On Saturday I did Laguna Seca again, met
@Will_ out there and saw his GTI, was nice to meet him in person, and he came to the track day all smart and prepared with some camping chairs and an easy up, was super thankful to be able to use them! My main goal for the day was to try and get under 2 minutes, first session out I did a best of 2:01.5, almost matching my best last time I went, but was struggling with understeer. Initially I tried to set the front sway bar to the middle setting after realizing I'd had it on full stiff, but couldn't get the end link out of the bar and ended up doing the second session with it in the stiffest setting again. In my second session I started focusing on braking harder and later into turn 2 and 5, as I knew I was massively overslowing for those. I found that with the Ferodo DS2500's I had, If I braked as hard as I could about halfway between the 2 and 3 board coming into turn 2, While I'd make that corner mostly fine, by the time I got to turn 5 the brakes would still be pretty warm and wouldn't bite as hard, so I need to work on figuring out how to best manage that. In the second session I did a best of 1:55.63, which made me over the moon stoked, but then on the second to last lap was 2 seconds up on that time coming into turn 10 before catching traffic, naturally..
Between the 2nd and 3rd sessions I got the front swaybar adjusted and went ahead and put it in the softer setting, and holy moly that was a massive help! Early in my 3rd session I found myself with 2 Porsche Cayman's in front of me and a 911 Turbo Cab behind me, naturally these cars should be WAY faster than me, but this was the beginner group.. While I was about as fast or slightly faster in the corners then them, they'd of course pull a gap when it was straight, and I found myself way overdriving the car trying to stay with them so I realized I should let them go and focus! Doing so, I managed to get a 1:55.33 (lap in video below), which was sort of satisfying, except for a few issues..
Currently all the programing on my car (save for APR stage 1 tune), is stock, and even with stability control "off" the slightest bit of a slight and it steps in HARD even if I already caught the slide. On my 1:55.33 lap the car got a little loose through turn 3, and stability control kicked in hard and even after I was going straight towards turn 4, wouldn't give full power till I fully let off and then got back on it. I've also noticed that even when there's no sliding at all and plenty of traction, It limits power when turning even if you floor it, so I think I need to get an OBDEleven and see what sort of coding I can do to help with those things, and I recall some things others have recommended for track use to code out (like straight ahead brake stabilization?).
Not sure when the next track day will be.. Was considering Thunderhill 5 mile next weekend, but my wife doesn't want me going that far just yet, there's one at Laguna Seca with NCRC on February 21st, so maybe that? Regardless the new goal is under 1:53, which seems like maybe it's possible, if I can do that, maybe see if I can match the time Randy Pobst did in a stock '15 GTI (1:50.11)? we shall see!