michaelsmiller wrote:
I got home tired but happy. My wife showed me our latest email from our son Eric, “Subject: Neener Neener!”. It contained a picture of himself with his tongue sticking out, a set of car keys in his hand, and a Viper next to him. It seems that someone tossed him a key to a Viper and he spent Saturday driving it around. A good son would have driven it straight to Danville, Va where his father was taking an Extreme Driving School. Lesson #1, your kids will disappoint you.
Another point of contention, my Miata has been called a girly car, but up until now, never a woman beater. I have not a bruise on my body. I do have sore forearms and blisters on my hand. BTW, I fit very securely into that car.
I learned an important lesson. I did the slaloms at a higher overall speed with greater G loading on the car and exited it 0.3 seconds slower than Tim did. I even knew that I was going faster than he was. Because of the speed, the car was sliding further out, the added ground that I covered was not made up by the speed. Also, at the exit of the slalom, Tim was going faster because he could stay ahead of the cones more at the end. Who would have thought? Luckily, most of my mistakes were blatantly easy to fix. Using too short a braking zone was one and braking too hard was another. Car position and not over accelerating in sweepers was another. It’s better to squeeze on the power than to oscillate around the ideal speed. Sharp acceleration followed by lifting really upsets the car. The problem is that the Miata forgives bad habits, but does penalize one by losing a tenth of a second or more for every bad move. A tenth is hard to feel.
Jennifer, sorry about all of the bruises. It’s such a cute little car. Who’d have thought? Hope that you get your car back to running. Eric plans to be driving at Laurinburg. I thought that he would still be on his honeymoon. I wish you good luck getting your car back to the living.
Mike, I found that out at the Evo school a few weeks ago myself.
G's feel good in a slalom but larger radii arcs means less G's and less distance. And staying on the back side of each cone means the 'final' cone is not even an element in that you are at WOT by the second to last cone so by the time you pass that final cone, you are well on your way into accelerating to the next element.
Furthermore, my fastest runs never felt like my fastest runs because I drove smoother, with better arcs and didn't pull any 'unnecessary' lateral G's because of it.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
