We had great weather yesterday at Eagles Canyon Raceway – especially with the weather cooperating and being in the high 80’s/low 90’s most of the time. ECR also had some track repair done and the entrance to Turn 6 and Turn 7 are now concrete and the exit of Turn 3 and Turn 9 also have some extra concrete patches. Hopefully, those would hold better over time.
We continue to get used to the GP-shift pattern and with the exception of a few missed shifts, it was becoming second nature. The missed shifts were just a little timing issue and none were in the wrong direction (unlike the first day we tried it). Carlo was also working on his body position during braking and I think it’s going to take another day at practice to learn the sequence and have it be second nature.
We were running consistent 2:11s in the last session so just a couple of seconds off our best time. I suspect we’ll be there again next time we visit ECR. We were a little bit more conservative yesterday because of the new concrete but that will not be the case next time.
One major area to work on is vision and reference points. Looking at the date, we noticed that Carlo would oftentimes get a very good drive onto a long straight but then brake earlier at the end, giving back the time. What we will start doing is braking at the same point and extending the brakezone into the trail brake area a little bit more if we get another 2-3 mph on the long straight. Since we are not at the complete edge yet, there should be room to be able to do that. In addition, we noticed that Carlo needs to look further ahead (he gets caught on track pictures not turning his head completely to the next reference point).
Next practice day is Sunday, 7/26 (if the weather holds). We’ve been getting our share of thunderstorms but the forecast currently shows a break for the upcoming weekend.
M2TX 