Team Trackday owns Eastern Creek

[fatz]

yo muma doctor biatch

you know you want some!!!!!!!!!

[benm]

Well my day started with arriving at 7:30am as requested to find myself sitting with the HCC boys. By 8am I had my own garage and most drivers had arrived by then. Looking over the otherside of my garage I see a Porsche Boxter with fatttt rear tyres thinking "oh gawd im in trouble today".

The Drive Briefing was well quite brief, MotoConcepts were quite easy going all day (which was good). I was expecting the day to be much more formal than what it was but really loved how it turned out (Even if it did take 30 takes on the microphone to stop people sitting on the concrete pit wall).

Session 1:

My passenger (Jamie who is trying to get is XU1 Torana ready for the next trackday) ended up being late (got called out to a job at 7am) so Duncan was kind enuff to lend me his experience. Spent the first few laps just trying to stick to the red cones to get the corners right. I thought my car was handling extremely well, much better than I anticipated considering I had completely warn and bad quality rubber (Faulken ZE502 @ 225/50/16 @ 38psi). I could tell straight away the difference if I missed an a-pex as my exit speed and straight line speed suffered. Brakes felt really good and I was hitting the 190km/h speed limiter quite early down the straight. I spent all but the main straight in 3rd gear while trying to get myself (and Duncan) around the track without sliding off. A huge thankyou to Duncan for your tips they'll greatly pay off.

Session 2:

By now my passenger and my dad had arrived and it was onto the track again to see what I could do. My brake pedal was slightly lower but with my non-mechanical knowledge I thought it was just from the wear of my pads from Session 1 so I pushed on. Not once did I get the car even remotely sideways (infact I think i only used opposite-lock once during the entire day and that was only for 0.2sec). I started to get alittle more confident and braked later into some corners (Turn 4, 6 and 11). Everything felt good, although my front tyres went off and I was starting to get understeer whenever I didnt hit the corners right.

Session 3:

This time my dad timed some laps which ranged from 2:16 - 2:19. For the last 3 laps I was taking about 1sec a lap out of that old red Ferrari (you shoulda seen the grin on my face even if the car was 20yrs old hehe). Front grip once again was an issue although I worked out that on some corners if I just went alittle harder instead of backing off the frontend would stick better so I played around with that. On the last lap I finally managed to catch the Ferrari and slipstreamed him the entire straight stuck on 190km/h not having enuff to overtake before the checkered flag was waved. I immediately slowed down to about 80 km/h just to let everything cool down. Upon reaching Turn 9 (the hairpin after Corporate Hill) I suddenly realised that my brake pedal hit the floor. I crawled back to the pits hoping i'd have something to pull me up at the end of pitlane. After talking to afew people I realised that I had cooked my brake fluid (standard fluid... once again me being the mechanical novice).

Session 4:

I took the car out again and did 1 lap @ 80km/h before realising that my brakes were no better so pulled in again immediately and my car was sidelined for the remainder of the day.

Session 5:

With my car sidelined I managed to grab a ride with Duncan in his car. Myyyy god I didnt realise how much ass a stock skyline could haul with the right driver, tyres and brake fluid (hehe). On a clear lap we did a 1:57 (apparently with crap tyres so Duncan said). The next lap we got held up by a 350Z (stupid $76,000 cars pffft) but still managed a 2:01, from their the front tyres went off before we could catch the F355 (or was that before it spun at Turn 2).

Tomorrow (Wednesday) im getting some higher quality Brake fluid put in my car (315c instead of 165c haha). So i'll be back at the next MotoConcept day (hopefully with new tyres and my own helmet too) to try and better my 2:16.

Just wanted to say once again a huge thanks to Duncan for your driving knowledge and ride on Session 5, if I was abit quiet its coz i was hanging on hehe. Also to Dan for showing me around n stuff thanks heaps mate.

Akira, Prank, Carlo and the rest of the boys you were putting down some seriously good times (ranging from 1:57 - 2:05) and hopefully by this time next year I'll be down around the 2:05's also.

Thanks again,

Ben.

PS. mmmm dagwood dogs.

[Duncan]

heh, terrible food at tracks, eh? I never did get my ceasar salad and watermelon juice

It was a great day out, huge crowd compared to the normal weekends.

Next one is Thursday 24/7 (the date, not the saying). Better get in early before it books out again

[carlo]

Uploaded more photos to the gallery..

yeah the next one will be even better.. Fewer cars, more skylines...hopefully..

[Duncan]

btw akira, your car is a beast. I'll look after it if you dont want it any more.

[Kinks]

Originally posted by carlo

yeah the next one will be even better.. Fewer cars, more skylines...hopefully..

Bring on the skyline drift! I missed some of it. That guy in the monaro was hanging it out every lap though. That's what I want to see, put some cheap tyres on the back and show them no respect at all!

[PranK]

benm, did i meet you during the day? which was your car?

[benm]

Yeah yeah, the Red 33 same as Carlos but with a S2 rear wing... ummm think about the DVDR conversation when u were sitting outside the garage on the chair.

[fatz]

mm drifting

if you want to c some of the work form the munro boys go to my web page i have several vid of them

pete

before they owned munros

http://www.cs-technologies.com.au/kero/videos.htm

http://www.cs-technologies.com.au/kero/videos.htm

[kabab]

ahahahaha another victim to corner 2 join the club !

[fatz]

felafel you shoud move to a suburb closer to the beach you spend so much time in the sand

yo muma

move to western australia and change your name to Sand Grouper ..... much better then felafel... you poof

pete

[Tex]

Ok guys, I've cobbled together a vanilla highlights vid for you tonight. I'm not really happy with it, my vid-editing set-up is doing stuff I don't think it used to, and tonight's been a bit of a frustrating one for trying to get output like I used to get out of it.

Anyway, I'll investigate further later, but in the meantime I decided to make this an experiment in Windows Media files as well. I've never used this format before (preferring DivX AVI), so let me know what you think. I'm not personally too thrilled with the quality, but it still seems to look ok at 200% zoom, and the filesizes are very reasonable. Perhaps a fair trade-off...

Rick click and download please! (5.2mb)

[OZ GTR35]

Tex,

When you get some time would you please chop together some of my drift and in car footage, what you did up in the above file is top Sh!t.

[nissaner]

big thanks to dan for the advice in session1, i managed to cut down 4 seconds by the end of the day and got 1:56 with bridgestone tyres which looked like slicks but which was just street tyres worn out to the sh1thouse i will try with better tyres next time and see what i can do

i really like this photo of my car... mainly coz it was still clean hehe

[Tex]

Oz, no worries. I'm just working some issues out with the system, and I'll be trying new editing software from now on, so fingers crossed I'll get the other 2 hours worth of footage I've taken on SAU events edited an uploaded soon (I would no doubt be crucified if I were to edit your footage before completing the Hunter Valley cruise vid, for example ), then I'd be happy to take a look.

[U WERE MINE]

woo hoo mad shit tex.. i like it.. did u get my first 3 drifts into turn 2???

btw what editing software u use??

[PranK]

Originally posted by benm

Yeah yeah, the Red 33 same as Carlos but with a S2 rear wing... ummm think about the DVDR conversation when u were sitting outside the garage on the chair.

ahhh, you were there first thing when i arrived eh? you bought matt nortans old car?

[Tex]

URMINE, unfortunately not, I'm afraid. We pulled up at turn 2 just as you must have been completing your third drift, which I must say was f*cking huge IIRC. Don't worry though, next time there'll be much better footage, you just have to turn up and put on a show like you did here.

[benm]

Yup thats it, Mathew Nortons old car (and a fine job he did with the car).

The car handled better than expected (with crap tyres) but i'll be back again to improve on my 2:16 (next time with brakes that will last the entire day hehe).

[red900ss]

As I said before..."You guys suck" damn work interfering in my fun again...

just trawling through all the photos and vids, looks like you guys had a HOOT! :uh-huh:

Originally posted by Duncan

heh, terrible food at tracks, eh?  I never did get my ceasar salad and watermelon juice

...

yer if there was a track on the //orthside we'd have all that and Lattes too! :uh-huh: