Just had my best track day ever.....
Suzuka on the 29th of Feb....I was in my EK9 for the first time at Suzuka.
We ran on the full F1 course, and I clocked a series of 2 46 and 2 47 laps....which is pretty good for me, at least.
There were 3 other Civics...a turbo ek4, and 2 EGs....they all ran very quickly, faster than me! But my civic was the only street reg'd one there.
The GT 500 cars were doing secret testing before our session....Tom's and Nismo had taken out about 13 pit bays to themselves, and we were not allowed to open the roller doors of our pits until they left the track. They sounded amazing.
I had a couple of fun battles with an EVO9 and a GRB Sti. ..... and another fun scrimmage with the TRIAL boss, in his very well prepped R32 GTR....he was just toying with my of course....ran right up beside and then in front of me after the tunnel, before the hairpin and slammed on his brakes right in front of me! ha ha...very fun. I think he was just throwing me some free action!
This was not my first day at Suzuka, and this time I got to know the course a lot better. I was really trying to throw my car around a few corners that I was really timid on last time. Particularly the first corner, which after watching Shumachers 2007 record lap, I had seen just how fast you are meant to enter. That worked out well for me. The esses, also. I had been way too timid around them the first half of the day, but chasing that EVO9 around them (pretty slow driver), I realised just how quickly I could go while still keeping it together.
I could still not put a decent corner together around the SPOON corner. I really need a lesson on how to handle spoons.....I was just ugly around that corner every time...
The track is just so damn fun. It is long, and wide, and the course-off areas are large, so you always feel pretty safe. The surface is just so clean and so, well, video-game like.
My favorite section was probably the esses, through to the hairpin...particularly flying through the right hander in 3rd, then going down the hill, and braking hard, shifting to 2nd,turning hard right into the tunnel, revving it out well past 9000 (!), a few times to almost 9500 (!!), and then accelerating up the hill in 3rd up to the hairpin.
That was the part of the track that my gearing is not well suited to, which is why I over-revved a few times. It was hard for me to remember to quickly grab 3rd at the tunnel in time.
The car ran like a dream all day. Can't wait to get my LSD fitted, and attack it again....but Okayama T.I. is next, another ex-F1 circuit.
That is on APRIL 21.
I will post some pics when I get around to pulling them from my iphone.