Just as I said we would, Clint and myself went to an SCDA track event at NHIS this past Tuesday. As per usual, the SCDA ran an excellent event. Everything was very punctual, the flaggers were on the ball, and the instructors were very knowledgeable and friendly. I drove my Miata, and Clint broke his Protege’s cherry (among other items) and tracked it for the first time:

The SCDA has 5 run groups at their NHIS events: Novice, Intermediate 1, Intermediate 2, Advanced, and Instructor. Clint ran in Intermediate 1, in part because is car was so slow, it was not really ready yet for Intermediate 2, and I ran in Advanced. I was up against some very impressive machinery, including this Noble M12 taking a breather:

and this Diasio 962:

The Diasio is an interesting car. Its very light (I think around 2000 lbs), and is powered by Mazda’s Renesis rotary engine. This is the engine that is in the RX-8 currently. The Diasio was very fast, and cornered insanely well.

As at Watkins Glen, my Miata was up against much more powerful cars running racing rubber. Though I drove the tires off her, there is only so much driving that can make up such a discrepancy. I pointed quite a few people by, but that is to be expected. There were a few spec Miatas in my run group, all running racing tires. Most of them were quicker than me, though I was able to walk away from one of them, which pleased me greatly.

This was my third track day with my new Falken Azenis RT-615 tires. I was actually very disappointed with them this go around. At Watkins Glen, they stuck ridiculously well, and I saw insane cornering forces from what are only street tires. This time around, they were very greasy, and the traction limit was much lower. I think the problem had to do with temperature. It was a good 10-15 degrees cooler at The Glen, and it had been cool in the weeks before. This likely meant that the track was a lot cooler as well. The Azenis are known for having a lot of cold traction, but, in my experience, lose much of this grip as the track surface heats up.

Passing zones were on the straights, and there were many scenes like this throughtout the day:

Tasty!

Most impressive of all, however, was Clint’s maneuver in Turn 11:

Click on the photo to see the big image. Look closely. Yup, that’s right, Clint has picked up the Driver’s side rear wheel under braking! Not bad for a beater with dry rotted tires!