From Trackpedia

Contents 1 The trip there 2 Day 1 at Road America 3 Day 1 lessons 4 Day 2 5 Summary

The trip there

Nordstern held a 2 day HPDE at Road America on July 10/11. It was a long drive down, around 5 hours from Rochester. There was a detour on 23 which went up to 21 and then back down to 23. This added about 90 minutes to the trip and then we overshoot the track and then needed to turn around and come back a few miles.

We had bad luck driving down when a tie down on Johns car unhooked and swung around to break his left front fog light. 1600 dollars for another one. Ouch. We then carried on to the track and unloaded the cars at the Paddock. The paddock was open till 10pm.

A funny incident happened when trying to gain access to the paddock. John went to inquire if we could still enter so he parked his SUV with Ferrari in tow about 20 feet in front of the paddock entrance. He walked over to the guard and asked about entering the paddock. The guard responded with "You need a car to enter!". Then John turned around and pointed at the Ferrari and said "What do you think that is, a boat?". The guard wasn't amused but let us in regardless.

We unloaded the trailers and got out of there around 9:00pm. We went to Seipkins then to try and register but everyone had gone. It was Subway for supper and then we drove to the hotel.

The hotel, a Sleep Inn was very nice. Compared to the hotel at Mid America Motorplex, it was a palace.

Day 1 at Road America

Day 1 started early, 5:30am. Showers and then drive over to the track to register. It was going to be a great day, 70F high which was awesome in our opinion, it meant the cars wouldn't be too hot. It was in the 90s in Mid America Motorplex and it was brutal on the cars and tires.

All the cars were double checked again, brake fluid, coolant, oil levels, pads, wheel lug torques, seat belts. We were in run group 2 and the first session was 8:30. The sessions were 20 minutes.

The drivers meeting was 8:00am at the start/finish line. Standard stuff at the meeting. Point bys would always be on the left with the car in front indicating right and pulling offline. There were about 125 cars register with maybe 30 per run group but the track is over 4 miles so most of us never saw another car while on the track.

Tire pressures were set to 25/28psi on the Michelin Pilot cups and then the first session came. The first session is basically a very slow 3 minutes plus set of laps. Check out the car, do a couple of hard stops to make sure the brakes are right and start learning the track, it's different in person than reading the track map on paper.

No events on the this session. The cars all came in everything was checked again. Tire pressures were checked and pressures dropped to 32/36psi. Brake fluid was checked and wheel lugs retorqued. We parked the cars on asphalt and looked for any fluid leaks. This is a tip, always park on asphalt after a session, much easier to spot leaks than on grass plus, grass can catch fire...

Session 2 had one car go off in Canada corner in the gravel trap. Basically, the driver didn't brake hard enough. He was braking like on the first warm up session and that was that. It's a long wait in the gravel trap waiting to be 'rescued'. How much damage was done to the car? Are the front and rear bumpers still attached. The rescue workers came and asked if there was a tow hook at the rear of the car. The car had trailer tie hooks attached and they used one of those to drag the car on to the grass. The car was restarted and then when they said it was safe to move, it was driven offline as much as possible to the paddock where it went back to the parking area. Nobody was staring at the car (always a BAD SIGN) so that was promising. The car looked good on inspection, no fluid leaks, just an unbelievable amount of gravel trapped in the aero panels under the car. All the panels were removed and emptied. There is a lot of gravel. It took about 90 minutes to do this. We started the car and let it run for a while and everything looked good.

Then the post session checks happened, brake fluid, oil level, wheel lug torques.

Lunch time. Subway again. We came back in time for the next session and it was a slow session. The car still had gravel inside it and basically this was a checkout session.

Car came back to paddock with normal temperatures, no warning lights, everything looked fine. We did the usual post session check, bleed tires to 32/36, check everything. Another car went in the gravel on turn 1 so we knew we had some cleaning to do when we got back.

The next session was faster, laps around 2:55 consistently towards the end of the session. Car was working well.

In all, we got maybe 3 sessions on day 1 which wasn't bad given the gravel experience. We were happy with the day, everybody had fun despite the gravel tours.

Day 1 lessons

There was carnage in the other run groups. At least five cars had serious incidents and hit safety barriers or walls. A pretty rough day. A couple of the incidents seemed mechanical and there wasn't much to be done in those cases. Most of the others were drivers trying to save the cars once they had unstuck around a turn. The safety guys and everybody else we talked to about this reckons there is a 1% chance to save a car once it looses the backend. The rest of the time, trying to save it usually results in the car shooting across the track and hitting the opposite wall or another car hitting it. The moral is to put both feet in and let the car travel in that direction using its momentum once the wheels lock up. You have a good chance of not hitting anything in this case. Much better odds than trying to save it.

For us, the lessons are:

• Never half brake. Always use maximum brakes on every turn. This would have avoided the gravel. Most cars have ABS and the wheels won't lock up. Just hit it hard and then if you braked too early, let the car coast to turn in. This also is better for the brakes, half braking or riding on the brakes will heat them up and cause brake fade or worse.
• If using new tires then find someone else with experience with them to set hot pressures correctly. A tire with too much pressure will not stick on a track, especially R compounds tires.
• Don't try to save a car when you lose control of it, just put both feet in and ride it out.
• Don't disable ABS brakes on a car :)
• The gravel trap seems to not damage a car

We then went back to Seipkins for dinner and then headed back to the hotel to discuss the day and watch video of everybody.

Day 2

Day two would be a short one due to weather. There were thunder storms headed in our direction. The drivers meeting was something we expected to be a little firmer than the previous day due to the incidents. The meeting focused on just everybody dialing back to try to lower the incidents hopefully to zero for today.

The rain started around 11am so most cars got a single session in before the rain started to drop on the track. The rain started in earnest around 1pm and basically a couple of brave souls went out but given the previous day, I don't think most had the stomach to risk the track in the rain. We packed up and started home.

Summary

The track is absolutely awesome. It's the third track we've visited personally and easily the best. Elevation changes, fast sweeping corners, big braking, high speeds, blind turns under bridges, braking downhill, the track has everything. The track needs respect. Take a lot of care on the kink especially and there is no where to go if you make a mistake besides walls, there are no small accidents at the kink.

It was a shame so many cars were damaged though. We were lucky enough with two gravel tours.

All in all, excellent event, brilliant track and we'll be going back.