First HPDE: Success!

[umarov]

Hello Mustang6G!

So I have made a post about my first ever Autocross here and got a lot of great feedback.

This thread is about my first time at an HPDE event. I will just write down how my experience was and how the car performed.

I will also include video material of my sessions and also two videos on how to prepare your car and yourself for the track.

My experience

So this is the first time ever I have been to a race track. I was nervous and excited at the same time. I have watched countless videos on preparing for the track and how to drive at the track. There were so many concepts to learn and I thought I was going to be very overwhelmed.

I arrived a day before the event and checked in at the local hotel. Gave me and my buddy time to relax and get a night of sleep before the event. We were the first ones at the event. We checked in and got through the inspection.

The guy who was doing the inspection also had a Compo S550 GT. He has an auto and base model pretty much. He was also one of the instructors. Very cool dude.

So after driver's meeting, I headed to my car and met my instructor. He provided me an earpiece so I could hear him properly. He told me to leave all the nannies on. So I used the Sport+ Mode, because normal mode's throttle response is a lot slower. He headed out and started the warm up lap. First few laps the yellow flag was out, which meant there was no passing. The track was still cold, so we had to warm up the tires and brakes.

After that it started. With each lap, I started to feel the car more and more. Started to push it more. I learned a lot about the car and how it behaves in different parts of the track. It was awesome.

I honestly didn't want to stop driving, but my body did and so did the car. I was exhausted after the first day. It really wears you out. It also wears out your car. More specifically the tires :headbonk:. After the weekend the tires looked like this:
Front Tires

Rear Tires

As you can see, the fronts were destroyed compared to the rears. That's what you get with a staggered wheels, stock suspension, and stock camber settings. I experience understeer at some point at the track, when I was pushing the car really car. Also at the same corner I had an oversteer slide.

Car's Performance

Let's talk about how the Mustang performed.
Excellent! For a beginner like me, it was amazing. Car gripped like no other. Tires communicated well. I had a lot of power to play with. Brakes were also amazing.
The Pirellis did really well after they warmed up. I pulled 1 lateral G

I feel like I could have done more, but I just felt bad for the front tires.
Towards the end of second day of HPDE, I could already hear the tires at some corners. I even heard them while braking from going about 130 mph. Knowing the limits of the tires really gives you an idea on how much you can push the car. It definitely inspired confidence, to be honest. From what everyone says and how the Pirelli's perform on the street, I thought I was going to be sliding all around. Hahaha I was so wrong.

Brake dust in the front wheels after the weekend.

Brakes were also amazing. Only thing I did to them was flushing the fluid. I swapped the fluid with ATE Typ 200. I never experienced any brake fade. I was expecting to experience some fade at the second day sessions, because we were doing the track at counter-clockwise. With counter-clockwise the straightway ends with a hairpin turn. You build more speed, but you also have to slow down a lot more.

Overall car did amazing. I drove back home and didn't regret anything.

After this event I really know what I need to do with the car. Some of these things are Brakes (Pads and Stainless Steel Lines), Sway Bars, Upgrade the suspension (Probably coilovers).

Here is the playlist for the six sessions I got on my dashcam. The dashcam power cable adapter was acting weird towards the end of day 2, so it didn't record some of my sessions. It kept on turning off, because adapter wouldn't transfer power. You can see this on my best session #6.
To see my progression better, jump to the middle of the video. First laps of each sessions are warm up. Then you can go to the next video.
Anyways enjoy the videos.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqpGt0wPEFuqGUgvn9ycUg8mfr4m9F0DK

Here are two videos I made on how to prepare your car and yourself for the track. I made the videos based on my experiences.

[ame]

[ame]

Conclusion
HPDEs are an amazing way to learn your car and improve your driving skills. I got a lot out of this event and really got the money's worth. I really want to go back to their June event, but then I will need to buy new tires by the end of the year probably (or sooner). I am getting married in August, so I don't want to accrue too many expenses on the car. After that I will get more serious with it.

I hope you enjoyed this write up of my first HPDE. I definitely enjoyed writing it and also making the videos. I will be going to a CDC Autocross event in the end of May in Winchester, VA. I hope to have dashcam video of that event too. I finally fixed the power cable issue. Only problem with it is the mic. I can't do anything about that lol.

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[El_Centenario]

Thanks for the detailed review on your first HPDE! I can't wait to take my car out to the track and test my driving skills as well as my cars limits. I will stop by this weekend at my local track ( Auto Club Speedway ) and check out the track event and get some information on the next event. What tires will you upgrade to for your next event?

 

[umarov]

Thanks for the detailed review on your first HPDE! I can't wait to take my car out to the track and test my driving skills as well as my cars limits. I will stop by this weekend at my local track ( Auto Club Speedway ) and check out the track event and get some information on the next event. What tires will you upgrade to for your next event?

I will upgrade to Nitto NT555 G2s with a square wheel setup. Probably do 285s all around.

 

[umarov]

Here are few photos from the track

Thumbs up for my crappy painter's tape job.

 

[Trackaholic]

It might just be me, but many of the images aren't coming through for me. The first 6 for example, as well as the third in the second set of photos.

Great write-up otherwise.

-T

 

[Norm Peterson]

It's not just you, T. I'd really like to see what the tire wear looked like, with maybe some camber numbers to go with them.


umarov - it's amazing how much more physical and mental effort you put into a 20 minute track session compared to, say, a comparable number of highway or secondary road miles. Flex your fingers from time to time on the longer straights when you aren't busy passing/getting passed; there's a tendency to clench the steering wheel harder than necessary.

what organization were you running with? I'd kind of guessed that the track was NCCAR, but I didn't think it was quite that big or able to support peak speeds that fast.

On your 'mode' setting . . . for the first few times you run a wet session (at least), the slowed-down throttle response of 'Normal' will be your friend. That's if you don't end up dropping all the way back to 'Snow/Wet'.

Nice track session videos, though I'm not sure what the point of frequently dissolving into new scenes was. I'd be expecting to see something useful about, say, an upcoming corner, and then not get to see what happened.


The hook has been set, right? ;)


Norm

 

[umarov]

It might just be me, but many of the images aren't coming through for me. The first 6 for example, as well as the third in the second set of photos.

Great write-up otherwise.

-T

I will fix the photos. Google photos blocked it I think hahaha

 

[umarov]

It's not just you, T. I'd really like to see what the tire wear looked like, with maybe some camber numbers to go with them.


umarov - it's amazing how much more physical and mental effort you put into a 20 minute track session compared to, say, a comparable number of highway or secondary road miles. Flex your fingers from time to time on the longer straights when you aren't busy passing/getting passed; there's a tendency to clench the steering wheel harder than necessary.

what organization were you running with? I'd kind of guessed that the track was NCCAR, but I didn't think it was quite that big or able to support peak speeds that fast.

On your 'mode' setting . . . for the first few times you run a wet session (at least), the slowed-down throttle response of 'Normal' will be your friend. That's if you don't end up dropping all the way back to 'Snow/Wet'.

Nice track session videos, though I'm not sure what the point of frequently dissolving into new scenes was. I'd be expecting to see something useful about, say, an upcoming corner, and then not get to see what happened.


The hook has been set, right? ;)


Norm

I will update the photo links in a bit. So you can see the tire wear.

Yeah flexing fingers helped a lot. By the end of the first few sessions, my hands were very sore haha. My instructor said what you said. On the straightaways to relax fingers.

I was running with Apex Track Events. They do bunch of events in this area.
I had my phone log my runs from my OBD2 reader. The peak speeds it showed were 129 on my best run. I didn't really look at the speedo while I am approaching a hairpin that fast. However, the fastest I saw with my eyes were 125. So 129 is possible.

That "wet" session wasn't really wet. It just drizzled for few minutes. I didn't experience any loss of traction or wheel spin. But in my last autocross run, it was pouring rain and even snow. Snow and wet mode gave me the fastest time lol.

I had no idea the video editor put those effects between the scenes. I was processing them in batches. I only saw it when they were uploaded. So I apologize for that. :frusty::frusty: I am thinking to invest in a better in-car camera solution. So my future track and autocross videos should be a lot better.

Oh yeah

 

[umarov]

[MENTION=7132]Trackaholic[/MENTION] [MENTION=6743]Norm Peterson[/MENTION] Photo links are fixed. Apologize for the bug.

 

[Norm Peterson]

Thanks, and don't worry about the bug. Odd things like that happen to most of us.

The front tires definitely got hot; those bits of rubber that seem to be stuck to the surface may not all be OPR (other peoples' rubber).

Roll stiffness, roll stiffness distribution, tire vertical spring rates, camber, camber gain, inflation pressures, even wheel width relative to tire section and tread widths all played a part. Probably more things past where my understanding ends.


Side thought, don't park hot tires on gravel if there's any way to avoid doing so. Find pavement. Hot tires are soft and will pick up most every little pebble, and you probably shouldn't count on the next session's out lap to get them all cleaned off rather than embedded deeper.


Norm

 

[dontlifttoshift]

http://www.trakktape.com/

 

[Norm Peterson]

↑↑↑ Thanks, never heard of that stuff before. A little pricy, but it has to be easier to apply than 2" painter's tape.


Norm

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