Estoril Experience Day 2017-04-08 - The 4th Track Day

The weather was glorious! It was almost a summer day and I regretted not wearing shorts and not having sunscreen. My regular tow truck driver from S. Bica e Almeida picked me up punctually and drove us to the track. The kid rides in the back!

We arrived pretty early. Mr. Almeida had two other cars to pick up and bring to the track.

As before, had RaceChrono Pro running on the phone to capture speed and GPS positioning and the SJ4000 cam on my rollbar. When, as usual, I got home and was going to mix the video and track data I noticed the data was really bad. Seems that storing the phone on my trousers' pocket, that go under the dash, broke the GPS precision. The data was unusable. The videos will have no data this time and next time I'll have a different solution to ensure this does not happen again.

1st leg - 9h00 to 9h20
Opening the track, I felt really well. I had been practising at home with my wheel and peddles on the rFactor2 simulator. Tried to apply a bit of that on the real thing. Did 5 full laps plus the warm-up and the coold-down (incomplete) laps. The most important thing is that the car now revs correctly and goes to the limit!!! So I was able to go to the 174km/h (phone GPS metrics, Digidash says 168km/h)! And on the first leg I was able to beat my best lap time! It was previously 2m52s and I did 2m39s! This was wonderful!

After the leg I met friends on the paddock and hanged out with them the rest of the day. They had a box and invited me over. They were running on a different group so we were not on the track simultaneously. Their first leg was red-flagged and shortened because of an accident where a Caterham collided with a spun Porsche.

2nd leg - 11h05 to 11h25
Another great session! I was feeling really well! Sometimes I would over-do it and make a mistake (failed brake, mostly) but after a couple of cooling corners I was going at it again! Made my best lap of the day on this leg: 2m36s! Unfortunately, when I was looking for my best lap I missed that one and considered this one the best lap, at 2m37s, making the video for it. I don't feel like redoing it all now.

Besides doing the best lap, this leg allowed me to do 6 full laps. The best lap is the first full one, from 2m59s to 5m35s on the full leg video.

Comes lunch break, I put my SJ4000 cam charging to be sure I had enough juice for the rest of the day.

3rd leg - 14h00 to 14h20
During lunch a friend asked me if I minded taking him along for the ride. Sure, hop in! First time I had someone with me on the car! It felt a bit different on the corners, can't say it was slower. This leg netted 5 more full laps.

My wife came for a bit between 3rd and 4th sessions. She brought with her the jerrycan. Digidash was saying my deposit was at 0%!!! So we dumped in 10 more litres... It seems the car spent a bit over 20 litres per 100Km... I'll be more precise with the numbers when I dump the tank again, check the odometer and do the math... Two good photos to represent the day below.

4th leg - 16h55 to 17h15
There was a huge crash with a Ferrari on the end of the straight having the brakes fail and hitting the tire barrier at 200Km/h. Seems the car is trash now. People were not hurt, fortunately.
This meant that that session was red-flagged and the following one started a bit later. It was a special leg just for a club and they gave them near full time. So people from our leg went later to the track and knowing it would be 15m instead of 20m and there was a yellow flag for the last third of the straight until after 1st corner. The organisation was taking 5m from each remaining leg of the day to compensate the time it took to rebuild the barrier and clean after the crash.

The problem was that I staid on a queue, with the engine idling, for over 10m. When I got to the track, the car felt a bit odd. After doing my first full lap, the leg was red-flagged because of a car spinning and throwing lots of gravel on the track. As I was on the queue, still not knowing if we would be allowed back in or not, started thinking about all the crashes of the day. About the Mercedes that almost crashed on my rear on this last leg. That my day had been great, why keep pushing? So I waved, went out and onto the tow truck heading home. Don't know if the leg was still allowed back in or not. I did what felt right and I'm happy with the decision.

The video for the last session

All in all, it was a wonderful day for me. Its a pity I didn't have the RaceChrono software running perfectly. Next time it will be different! Yes, next time! I bought insurance at DuoSeg for the 3 scheduled sessions (8 April, 2 July and 10 September) and now I can't miss them! The organisation opened up for registrations on the 12th and I signed up straight away! So...
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