The Project Pad

It was a blast. They had some vintage races going on and there was an Audi Sport B5 S4 there racing in the 90 min enduro in the afternoon. I chatted with the owner/driver for about 30 minutes, great guy! I also went out on the track with my M5 following an E92 M3 (with a bunch of stupid, slow cars in front of us) and we ripped it up where we could. The description of the video explains it all.



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDNgGUZ63fo[/youtube]

I'll add some pics later once I get some kind of photo editing software on my new computer.

That Mailbu MAXX is pretty sweet...and did I spy a Crystler Town and Country?

I love the noise your m5 makes, what a great car!

Dude. That looks like a blast! I am madly jealous!

Well after racing my friend's turbo E30 tonight I have some light thumping/knocking coming from the right front of the car (speed related, not engine related thank God!). Gotta figure out what it is tomorrow. On the bright side, I got some awesome vids of it

loxxrider wrote:Well after racing my friend's turbo E30 tonight I have some light thumping/knocking coming from the right front of the car (speed related, not engine related thank God!). Gotta figure out what it is tomorrow. On the bright side, I got some awesome vids of it

This post is a complete fail without said video!

Vids are posted in another thread Found out what the knocking was... loose lugnut. DOH!

Hey very cool video !

In March we were freezing here ..

Slow cars never let you pass ? Most of people let you pass them here, even sometimes on openroad .. or maybe cause I sometimes push a bit .. who knows
Your engine pulls hard, love the sound too

Thanks! There was no passing allowed because it wasn't a racing event... it was just something where anyone can go take a drive on the track. If they let people really race, they'd surely get sued when some idiot pulled a bad move!

Oh come on you can't drive THAT bad to crash while pulling a bit on this nice tarmac :p

It was just a track discovery day ?

+ how did you fit subtitles on your video ?

Clem86 wrote:Oh come on you can't drive THAT bad to crash while pulling a bit on this nice tarmac :p

It was just a track discovery day ?

+ how did you fit subtitles on your video ?

Never say never... lol. It's frightening sometimes to see who comes out on a track and thinks they can lap like the best of them and end up relying 100% on the nannies in the car to keep them on the road. Thankfully, I've been lucky w/ the students I've instructed that they're not that bad and generally slow down once they spook themselves, like a student I had w/ a TTRS who hit the brakes at the crest of the hill on the back straight at VIR at 140mph... talk about dancing!!! He suddenly started driving a LOT slower the rest of the event... haha.

Yeah sure you need to be frightned one or two times to get what an emegency braking or countersteer could be.

But I'm sure it could be really boring to wait behind a random suv when you have a decent car..

You're an instructor on this track?

Haven't instructed there. Instructed at Summit Point, VIR, NJMP, and Watkins Glen. Instruct mainly with the Audi Club, and help run the Potomac Chapter events (I'm chief tech).

The lead follows can be very boring/frustrating, as most people don't know the car's capabilities in the turns, so like most green students, they crawl through the turns, then hammer the throttle to see how fast they can go on the straightaway . As they learn the line, etc, they get faster through the turns and then the straightline speed doesn't seem as important. But for those that already have a loose idea of what line to take and how their car handles, they're already a step or two ahead of many on the track.

People come with their cars and you show them how to turn handle and brake properly ?

I think driving feels depends on which type of road you drive usually, straight lines, forest, mountain, gravel ..

Most of people in powerfull cars just like to push full throttle in straight line but they disappear when the first turn comes, just like in mountain-skiing.

I personnaly learnt a lot while driving on the snow even with underpowered vehicles (I'm thinking of my old 400k kil fiat ducato haha), about weight transfers and braking.

Yup, instruct them at HPDE (High Performance Drivers Education) events. It's a bring whatcha got, though as people get more serious the mods on the cars start piling on. Teach them the lines around the track, threshold breaking, science behind everything, etc. Essentially help them safely explore the limits of the cars and generally hope they stay within those limits

Student I was most scared to get into was a race prepped Viper, and in all honesty he was the most reserved driver I've ridden shotgun with. Very smooth and didn't push the envelope very far. Grand scheme of things, I have been pretty lucky w/ my students. Had a few that have made me slightly motion sick or sore from the unsmoothness (jerking wheel, stabbing brakes, etc), but overall none I've had to yell at. I did have to grab the wheel once when one student tried to early apex a turn so badly we would have been into a tire wall on the other side of the track before she even blinked. Thankfully we were going slow and she didn't fight with me when I did it, though I got a ding on my eval... lol. Such is life.

Treshold braking is when you push hard the brake and release softly to avoid wheel locking ? It's hard to practice on open road, most of the time I don't brake enough and have to push again .. it's really hard to be precise
Do you practice left foot braking on RWD cars ? I use it sometimes on my FWD Audi 90 (on the quattro too), which is truely great on the snow but hard to get on tarmac ..
You have a really nice job, glad nobody crashed his/her car while having fun on a track.

You're right about the Viper, sometimes you think you will have a heartattack in a powerfull car but it's really soft, and sometimes you are scared in a random car with a good driver..

If I learnt something since I'm a delivery man, it's that any car is fast depending on the situations (downhill in a light weight is really fun )

Watching the vid is not helping my urge to make an offer on this http://denver.craigslist.org/cto/3930170045.html

The gray interior and ~14city/18hwy (est by seller on Bimmerforums) are tempering my interest (I'm beating that on E85 in the CQ).