April 14, 2010 - After Janel had so much fun on Friday, it was time to meet the hundreds of Miatas that had come for Miatas at MRLS.
The plan was for me to drive the car in the fastest A group and take people for rides, and Janel would drive in the C group. However, when I first jumped in the car, I discovered that it was very unhappy under part throttle. It was too late for me to do any more tuning on the car, but spending a single session with a laptop jammed under a seat would have made a big difference. Still, it was easy enough to drive around. I also discovered that while my spare rubber was up to pressure, I had the tires on the car about 7 psi low. Whoops. So the car should have been faster on Friday for Janel if I'd been able to take a quick test drive. Sorry!
For the rest of the weekend, the car pounded around and around the track. The other cars from Flyin' Miata were under orders not to run at 10/10ths to ensure they'd last, but that didn't apply to the Targa car. So I ran it pretty hard, and I know Janel did as well. This is one solid little critter, and so much fun.
The new suspension wasn't a big hit with Janel, and it certainly did allow a lot of lean. Still, it put down the power well and seemed friendly enough. I wanted just a bit less understeer but didn't want to mess with it after Janel had spent so long honing things with Rick.
I spent a lot of my time staying out of trouble with the A group, populated with winged beasts and drivers that were considerably faster than me.
Janel had a different problem. She was much faster than everyone in her group, and so she spent most of the time waiting for the slower driver to point her by. It was frustrating. She really should have been in the B group.
Sunday started off cold and looking like rain, and it started to sprinkle fairly early. Janel came into the Corkscrew with the back end of the car quite loose and almost looped it, and I found the grip level changing on every corner. So we parked the car, and shortly afterwards the skies opened. The track was closed early due to the deep water, and we packed up to go home.
A pretty good weekend.
tags: laguna seca, track |
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