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GPS Course Map:


Course stats from my best clean run (66.6s):

Length: 0.823miles (1.324km)

Top speed: 59.7mph
Average Speed: 43.2mph

Max lateral g's: 1.17g's turning left, 1.19g's turning right
Max longitudinal g's: 0.478g's accelerating, 0.682g's braking

Video link to run

Laurinburg is obviously very bumpy and it makes my entire passenger seat vibrate like mad on course. The video quality suffered from this but I am working on a better mount which should improve things greatly. In the meantime, I apologize for the shaky picture once again.

As I stated in the event thread, I'm a little bummed that I forgot to datalog going left -vs- going right in the optional slalom. I still think that going right was better for me as going left would have required a low percentage maneuver (trail-braking) in my twitchy car. You really couldn't use the extra momentum on exit if you entered to the left but perhaps it was better for high-hp cars with tons of grip. I was able to flat-foot the remainder of the slalom which backs up that assertion in my mind.

As some of you know, I was running different tires (Bridgestone RE-01R's) for the first time and while everybody on the internet seems to think they are the second coming of an R-compound tire, they are far from that in my opinion. They are definitely more forgiving than the Azenis which will help some people more than others but for regional events, they aren't worth the price premium over the Azenis.

To get any advantage out of them, you must shave them down to next-to-nothing which put the edge squarely back in the Azenis camp if you're planning on running them as your day-to-day street tires as well. The price of the 15"'ers isn't too bad (but still >$30 per tire more than the similar size Azenis) but when you get to the 16" size, it gets crazy and just goes up from there.

So how good are they? I ran the Azenis earlier in the year at Laurinburg and managed to set FTD which I couldn't duplicate with the 'Stones so that should tell you everything you need to know, right? Heh-- it just further illustrates how little you really know about an event by just looking at results. Context is paramount in this sport which seems to get overlooked or dismissed by most "internet experts".

Anyway, if you look back on the "data" thread from earlier in the year, you'll see that I pulled ~1.15g's maximum laterally on the Azenis which is pretty darn close to what I pulled with the Bridgestones. My car has undergone some setup changes since then and obviously the weather wasn't the same so it isn't entirely apples-to-apples but it is pretty darn close. The 'Stones do show a bigger gap in steady state lateral g's which backs up what others have observed.

The bottom line? Yes, they are faster but not by much. I'd estimate they were worth ~0.5 seconds on that course but certainly not multiple seconds that others are reporting. I think the majority of the time others are picking up simply comes from the fact that they are more forgiving and nothing more. The Azenis sure feel better to me though, for whatever that is worth.

One last thing about the Bridgestones I was using: if you look at the maximum speed for the run you'll note it is 59.7mph. That occurred when I was banging off the rev-limiter on the main runway and it is down from the 61.4mph I would see in the same situation on the Azenis. That illustrates how much shorter the Bridgestones are than the Azenis and gives me extra incentive to finally chip my ECU to gain a few hundred rpm's.

According to the datalogs, I had a real flyer going on my last run but I tossed it away coming onto the taxiway. I was up a full 1/2 second compared to my 4th run and after I recovered from my tank slapper, I managed to eek out nearly another full 2/10'ths through the "P". In classic bench racing woulda-coulda-shoulda, it looks like I would have picked up nearly a full second on that run had I not run out of talent.

Here is a video clip of my "moment" entering the taxiway

You can see my hands start to "twitch" as I sense the impending doom of the near-spin and then grab a ton of opposite lock followed by a big stab of the gas to keep myself out of the grass. I could have driven out of it smoothly it weren't for the fact that the course went the other way after the initial slide. I tried to force the car back to the left and it resulted in a near spin going the other direction. You can see the course out the passenger window at that point which is never a good thing. Course designers: 1, Jim: 0.

All in all, I thought the course was awesome. The biggest surprise to me was the seemingly very tight gate just before the finish. I found that I had to brake in the gate to make the apex for the final right-hander. It didn't drive nearly as tight as it walked but it was extra tempting to go blasting through there full-throttle which I did on my first run. Of course I missed the apex on that run by what seemed like 15 feet so it was a great "sucker" spot. I love stuff like that! Great job again guys!

Jim