Because I was living under a rock, I didn't know that Audi was setup at Sears and was having regular driving events there. Eventually I found out (through a banner ad on Jennifer's chromebook no less, what are the odds?), and signed us up for an event where we each add a class at our respective levels.
Sears is being more built up each time I come (which isn't often enough it seems).
The cars
My Ride
My setup with Trackmaster and GoPro
Jennifer went to her Audi experience course, and got her first experience in track driving.
On my side, I did the advanced course with one on one coaching. I had only ran Sears once, and that was almost 5 years ago, so my private coach had some work on his hands. To make matters worse, I had had a pretty bad night, so my brain had a hard time gathering new information.
But, Tom did a good job in giving me the tips I needed, and I tried to make the best of it on improving with his help. That got me from 2:07 to 2:03 by the end of the day, which isn't great since the car can easily do 1:58 or less, but that was good enough an improvement for me that day :)
I definitely got better at learning the turns on the track, as well as doing my first steps at not being as binary in my braking. In the end, I got just below 2:04, which is more or less what I got in my F430 last time. This makes me hopeful that I can go faster than that if I come back with the F430 after I've improved my general skills.
Here's one of my better laps at the end of the day:
For comparison, one lap from my instructor:
Despite my struggling with lack of sleep, it was a good day, and I'm thankful to Tom for his help and tips.
This time I took one of my coworkers' brother up to Willows. It was a very windy day, so the flight was a bit slower than usual, especially since I took a small detour through SFO for my passenger :)
Golden Gate Park
Presidio and Golden Gate
Marin
Balloon over Napa
Attila, at work
And I turned my car into an electric car. Well, actually not really it's more than my battery was having issues, so I was making sure I could start the car before the next session :)
So it was all fun and games until I realized at lunchtime that my rear pads were _very_ low (usually that doesn't happen, since they should get swapped at the previous service and they last multiple days). Anyway, it was clear that I had to swap them if I wanted to continue, which is a pain in the rear (30mn to cool down the brakes, and 1h to change the pads since it requires removing the calipers to get to them).
you can barely see the pad meat left
oh my, I had actually just run out, but thankfully the rotor didn't suffer
I got the brakes changed within 1mn of my session start, so it worked out, and I went back for more fun
I got down to 2:08s again, which has been my limit so far, although I started doing better after having changed my rear pads, although that was also the time where my front tires were already somewhat worn and not gripping as much in turn 2. I tweaked a couple of things I wasn't doing quite right, but dont' have much to show for it :)
For your fun enjoyment, I kind of passed when I shouldn't have on my very last lap of the last session (jump to 20:15). No harm done though.
The flight back was uneventful and quick with a 20kts+ tailiwind
