Jim how many track hours do you have under your belt? Roughly... And are you still improving?
Honestly Dave, I'm not sure.... Alot of auto-crossing in high school and then I did some vintage racing in the late 80s and early 90s. My Uncle collected Indy cars (70-80s) and CanAm. Then I fell out of it for a while.
When I got the NSX in 2005, I got into HPDE and shortly thereafter started instructing too. Roughly 8+ weekends on average each year from 2005-2009. 2010 I did something like 14. 2011 I only did 5 and this year only 3 so far.
Some of the events were 3 days (instructor & adv on Fri). Low estimate somewhere around 280-300 hrs of on track from 2005-2012.
Am I still improving? It goes in steps. I make a giant leap forward and then plateau for a while and then learn something new, practice that and another leap forward and plateau again. Here is a for example: I was running 10 clean laps in a row all within a 1/10 of a sec. I mean you looked at the data-logger and it was 120.2, 120.2, 120.1, 120.2, 120.3, etc, etc. I thought "man, that's it. That's the most I have in me or in the car."
Well, I rode with a student who would scream down the straight brake as hard and late as possible and tip-toe through corners. All of his momentum was gone and his lap times sucked. It was a low powered car (Miata) so I made him drive the whole thing in 4th gear and run it like a very fast "cool down" lap. Don't touch the brakes unless you have to and then brake early and light.
The whole idea was to force him to keep the momentum going. Now, a miata is a momentum car, right? Well, when you have to drive the whole track in 4th gear it becomes very apparent if you scrub off speed as the car bogs down. Kind of like one of those underpowered go-karts when you scrub they just sit there and you wait and wait. We did this two whole sessions and his lap times were much better than when he was shifting and threshold braking, etc, etc. Finally, I gave him 2nd and 3rd back but made him keep braking early and light and keeping that same momentum going. Bam... 10 sec a lap drop right off the bat.
Well, I decided to take my own advice and got in the NSX and ran the whole thing in 4th instead of 3rd (4th on the straight). I worked on keeping my momentum going and braking only enough to make the turn in. Entry speeds were bumping up 3-4 mph on most of the corners but I wasn't accelerating out of the exits as I was in 4th. Who cares.... my entry speeds were improving. And it compounds as you carry that momentum from turn to turn. I was only about a second and half off my times using 3 & 4th gear.
But I learned that braking hard and late wasn't going to increase my times - in fact it was hurting me. I would go into the corners slower than the max and feel that I could accelerate but then feel the car sliding and think I was at the limit. I wasn't. I was on the limit of what the rears could do because I was asking them to corner AND accelerate.
So I concentrated on braking a little earlier and a little lighter and keeping the momentum going and THEN get back on the gas at the apex. Set my personal best the next morning - 119.3 a full second off the 120s I was running.
So to answer your question - it goes in steps and plateaus. :wink:
