After 5 years of not having been able to go to Laguna Seca due to their BS sound restrictions on most days, I heard that Speed Ventures was putting out an unlimited (enough) 105db day (my car is around 96db from what I know).
I had hired a professional racer as a coach for the day since I hadn't been to Laguna in 5 years and I figured it would save me some time relearning the track and it would be good having someone tell me whether I was braking too hard and too late, or not (he said I wasn't).
I bought 2 sessions back to back, so I had 40mn, and sadly my gas tank isn't actually quite big enough to do 40mn, so I had to exit a few laps early to avoid running out of gas on the track. I got 3 of those sessions (about 90mn) and my brake pads ran out after 20mn in another session after that.
Considering they were over 80% when I started the day, that was vexing, but thankfully I met someone who told me about 3rd party CCM pads that can stand track heat better and won't wear out as quickly. I'll be trying that next.
Thanks to Joon, I got a few nice pictures in the corkscrew. Thankfully he was able to ride with me one session before my brakes ran out.
Here is my last and best session just before the brake pad gave a wear warning (I then stopped right away to hopefully avoid destroying the rotor). Many 1:41 laps, although my timer says choosing the right points, I apparently did a single 1:40:x, and putting all the best track sections together, I ought to be able to do 1:38:x:
Turns out the rear facing videos were actually useful to see after the fact both when I should have been quicker to point some people by (I did, but not fast enough for some), and also see where people behind me were gaining on me. Thanks to that, I saw plenty of turns where I wasn't familiar enough with the track and was slowing down too much instead of keeping speed through them. It's pretty obvious when people farther behind me end up on my bumper right before the corkscrew for instance. Anyway, here's the session I did with Joon:
