It was a Kia.

Exactly, both my instructor for this event and the ones I had at my last said the same thing. "Get on his ***, let him know you want to pass."

What I would do was run up on someone (where ever I happened to catch them) and get in real close then back off a car or two until right before we hit a passing zone. As we came onto the passing zone I would begin to close the gap and, if the person had been paying attention, they would point me by so that I never needed to lift. Okay, so this didnt work out as often as I would have liked and I had to lift a lot...but it was a good idea in theory.

Im not sure how a lot of people come into their first event but one of the things I focused on in mine was checking my mirrors and pointing people by ASAP. Im out there to have fun but so is everyone else. I had no fantasies about my driving skill at that first event and I did not want someone getting pissed about being stuck behind me. It's too bad that a lot of people forget to check their egos at the gate.


Speaking of trains, here's a short one...

A train led by an Evo, oh no!!! I'm sure it's only because you just passed 3-4 of them on that straight, though.

Haha, yes. I was definitely not the cause of that train. *cough*E30*cough*

yea, i saw that guy, he should have been all over the gt3s and it wasn't even close,

the Se-Rs are getting quicker, but they will never do a 1:23

I always assume when i instruct (which is not that often) that part of my job is to let my student know when they should wave people by, if there is a car at the head of the train, it is as much the instuctor's fault as the student

and yes, i tell them to get in the mirror, includign the passenger mirror so the instructor sees


[QUOTE=Mikey52]It was a Kia.



Exactly, both my instructor for this event and the ones I had at my last said the same thing. "Get on his ***, let him know you want to pass."

What I would do was run up on someone (where ever I happened to catch them) and get in real close then back off a car or two until right before we hit a passing zone. As we came onto the passing zone I would begin to close the gap and, if the person had been paying attention, they would point me by so that I never needed to lift. Okay, so this didnt work out as often as I would have liked and I had to lift a lot...but it was a good idea in theory.

Im not sure how a lot of people come into their first event but one of the things I focused on in mine was checking my mirrors and pointing people by ASAP. Im out there to have fun but so is everyone else. I had no fantasies about my driving skill at that first event and I did not want someone getting pissed about being stuck behind me. It's too bad that a lot of people forget to check their egos at the gate.


Speaking of trains, here's a short one...

The E30 in the picture above held up all 5 Evos in HPDE1 for 2 full laps before he finally let us pass. Our only guess was that the front Evo was being too nice and leaving about a 3-car gap while waiting for the passing signal, which never came until lap 3 at which point we had wasted 4-5mins of our time already. That was incredibly annoying, but it showed that we could not sit back and be nice, but rather had to ride up on people's bumpers before they'd be willing to let us pass, and that is exactly what we did the rest of the weekend...

Were you guys (HPDE1 Evos) going to class? I assume so since you must have had passes.

Did you miss the E30 guy's speech about how the driver who complained to him in the paddock about not getting point bys, was the same guy who went into the wall?

It sucks when people don't give out point bys. I try really really hard to not hold people up with my 116 hp beast. But if I'm on someone in HPDE1 and they are not giving me a point, I know I have two options:
1) Pit, give it a little while, and go back out there
2) Be patient, practice the line, practice looking out for flags, practice looking ahead, practice NOT driving the same line as the guy in front of you. If you are in HPDE1 (like me, for now) you probably need to work on these things (like me).

Maybe they are already at the limits of their concentration, maybe their instructor isn't paying attention, maybe they are just uncomfortable for some reason, WHATEVER. It's the intro level group. That's where people learn to be comfortable. Sorry that they might hold you back, but them's the rules. If you are driving well enough it will NOT matter whether you got held up or not. Your instructor will see that.

(Otherwise no one with a slow car would ever advance)

Riding people's asses might feel good but I don't think it helps either you, or the person who you are tailgating. You know that "HPDE is not racing" thing they keep preaching? They keep preaching it for a reason. Reading some of these posts it sounds like some of yall are looking at this as a time trial instead of a car control clinic. Worrying about your lap times seems pretty silly. That's what club racing is for...

(and I'm not saying you don't need to be close to people sometimes in order for them to wake up and point you by - but I am saying that if you do that and it's not working - give it a rest)

(and I'm not saying that any of this was involved in the accident, T10 is just hard)

john

That white/blue E30 was actually driven by a female... pretty hot too

Im not THAT good!

Nice instructing you again Steve... get your car tuned properly so you can exit the corners correctly (ie. on throttle!)

My car's diff. finally died... I was spinning one wheel out of T1 and the carousel.. and although I managed to qualify near the front... I lost many positions and ended up running measely 1:29s

In case you guys did not get enough... Audi club is running 10/3 - 10/4 (this coming Mon.Tues). They are underbooked and you guys will have some REAL open track to practice on... they also give you more sessions vs. NASA's (3) 25 min. sessions.

http://www.audiclubna.org/chapters/p...nt&event_id=22

Ive heard not too many ppl are registered for this b/c its on a Mon/Tues... meaning less trains, and more open space to learn!

$325 no late fee

$44 Audi membership if you do not already have one. Well worth it since they run numerous events throughout the year!

what were you racing? what class? etc......

E36 M3 in GTS3

what kind of lap times do you normally run in that car at summit? 1:29's gets you beat by some 140hp acura's....

Yup... you dont have to tell me that!

Top IP times are in the 123s..

My father was there, in HPDE 1 in the the silver E36 M3. I think that's him at the end of that train in the posted pic. He called me and told me about all the Evos that were up there. It's a bit of a drive for us to get there from Louisville, KY.

Anyway, he told me about the Evo kissing the wall (hate to hear that) and about a few other incidents this past weekend. How many collisions were there? I had trouble understanding what he was saying (on the phone) because of the loud track noises and poor cell connection. But what I got out of the conversation was that there were too many incidents. Enough that I figured they would have had one hell of a drivers meeting the next morning.

But, I still haven't talked to him since he's been back and I need to get the details.

I've been to a lot of PCA HPDE events and some NASA events and generally NASA seems to run a tight ship. Although PCA seems to run a much safer, stricter tight ship. I've seen rules being bent and broken yet I've never seen a black flag at NASA events. A car once went all 4 wheels off once and came into the pits and the pit/grid master asked, "what are you doing?"..."what the rules told me to do, duh!" The good thing about NASA is that the drivers seem to be a faster crowd compared to the PCA guys who are more concerned about the coats of Zaino on their Boxster.

All the problems with point by's seems to be the norm for all the events and different tracks I've been to. Sometimes you have good weekends and sometimes you don't. FWIW, I always drive in a person's mirrors when holding me up. You need to let them you that you are there and they are not the only person on the track. My first instructors always told me to do the same thing and I've continued doing it since then. The only time I back off is for the turn right before a passing straight. This way I can speed back up through the turn and have plenty of velocity built up to make the pass.

Yeah, I had several long conversations with your dad in the pits. He told me about you and your car. One thing, if true, is you need to go ahead and run 20-21psi on pump gas. He mentioned that you only keep it at 19, so I told him to tell you that 20-21psi on pump gas is fine for daily driving. He may have been mistaken, though...I know it's hard to remember details about someone else's car. I was actually right up on his bumper coming around turn 10 and preparing to pass when we saw the carnage unfold before us. It was quite a sobering experience...

I think you may have been confused about the "incidents" due to the noise, because although there were a fair number of crashes, we had no other "incidents" in HPDE1 that I know of. I saw 3 cars go off course and have to go back into the pits to get checked out, but none of those 3 were wrecks and there were no collisions that I heard about. The closest I got to an "incident" was when a 240sx in front of me was trying a little to hard to keep me off his 6, which caused him to enter turn 5 too hot and end up shooting straight into the grass instead of making the hairpin turn. That was pretty funny from my perspective.