The Cart Before the Horse: Spec 3 Build

[Senor_Taylor]

First weekend in DE2 and first weekend in this car was a success. I packed up the car Wednesday night and headed down Thursday to work. Packing all of my gear in the car, included 4 tires in the trunk, and I didn't even need to use the passenger seat. The car is a lot better than the other BMWs I've owned so the drive down wasn't too bad, just uncomfortable from the lack of seat padding, stereo, sound deadening, cup holders, etc.

I let Jake take the car out on Friday and he said it felt very good, which got rid of a lot of fears I had and instilled the confidence in me to really go out and rip on Saturday. My instructor was amazing and really let me push in a lot of places. I knew the line from the GTI, so I picked that up quickly again, but I was not expecting so much grip and so much braking. Having a purpose built car makes the whole experience a lot better and I was able to learn/improve a lot more since I'm not being held back by stock brakes and all seasons. The first day went well, with me only needing to point by the V8 cars in the straights, and otherwise had a lot of room and open track to play around on.

During my third session, a very intense vibration developed and I came back in to find that my right rear tire had separated belt from rubber and had a huge lump on the inside. This is likely due to this being a budget build and me running Toyo RA1s made in 2011. I ran around the paddock asking everyone for a tire to buy and eventually someone from Spec 3 let me borrow one of their rain tires to use for the last session. I then did some more walking around the paddock after the day ended and found a Spec 944 guy who sold me a full set of Ra1s for cheap. Unfortunately, those were even older (2008 manufacture date). I woke up very early Sunday morning and was the first at Phil's Tire service to drop everything off to get swapped over and chatted up someone dropping off some $erious rubber. They had a set of Toyo RRs (2017 Date) with plenty of life left they were tossing and they just gave them to me. They are not the exact size I run, but close enough, but I didn't have the time to get those swapped onto my wheels so I stuck with the old RA1s.

I did one session on the 3 2011 tires and the 1 2008 tire I bought and shaved off even more time. My instructor was silent throughout as I worked on getting Oak Tree figure out. By the end of the session, I was taking turn 3 at 70 mph indicated (speedo may be off a bit), the uphill esses flat in 5th at around 100 mph, and exiting oak tree at 60 mph. I compressed a lot of braking zones and got the zone at the end of the straight down to braking at the 1, which was a big improvement. My instructor told me he thought I was ready for DE2 solo and was about to sign me off for the rest of my sessions, but I discovered another one of the 2011 tires had developed the massive lump, causing vibration and a hard pull to the right and I was then out of tires and out of options as the guy I borrowed the wheel from had already left. I packed up knowing that I put down some good times and feeling confident that I may progress to DE 3 at some point this season, however I'm not in a hurry to not have awesome instructors helping me improve. I'm bummed that I had to quit early as I felt like I was really shaving off time every lap and making great improvements, but I'll settle for a major incident free weekend.

My current plan before April is to try to lose more weight from the car. It weighed in at 3170 with a full tank and me in it. Also, I'm going to swap those Toyo RRs onto my wheels and try to sell the 6 RA1s I have left to recoup some money if I can. I'll do a nut and bolt on the car and she should be good to go.