13COBRA
05-29-2017, 11:49 AM
I was finally able to get out to the track for a Saturday and Sunday event. NASA put it on at Heartland Park Topeka. It was a great event! Besides the rain and threat of severe storms Saturday morning, the weather held out and we were able to get all of our scheduled sessions in with little or no delay.
25874
NASA had us running the full configuration (about 2.4 miles) which led to a lot of fun combinations, fast straights, and a few corners that I dove into without enough weight transfer and went plowing grass with my front splitter, luckily no harm-no foul, and kept rolling. (red line is the track, best I could do with Microsoft Paint).
25875
This was my second time out on the track, and felt like I made huge leaps in my driving ability, my confidence and obviously my lap times. Last month when I was out here I was running pretty consistent 2:08-10's, but I was missing a lot of the late apex's and wasn't very consistent on my line. A modded Viper ACR might have been a poor choice to learn to road race with, not because it's uncontrollable (I actually found it to be quite predictable) but because I could make up for my poor cornering skill with the skinny pedal and still turn pretty decent lap times.
I had signed up to run in the HPDE 1 group, and after my first run my instructor told me that he was going to put me into the HPDE 2 group, so that was a nice way to start the day off. The first run had a lot of water on the track, I obviously wasn't going balls to the wall (still turned a 2:09) but the R888R's stuck really and I always felt planted. The amount of grip the ACR produces is unreal. Even with my lack of experience and skill, I was able to toss it around through the corners and not worry about the rear going around on me.
Going down the front straight (left side of the picture) and into turn one, you go over 'alpha zero'. While it's only about a 45-50 ft drop in elevation, at 140 mph it feels like you're driving off a cliff. I'm confident I would be able to take another second or two off my lap times if I had the balls to hold the throttle and not lift going over the hill; the Time Trial and Race group both held and you could tell it was dramatically increasing their ability to hold speed through turns 1 and 2. Oh well, I'll see if I can grow some before I go back in a few weeks.
Turn 3 feels like you're driving from California to New York; it just keeps going. Once I was up to speed I was making the corner at about 76 mph and accelerating to 88 mph or so before turning into 4 and 5. I wasn't a big fan of 3 as only going 75 felt like you were crawling after going through 1 and 2. I was able to pull about 1.3-1.38 G's through 3.
Turns 4 and 5 were pretty simple. 4 ended up being just a quick tap on the brakes and turn in, which led to 5. Once I got my line I was accelerating early through 5 and had just enough track to carry the car out to the strips and dive back out to an excruciatingly slow turn 6. I was going through turn 6 at 44-46 mph.
Turn 7, bottom right hand corner of the picture above, was a corner you could carry a ton of speed through. I found that you could hit the corner about 85-88mph and I was able to accelerate to 121 before hitting the brakes and diving down in turn 8. The R888R's held up amazing on that corner as I kept hitting it harder and harder. I would go through the corner between 1.41 and 1.44 G's and never felt like I wasn't in control of the car.
Turn 8 was another slow turn at just under 50 mph, and then a quick whip back to the right to go through turn 9 and accelerate to 115 mph going into turn 10. Turns 11, 12, and 14 were very patience-testing as they felt very technical and I just wasn't ever 100% confident with my line through that mess. I could shave another 1 or 1.5 seconds off in that section fairly easily.
Overall, I was VERY impressed with the R888R's, and short of switching to Hoosier R7's, I would be more than happy to keep using them. We had 4-20/25 minute sessions Saturday, and 4 Sunday, and after seeing how they wore, I bet they would be good for 3 or 4 full weekends (with 4 being their death), at least at my driving ability. They got up to a temperature that would more than hold my driving ability in less than half a lap each session. They did well in the rain, and they wore well. I didn't feel as if they would get greasy towards the end of the session, I actually turned my faster times toward the end of each runs. My tire pressures fluctuated a lot though. I started at 32 in the front and 30 in the rear. Ended up adjusting down to 30/28, and that seemed to do better. Before I let air out, they were getting to 37-38 while hot. After I adjusted down I was seeing 35/33 and felt as though they held better that way; but again, with my limited time on track, I could be wrong.
I was able to set some personal bests that I was very happy with. Saturday I made several 2:01-2:02 passes, and was happy with that. I decided on Sunday that I would like to break the 2-minute mark. My first session yielded a 2:00.43 lap, which I was happy with. The second session yielded a 2:00.05 lap, again I was satisfied. Then my 3rd session I was really pushing it and ran a 1:59.86, and a 1:57.49! I was ecstatic. The hard part about driving a fast car with the HPDE 1/2 group, was the lap traffic was hard to get around at points as they only allow passes on point-bys and straight-a-ways. I am going to make it a priority to get out to an actual Viper track day.
My last session of the day, I was able to string together a 1:57.47, 1:57.69 back to back and didnt havbe a great weekend! If I would've had one more session I probably would've asked for a check ride to see about moving to HPDE 3; but by not asking, it gives me a pretty good excuse to come back for another weekend.
25876
Video: Excuse the slight rattle, I think I broke the door to my GoPro mount and it causes a slight vibration. Also, I'm still trying to figure out how to sync the video with Harry's Lap Timer so I can do an overlay, etc. Note to self, next time bring back up batteries for the GoPro, as I missed the last 2 sessions. HLT, SkyPro GPS and my phone worked flawlessly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET9CEEAyDfo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcio9NvVH4w
25874
NASA had us running the full configuration (about 2.4 miles) which led to a lot of fun combinations, fast straights, and a few corners that I dove into without enough weight transfer and went plowing grass with my front splitter, luckily no harm-no foul, and kept rolling. (red line is the track, best I could do with Microsoft Paint).
25875
This was my second time out on the track, and felt like I made huge leaps in my driving ability, my confidence and obviously my lap times. Last month when I was out here I was running pretty consistent 2:08-10's, but I was missing a lot of the late apex's and wasn't very consistent on my line. A modded Viper ACR might have been a poor choice to learn to road race with, not because it's uncontrollable (I actually found it to be quite predictable) but because I could make up for my poor cornering skill with the skinny pedal and still turn pretty decent lap times.
I had signed up to run in the HPDE 1 group, and after my first run my instructor told me that he was going to put me into the HPDE 2 group, so that was a nice way to start the day off. The first run had a lot of water on the track, I obviously wasn't going balls to the wall (still turned a 2:09) but the R888R's stuck really and I always felt planted. The amount of grip the ACR produces is unreal. Even with my lack of experience and skill, I was able to toss it around through the corners and not worry about the rear going around on me.
Going down the front straight (left side of the picture) and into turn one, you go over 'alpha zero'. While it's only about a 45-50 ft drop in elevation, at 140 mph it feels like you're driving off a cliff. I'm confident I would be able to take another second or two off my lap times if I had the balls to hold the throttle and not lift going over the hill; the Time Trial and Race group both held and you could tell it was dramatically increasing their ability to hold speed through turns 1 and 2. Oh well, I'll see if I can grow some before I go back in a few weeks.
Turn 3 feels like you're driving from California to New York; it just keeps going. Once I was up to speed I was making the corner at about 76 mph and accelerating to 88 mph or so before turning into 4 and 5. I wasn't a big fan of 3 as only going 75 felt like you were crawling after going through 1 and 2. I was able to pull about 1.3-1.38 G's through 3.
Turns 4 and 5 were pretty simple. 4 ended up being just a quick tap on the brakes and turn in, which led to 5. Once I got my line I was accelerating early through 5 and had just enough track to carry the car out to the strips and dive back out to an excruciatingly slow turn 6. I was going through turn 6 at 44-46 mph.
Turn 7, bottom right hand corner of the picture above, was a corner you could carry a ton of speed through. I found that you could hit the corner about 85-88mph and I was able to accelerate to 121 before hitting the brakes and diving down in turn 8. The R888R's held up amazing on that corner as I kept hitting it harder and harder. I would go through the corner between 1.41 and 1.44 G's and never felt like I wasn't in control of the car.
Turn 8 was another slow turn at just under 50 mph, and then a quick whip back to the right to go through turn 9 and accelerate to 115 mph going into turn 10. Turns 11, 12, and 14 were very patience-testing as they felt very technical and I just wasn't ever 100% confident with my line through that mess. I could shave another 1 or 1.5 seconds off in that section fairly easily.
Overall, I was VERY impressed with the R888R's, and short of switching to Hoosier R7's, I would be more than happy to keep using them. We had 4-20/25 minute sessions Saturday, and 4 Sunday, and after seeing how they wore, I bet they would be good for 3 or 4 full weekends (with 4 being their death), at least at my driving ability. They got up to a temperature that would more than hold my driving ability in less than half a lap each session. They did well in the rain, and they wore well. I didn't feel as if they would get greasy towards the end of the session, I actually turned my faster times toward the end of each runs. My tire pressures fluctuated a lot though. I started at 32 in the front and 30 in the rear. Ended up adjusting down to 30/28, and that seemed to do better. Before I let air out, they were getting to 37-38 while hot. After I adjusted down I was seeing 35/33 and felt as though they held better that way; but again, with my limited time on track, I could be wrong.
I was able to set some personal bests that I was very happy with. Saturday I made several 2:01-2:02 passes, and was happy with that. I decided on Sunday that I would like to break the 2-minute mark. My first session yielded a 2:00.43 lap, which I was happy with. The second session yielded a 2:00.05 lap, again I was satisfied. Then my 3rd session I was really pushing it and ran a 1:59.86, and a 1:57.49! I was ecstatic. The hard part about driving a fast car with the HPDE 1/2 group, was the lap traffic was hard to get around at points as they only allow passes on point-bys and straight-a-ways. I am going to make it a priority to get out to an actual Viper track day.
My last session of the day, I was able to string together a 1:57.47, 1:57.69 back to back and didnt havbe a great weekend! If I would've had one more session I probably would've asked for a check ride to see about moving to HPDE 3; but by not asking, it gives me a pretty good excuse to come back for another weekend.
25876
Video: Excuse the slight rattle, I think I broke the door to my GoPro mount and it causes a slight vibration. Also, I'm still trying to figure out how to sync the video with Harry's Lap Timer so I can do an overlay, etc. Note to self, next time bring back up batteries for the GoPro, as I missed the last 2 sessions. HLT, SkyPro GPS and my phone worked flawlessly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET9CEEAyDfo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcio9NvVH4w