A year of track day shenanigans; the concise(ish) summary

As the year starts to wind up I guess it’s only natural that we start to think about the twelve months that have passed. It was this time last year that I grappled with the decision to sell the Zed and look for the next project, which ended up being this Ibis White TT-RS.

So apart from having the reputation of a hairdresser’s car, the two big negatives about the TT are the poor steering feel and the tendency to understeer just about everywhere (according to reviewers). Still, I was pretty confident that these two latter issues could be dialled out with a bit of track-time and TLC. But the most important thing to do was to get a baseline for the car and better understand what I wanted to get out of her.

Mike was running one of his Porsche Club Motorkhana days, which I figured would be a good ease-in for the car, being a lower speed environment and all. The understeer was definitely there, but the car’s brutal low-rpm torque helped fire it out of each corner to eventually come third by the end of the day.

Then it was off to Winton for some proper lap times at the Toyota 86 Track day in April where, next to Justin’s modified monster MR, the standard TT paled in comparison. The day ended with a 1:43.3 and the verification that the TT does indeed understeer pretty much everywhere and that it was just silly to attempt to chase the aforementioned MRS out of any corner.

While not a terrible time, it was still over six seconds slower than my outgoing 350Z and the aforementioned understeer was extremely frustrating, as can be seen at about 1:10 in the above video from Justin’s WingCam(tm). Luckily the hop over the ripple strip didn’t hurt the car.

The first round of tweaks included a Whiteline positive caster kit to help with steering feel, H&R sway bars to tune out some understeer, a tune to unlock the latent potential of the engine and an intercooler to keep charge-air temperatures in check on the track. All up a fairly rounded package with some adjustability.

Back to Winton for the EXE Track day in May and the modifications yielded a three second gain. More importantly the understeer in the TT had been greatly reduced, making the car more fun to drive. As a final added bonus some tail-out shenanigans were now accessible with some lift-off on both throttle and brake inputs, bringing out a little character and making the car far less one-dimensional.

So an apt finish to the end of the Autumn season; a bit of clowning around with the squad and a 1:40 lap time, three seconds down from the first track day.

Over the Winter I found some wheels to (mostly) fit the semis I had squirreled away. One annoying thing about this car is that 18-inch wheels with appropriate widths and offsets are really thin on the ground and I eventually settled for 9-inch (instead of 9.5-inch) Rays Engeering ZE40 wheels. Then back to Winton where finally the TT could really put down its power and rip out a 1:36.6, now faster than the venerable 350Z. I’d learnt a lot of lessons when tuning the Zed that made tuning the TT a relative breeze; seven years of tweaking and fiddling the Zed and now the TT was faster in less than six months.

But time waits for no one and by now I felt that the extra lateral-G’s generated by the semis was causing the stock suspension to bottom out, so over-night-parts from Germany in the form of a set of KW V3s to fix that and my dump-pipe finally showed up, allowing the unlocking of the Stage 2 red zone.

To mix things up a bit, the squad drove up to Wakefield where my new nemesis Tom and I battled it out in a thoroughly entertaining day where many wagers were made and some bets settled with delicious free steaks. Finishing the day in the 1:08s wasn’t too shabby for a second stab at the track, but there’s definitely way more time to be had.

So as the year started to draw to a close we had a massive contingent head down to Philip Island where I quickly learnt that the lack of steering of feel really comes to the fore when you’re trying to  corner at 180km/h and put the car on the apex. Also my first “moment” at the high-speed turn 12 from some lift-off oversteer had me fiddling the suspension slightly in an attempt to get less oversteer into the apex, but more oversteer on corner exit. While the changes felt better, I was never quite brave enough to full-throttle it from turn 10 through 12, one big moment per day is enough for me.

After PI it was time to turn some attention to the front-end of the car. Inspection of the front tyres showed that they were still rolling onto the sidewall even after installing the KWs, lowering the car and getting 1.5-degrees of camber. Unfortunately there’s no camber adjustment from stock, but IE make a neat camber top that would work with the V3s and should be able to take the car to around 3.5-degrees.

Unfortunately the camber tops were generally designed for the Mk6 platform and the hole at the top of the TT’s tower isn’t big enough to achieve maximum camber, obviously because hairdresser’s don’t need negative camber. It does however look like these tops have managed an additional one-degree or so, for a total of around 2.5 (alignment next week). Well, that gets me all set up for next year and if all goes according to plan, it’ll be a another busy year of race track shenanigans. Merry Christmas everyone!

It’s time to pack my bags for some travelling adventures again…so the next blogs should be a welcome change of pace!

Track day snippets, BBQ lunches and what hiring hookers and track days have in common

It’s a quarter to twelve and Nick, Casey and I are leaning up against the front of Jim’s X5 (after asking nicely) as the big car is positioned for optimal sun-to-wind ratio. As an added bonus, we’re facing the track and can see the action that happens around Winton’s infamous S-bend. Stage right and a bunch of guys are huddled under a Space-Invaders-era CRT monitor, completely transfixed by the names and statistics blurrily cycling through the 65-odd competitors.

As far as track days go it’s been a pretty smooth morning. Everyone scrutineered, briefing done, MacGillaz and I doing our usual Tango & Cash routine (you can have a guess who the studious one and who the loose one is). Cars out on time and no one backing into walls on their first lap. My Hankook Z221 soft-compound cheater qualifying tyres have worked a treat, dropping my own personal-best by over a second and putting me back into the game where two-wheel-drive cars are concerned.

A cheer goes up from the CRT congregation as someone’s name comes on screen, posting a luminescent new personal-best. Back-pats and high-fives ensue. I smile inwardly, appreciating the elation at being able to go faster than ever before.

An impossibly long tyre-screech and Nick is looking a combination of impressed and distraught, “Man that guy must hate his WRX, he’s driving the tits off it.”
“Either that or he stole it,” Case chimes in.
Only one guy I know drives a WRX like that. “Ahhh that’s Viv. He races rally cars…like, through forests and shit.” Knowing nods all round; those forest-people are bat-shit crazy.

“You know guys, I think I’m done for the day,” I think aloud.
Nick is incredulous. “Mate, it’s only midday.”
“Yeah, but a 1:37.3 is fine, mission accomplished, the track looks like it’s getting cold and I probably won’t go faster today. Plus the last time I was told to go out and just have fun by that pink-haired girl, I drove off the track and munted the underside of my car.”
“You’re being silly,” says Case, as Nick and I look over. “If you hired a bunch of of hookers for a few hours and banged them twice in the first hour and a half, would you not bang them again just because you thought it wouldn’t be as good as the last time, or would you go and get what you paid for regardless?” She has a point.

Another impossibly long tyre screech and I look back at the track, letting the smell of Nakama’s BBQ lunch waft over us as I give Case’s hypothetical a lot more thought than it really needed; are the hookers at my house, or did I get a hotel room? What are they wearing, what am I wearing? Are they hungry? Am I hungry? What if I COULD go faster?

Well played Case, well played.

A bunch of guys over by the office have also heard the tyre screech and are looking at the track. “How is that CE Lancer in Group C?” one of them questions. “It must be really modified”.
You guys obviously haven’t met Dan CW, aka The Professor…and you should see the things he can do with a Toyota Starlet.

A personal best, or PB, is the reward bestowed upon you for doing something positive, either to your car or to yourself. It’s a way of letting you know that you just haven’t wasted hundreds of hours playing Gran Turismo or thousands of dollars on a bunch of modifications to your car, as neither investment is absolutely guaranteed to make you faster and sometimes you actually go slower. As a bit of a side-show, your PB also earns you bragging rights with your mates…but you have to be really careful when you’re showing off your shiny new lap time.

My group is called up and as I wander up to my car I stop past Ying, Dan and Anthony, the latter seemingly very elated as he’s just stripped a full three-seconds of his personal-best time, but I know he’s put his foot in his mouth even before he finishes the sentence.

“Hey Ying, my car’s faster than your car.”
Pink hair flutters in the wind, a thousand microscopic razor wires. “Oh your car with its hand-built VTEC engine, custom made for race tracks is three-tenths faster than my hairdresser’s car?”
Vocal silence as all I hear is Dan exhaling the smoke from his cigarette. “Still not faster than our Starlets.”
I feel the burn from three feet away and keep moving, settling into my car for the pre-flight routine.

The session’s laps are all over the place. Cresting the finish on the second flying lap and the logger locks a 1:37.19…OK not bad. On the third flying lap, sector 1 is shit, 0.1 seconds slower. I push hard, brake late and under-steer while trail-braking. It’s messy but past the sector two marker and I’m back up to +0.5 seconds faster. Then over-enthusiasm sees me stuff the entry into turn 11, running wide into the V8 Super-car pit entry-lane and my gap is down to +0.2. Grit teeth, brake late, flat through the esses and rewarded with a 1:37.08. That’ll do pig.

I personally like the old saying “built, not bought” and like to see how fast my little Nissan goes against fresh factory cars and the local Motor magazine uses Winton to benchmark a wide variety of cars and posts their lap times. This has been a constant source of fascination for me and in the beginning, it was a bitter pill to swallow, that a professional driver in a Holden Barina SRi (Opel Corsa?) was faster than me. Hell a Ford Fairmont Ghia was faster than me! Now, after years of work the old girl is just one one-hundredths of a second off Porsche’s 996 Turbo. Maybe next time we’ll take the Jap-spec R35 GT-R.

I pull my car into the pits and as I walk past the office our Clerk Of Course, Jally, is yelling at some guy, in only the way Jally can, “You’re an idiot, braking at the one-marker is too late! Your car has more power than mine, so you’re going faster at the end of the straight and I brake way earlier than that!”
The guy looks sheepish; “But I have better brakes and maybe…”
“Shut up. Did you go off the track!?”
“Yeah but…”
“Shut up. I’m faster than you, so go away.”
Smiles and nervous laughter as no one actually knows whether she’s joking or serious.

The sky glows deep azure as the light fades and I stop off in the Nakama BBQ camp and chat with Vu about cheater qualifying tyres. I’ve known Vu for ages, we both had Silvias once and were a constant presence on Nissansilvia.com, but it wasn’t until I’d bought my Zed that I actually met him IRL (that’s in-real-life for you non-nerd types). Since then we’ve spent the last few years or so trading fastest laps.

“How’s Vyets going?” I ask, and everyone laughs.
“He’s just off his PB and not happy. That’s why he’s going out for the last session.”
TJB, aka The Legendary Charger, is running flags and happy to extend the session right up to closing time in order for Vyets to PB.

I wish him luck and as I work my way back to my car to pack up and sunlight tags out for moonlight, I wonder how I’m ever going to catch that guy. That wind is starting to bite again and my mind switches to another important unsolved mystery; how I could get someone to cook me BBQ whilst I go and get more PBs? Maybe Casey will have some theory or anecdote about it. Well played today everyone…well played.

Thanks Andy Szeto, Anthony “Bong” Chee, Ben Johnson for the pics!

S.E. Asian Hot Laps Part IV : Sentul International Ciruit

The familiar buzz of engines and click-clack of tools are a reassuring sound in somewhat unfamiliar territory, caged up cars sit patiently in garages while crews fawn over their state of (dis)repair. The spin-cycle of a starter-motor, an engine turning over, the guttural blast of race exhausts. Let me play you the song of my people…

As part of the wedding celebrations, Silas has booked out Sentul International Circuit for the day and provided us with an assortment of tools to ply our trade, so to speak.

Originally built for Formula One racing in the early nineties, the original track layout was shortened by around 40% and ended up proving unsuitable for F1 cars. The fall of the Asian Tigers in the late 90s contributed to the declining popularity of the track and today it’s used primarily for several local race series and club days.

Silas does door-to-door racing in one of the local BMW series and has invited his fellow competitors along to his track day, so there’s no shortage of seriously race-prepped equipment.

He’s also started racing bikes in the lower-CC class, and has brought a couple of his bikes along for anyone willing to give it a go.

Awesome matte-black baby-bottle overlow mod is awesome!

His beast of a choice is an E30 sedan with some Frankestein BMW engine…block from this car, heads from that car, crank from another car. The result is pretty impressive, the engine’s power output is 170-180rwkw from three aspirated litres. No one knows the max RPM, as the car revs off the 7000rpm clock, but Silas reassures us that the engine is tuned to cut fuel as it starts to lean out in the top end, so it’s OK to give it a boot-full.

The interior is all work and, no play…all the trims are removed, there’s a full cage and the seat is fitted to Silas, with no adjustment range.

Everyone is pumped, until it starts to monsoon down, the maelstrom of wind and giant raindrops brings welcome relief from the heat and humidity but now we can’t push as hard as we’d been hoping.

Silas looks thoughtful, “Indo semi slicks are great in the dry” he starts, “but they’re pretty, well, shit in the wet. So just be careful because I have no ABS and the car can lock up.” Shortly after his sponsor pulls into the pits from his warm-up lap missing a front bar and some other important looking cooling components. We’re all concerned but he says not to worry, he’s got at least another four shells that he can cannibalize parts from.

A few other cars start to arrive and YingBot has discovered more Starlet racers…excitement ensues.

There’s also this hyper-green Gallardo which was unfortunately shod with full slicks, not ideal for monsoon conditions. Widebody front-end looks the goods!

Dat ass!

The track day theme extended to our food and drink…and much coolant was required for both cars and people.

The track did dry up a bit and we all got a couple of laps in…due to the driver’s seat being Silas-spec, I couldn’t seen the rear view mirrors and had no idea I was having a go with this E36.

Master TJB pulled in on his lap, citing a few issues with the car.

The car was pitted and the mechanics went to work…

In the meantime the bikes were let out and Big Mac was keenly on his way…too rich for my blood! No way I’m trying a new bike on a new circuit in monsoonal rain! Everyone is suitably impressed.

When you ask people how they met Silas, 99% of them will regale you with some car story, but along with that, 99% will also tell you of some story where Silas went out of his way to help a stranger…and how after that, they kinda never left. I first met Silas when I bough a set of camber arms from him for my 350Z. He spent a good couple of hours installing them for me and they’re still on my car today. After that, I kinda never left.

The end of the day comes all too soon and the cars are loaded onto the back of trailers.

It’s not the end of the festivities however and we’re off to sample some traditional Indonesian food. This “Ikan Bakar” is grilled fish wrapped in pandan leaves.

After dinner we’re off to Bandung hot springs for some well needed R&R…just a tip when you’re in a hot spring, it’s not a swimming pool, don’t open your eyes under water, it buuuuuuuurns!