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September 25th and 26th I attended the annual Octoberfast BMWCCA event with the Badger Bimmers.
[ http://www.badgerbimmers.org/ ]
Cliff’s notes: Road America is really fun. Here’s a picture. There are more at the end, enjoy.
Otherwise my write up:
This is my first summer taking my car to track/high performance driver education events, and my 5th event of the summer. I have been to Mayfast at Hallett (PCA), June - Motorsport Ranch (PCA), August – Motorsport Ranch (BMWCCA), September – Hallet (ZCOT), and now Road America. My first time at each track (since it takes me a while to learn a track) I always join the novice group and even as an intermediate I try to go to the novice classroom if there are no intermediate classrooms offered. You can never know too much, and since I am still no stud driver (I’m getting better, and can’t wait until I am considered good – it will be a while but at least I’m practicing) I’ll take every little bit of help I can get. About Road America, its long, 4 miles long (I believe one of the longest if not the longest in the country), with 14 turns many of which are fairly fast turns making it a pretty fast track. I really liked it because it was “easy” compared to MSR and Hallett. Now, I call it easy because its easy to learn, for me. Hallett was about medium to learn I guess and MSR really difficult for me because of the lack of landmarks. Since RA has been around since the 50’s or so it is very mature (and really nicely maintained) and there is a ton going on, with a different bannered bridge going over the track before every important set of turns. Those really helped me to know where on the track I was and what turn is coming up. It also seemed to me that most of the turns are on camber (the exception being the kink), so you feel safer taking them. The kink is dangerous because it IS off camber, fast and leading into a pretty long and very fast/scary backstraight. About the Z, I had 3 different instructors the first day and 2 the second day so I really got to hear a lot of different opinions of the proper line. But the instructor I had most often was the driver of a boosted minicooperS, and he continually praised the Z, talking about how well set up the car was and how amazing the brakes were. This was my first event on compR tires, and my first with true racing brake pads. The pads DO make a huge difference. I was previously using Ferodo DS2500 street/track pads with a Brembo Big brake kit (with rotors incorrectly installed to be fair to the ferodo’s), and I have to say it is a no brainier to go with a dedicated track and a dedicated street pad. While there is some satisfaction in just driving straight to the track and driving right on, that is the ONLY upside. I am now using a Brembo branded ceraminc race pad and a brembo branded ceramic street pad. And the difference is BIG. The Ferodos “squeeled like a pig” and dusted like, well a lot on the street, and on the track they were alright (any fade I experienced with them I would attribute to the rotor vanes pointing the wrong direction not the pad) but defiantly lacked the crazy bite these race pads were doing. I’m sure these expensive Brembo pads are not really necessary and Hawk HP / Blue combo would probably be equally effective (I ran Hawk Blues on the rear). Suffice to say the tires and brakes are the two most important parts of a car on the track and this time I had those two totally covered. Driving at Road America. The first day was super busy. There was no free moment the entire day save one hour before my last track session. The day went straight through–registration, unload car, classroom, autocross exercise (braking), track, classroom, autocross exercise (turning...clockwise+PCV =smoke), 20 min luch, track, classroom, autocross exercise(braking then turning), track, finally a break then track again. My novice group was probably the slowest group of cars (exception VW R32, and 2xE46 M3s) I have ever had in a driving event, and since it seems I was running behind all day I always started at the back of the grid so suffice to say I ended up taking the turns pretty slow most of the time as I was stuck behind much slower cars. Also my main instructor was very conservative and always wanted me to slow down more then most others for the turns. With that said, speeds reached on the straights were usually around 125 and when running on race fuel (all they sell at the track and when your out, your out –6 bucks a gal)130’s were easily attained and these are coming from very slow corner exit speeds (and yes I’m still learning the track). With practice I’m sure 140+ would easily be in reach. But, as most of the road course drivers know its not how fast you go on the straights, but how smooth you are, and how much speed you can carry safely through a turn. But, don’t get me wrong the straights at RA are pretty fun (esp the slightly downhill back straight after the kink). The second day there were only two classroom sessions and two autocross sessions (slalom and everything combined). The second day I also saw a VERY scary thing, as I came upon the slow turn after the really fast downhill back straight there was a yellow flag, and as I came around the turn I saw the C4 from my rungroup, offtrack, on its top - upside down, with dust all over the air, and the helmets pinned inside not moving. I had no idea what had happened, or if they were OK. The black flag was out at the next turn and we all exited the track. I later found out he came in too fast and slid into the tirewall pretty fast and it flipped his car. Very scary to see, it was an older guy, really really nice and you could tell he loved that car. Turns out he was OK and we had one last classroom meeting to discuss what happened. The car on the other hand will probably be totaled or at least require a lot of work. SLOW IN, FAST OUT. Anyway, after that I actually had time to talk to people on the second day and believe it or not log on to twinturbo.net (had about 5 days of catching up to do after my busy trip to RA.
See that post here:
[ http://www.twinturbo.net/net/viewmsg.aspx?forum=general&msg_id=1368990 ] Road America is a ton of fun and I highly recommend it to anyone and this event was very professional and I definitely got my money’s worth with all the classroom instruction and the autocross exercises. If anything, its worth it to be a novice just to get all those extras. I plan to do OctoberFast next year and next time I will put something in the events section about it and possibly get a few other Z32’s out there as well.
Parking lot at registration for Road America
Lining up to do brake exercise, first exercise of the day. Notice the mostly clean front wheels, that won't last long...
Lining up to do the brake and turn exercise, after a couple track sessions the front wheels are already a bit dusty.
Crappy picture of me doing the turn part of the brake and turn excercise.
Me chatting with the guy that gives you advice and answers questions about the exercise.
The on track pictures were taken by a professional photographer and it shows. These are some low quality scans of the pictures. I'm sure once I get them back I can get some hi-res scans. Seem to be really moving through one of the "fast turns" I was talking about.
A cool shot with the Road America logo in it.
This shot is one of my favorites, as I think it is a good angle for the car.
A picture I had no idea my buddy was taking (or I would have moved my butt). At that point I'm sure I was saying "Dang thats hot" while moving the hood prop into place.
Lastly these gray 993 turbos seem to follow me me around. And whats that on my laptop? tt.net via my sprint vision phone. Got to love unlimited 56k via #777
Anyway, I hope you guys like these pictures and this post convinces a few more of you to go out to a roadcourse to see what your cars (and more importantly you) can really do. I still plan to tweak the front fascia and wash up the car from all the traveling later this week or next week. I'll be sure to post a few pics after that. Again, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!
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Road America – OctoberFast with Badgerbimmers (pics,long) - 
07:59:13 10/06/04
