Welcome to our latest podcast episode where we review our weekend HPDE with NASA North East at the world famous Watkins Glen International racetrack.  We had a great weekend with 5 of our team showing up and two other friends from the Everyone Racers Podcast and The Three Pedal Mafia racing team, Chris and Chrissy. 

 

We summarize the prepping of the many cars we brought and the debacle it became for almost every car we brought.

 

Cars we prepped included:

1. BMW E36 1998 race car
2. 1. Roll bar prep and Passenger racing seat installation
   2. Issue:  Won’t start as we were prepping to leave.  Issue still TBD
   1. Roll bar padding and switch to racing seats and racing harness from OEM
   2. Issue:  4-point belts aren’t acceptable so hot swap at Watkins Glen to install two new 6-point harness sets
3. 1999 Mazda MX-5 Turbo Miata with Flyin’ Miata Turbo
   1. Installed new roll bar
   2. Issue:  did not finish roll bar installation and did not remember to reconnect the battery before giving it to Jennifer
4. 2019 Mazda MX-5
   1. Mostly no issue, except cleaning
5. 2017 Toyota GT TRD
   1. Bad Lug bolts and Missing Lug bolts
   2. Waited until day before to get parts, ended up with bad hub threads and missing bolts, and doesn’t know how to click the pay button after registering for the HPDE
   3. Cue the sad trombone please
6. 2013 Dodge Dart
   1. Did not have time to change to race seats, nor brake pads and fluid, nor tires from standard OEM
7. 2017 BMW M240i
   1. No issues since Chris and Chrissy are always prepared, unlike us.
8. Race Prepped Honda Civic

 

Brad was an excellent test passenger for three different cars on the track.  He reviews his first ever race laps in the Turbo NB MX-5 versus the race prepped Honda Civic vs a new Acura NSX. 

 

Vicki, Jennifer, and Bill covered our in car instructors and areas we worked on and improved over the weekend. 

 

These areas included:

1. Track vision
2. Racing lines in general
3. Braking points and braking pressure and the proper application and removal of the braking pressure
4. Turn in Points
5. Input sequencing
6. Several drills, including vision and non-shifting the entire lap or session
7. Car control
8. Learning and feeling what is correct and what isn’t with immediate feedback
9. Late apexing vs early apexing and turn in
10. Prep is key to racing

 

In addition, we also reviewed our thoughts of the track and the NASA North East HPDE event in general. 

 

We also reviewed the relative performance of the Turbo 1999 NB MX-5 to the newly updated 2019 MX-5 ND.