Tried my first GAX event today – was in a rush and barely made the afternoon, didn’t get a drivethrough or walkthrough, but got a good 7 runs in so can’t really say I didn’t learn the course.

Was a good course, fast with a lot of offsets and a very sweet sweeper in the back that the Mini seemed to struggle with a little. Overall I ran into a lot of understeer with the car – I think it is a combination of the tires being close to done as well as pushing too hard and braking too late in a few sections. The course overall seemed to benefit looser setups though, and this is the time of year it will pay off for me to set the car to the stiffest RSB setting. We’ll see how that impacts the behavior of the car at the next few events. I think with the loosest setting I can squeeze a few more events out of the tires, but they don’t have much left in them. It will be decision time what I want to do for the rest of the season. I can run these until they cord, but I was hoping they’d last the rest of the year. I may need to drive the Miata or switch to the Evo a bit more through the next few months. Again though, not that thrilled with my performance, but I am learning. I’ll reserve what changes I need to make until I set the sway bar to the loosest setting.

Overall, I see that these non-points events are where some of the faster guys are learning and pushing the limits in order to apply it to our points events. There’s no penalties (championship-wise) and plenty of runs, so it seems overall the drivers are much more willing to go over the limit. In order for me to improve and continue learning, it will be a good idea for me to do the same.

Didn’t ever see the results for GAX so just posting a Run 3 video that looked okay. Not sure what my fastest time was.

Things to work on (Mini):

• Carry more speed through corners, push the limit

Notes (Mini):

• Full tank
• PSIs ended up being 28/31 cold. Turns out the tire pressure gauge I had (Joe’s racing) turned very bad and had been reading 6-7psi HIGH. Using a new LongAcre gauge starting the next event.

2015 Run Count: 98 (+7 Mini)