Buttonwillow SSF Mixed November 2019

A return visit to Buttonwillow Raceway and this time to go out and get that sub 2 minute lap. Weather was really worrying as it tipped it down with rain the day before and it was very cold. That said, the rain did hold off, even though we could see it on the mountains and conditions were really good.

Had a really good day both off and on the track. Got talking to quite a few folks there which is always good and also had some good racing with a Porsche (GT3 I think), a Mustang and a Honda S2000. All of us were running pretty much the same lap times and there was a lot of give and take. They were all running transponders, so I got to see their lap times. I think the Mustang ended up starting slowest (going off in front of me in session 2), but I think he ended up quickest with a 1:58. Pretty sure the Porsche and S2K ended up with 1:59s and, sadly, I ended up with a 2:00.572 so not quite.

In the last session I opted to follow the S2K as he was definitely quicker than me in a lot of the track (basically everywhere that power wasn't an advantage). Learnt a lot that hopefully I'll bring back next time. The thing that's funny is that I'm not sure I'd have got down to a 2:00 without him, but he ended up stopping me from going below - not on purpose - I dropped back to get a run on him as I figured if I started a couple of seconds back and caught him, I'd end up below 2 minutes. On that lap he went off at Phil Hill and I caught him going into the sweeper. My shout of "fuck it" was not in anger at him, just that I knew that was realistically my last chance to get the lap I wanted. I'll be back.

I didn't record the first session. I actually did the same thing on my second lap - went over Phil Hill (blind crest about half way round the track so circa 1:10 on the lap timer) and just carried too much speed at the wrong angle. If you watch the video of session 2, you'll see the tracks I made through the mud. At the end of the day, you'll see there were several people who had tracked through the mud on that corner.

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