Overall, it was a good weekend at Sonoma. Good, but weird.
First, the good. The car ran and handled perfectly. It felt really good to be back in the drivers seat. This was my first time at Sonoma and I had spent a good amount of time watching video and using the sim (Forza 7). I really credit both of those with making me feel reasonably comfortable the first time that I went out onto the track. Sure, I still had to "learn" the course but it was much, much better than having done nothing.
The most surprising thing about the sim vs the real course was that the sim made the course feel longer, like there was a lot of time between corners. The reality is that the course felt fairly short and kept me quite busy as the corners come at your rather quickly. This meant that it was important to look ahead and plan ahead. This was especially true in Turns 2/3/3a which are a quick succession of blind uphill curves and in the S's, Turns 8/8a/9. Getting the flow correct was key to getting through quickly.
The most challenging was Turn 2 at the top of the hill. You come flying up the front straight (which actually has a turn (T12) in the middle of it) and have to get properly lined up for the blind right at the top of the hill - all while braking and downshifting.
It is downhill into Turn 4 which made it difficult to gauge the proper speed and the exit is deceptively shallow so it was easy to over-cook the entry speed and put two wheels in the dirt. Ask me how I know.
I spent Friday getting to know the track and working on getting some basic speed. My best lap time on Friday was 1:58. The track record is 1:52 and a decent BSR time is 1:54-1:55, so I had still some work to do.
On Sat, I qualified 10th of 12 Boxster's but I only got 1 clear lap. And I apologize to the Spec911 that was caught behind me for half of that lap but I really needed to maintain my line (I respectfully let him by as soon as we passed the Start/Finish line). With around 45 cars of all types in a single run group, there was constant traffic from catching slower cars and being caught by faster cars.
The race went well. I was stuck behind a couple of cars that had more power than my Boxster but were slower in the corners, so I'd catch up and almost pass them, then they'd drive away from me on the straight, only to repeat it again at the next set of corners. This allowed the group in front of me to pull a big gap which I couldn't make up and I finished 11th out of 12.
But I put down a couple of good laps during the race at 1:55 and was hoping that would bode well for Sunday's two planned races.
And that brings me to the weird stuff...
I drove the Boxster up on Thursday (6 hrs) and went for a run on Thursday afternoon and suffered a migraine headache while running. I had to walk a couple of miles back to the hotel and then rest up most of the afternoon. This has happened before while running but it always throws off my routine (which I try to adhere to on race weekends).
Then on Sat evening, the power company turned off the power to most of the region due to high winds and fires in NorCal (even though the fires were 20-30 miles away). The hotel staff went room to room handing out glow sticks prior to the power outage but I always keep a small flashlight in my suitcase. The power went out at 8:30pm so I went to sleep. The hotel made arrangements to get a generator and it came on at 1:30am because that was when all of the lights in my room came on - I had forgot to turn them off after the power went out!
I went to the track at 7am only to find that the track had no power and that all of the ambulances had been called away to support fire evacuation efforts. No ambulances = no racing. Everything was cancelled for Sunday so I packed up and drove the 6 hrs back home.
Also, the PCA announced that they had cancelled the Buttonwillow race (but Time Trial/DE is still happening) for this weekend due to the low number of racing registrants. In my opinion, they should have run the race regardless of how many race cars showed up - especially since they were still running the TT/DE event and the fact that I selected to miss another racing event to attend this one. In the future, I'll now have to consider whether to skip another race for a PCA race since they might not hold the PCA race. Which probably means that I'll do fewer PCA races in the future. Which is too bad, because the PCA hosts great events but I can't be left out in the cold and not racing.
Overall, Sonoma was a really cool track to visit, it was good to hang out with the NorCal racers (who are a group of really nice and very talented drivers), and I really enjoyed the weekend even with all of the weird stuff.
I'll post up some video soon.
