The Hothatch Diaries

First the good news: I set a new personal best of 1:46.7. The bad news: It seems that was a little too much for my tyres. But we’ll get to that later.

Easter monday was a very nice day at the STC Spreewaldring. With the sun shining and temperatures of around 6°C (no getting away from the weather theme in this blog, I guess), the conditions were not bad. No wonder that quite a few people showed up to turn some rounds. The nicer machinery included a Porsche 911 GT3 (which had just under 1.000 miles on the clock, as far as I know) and an Opel Speedster Turbo pulling 287 hp and 454 Nm of torque. Quite a few bikes were also present.

On the first turn, I set a best of 1:46.8 which was a lot faster than I expected and almost two seconds faster than previously. I did have the feeling that I was driving a lot more aggressively than before and my tyres seemed to agree. In fact, if tyres had a face, I’m sure the front left would have given me a rather taunting and disconcerted look when I checked it after the first stint. The picture doesn’t quite tell the full story, though. Not only does the tread look a lot worse in reality, half of the sidewall is also quite worn and looks as if it overheated. I’ve heard a lot of reasons in the past two days as to why the tyres look like they do, but opinions vary. Some people think it’s normal wear for track use, others say I overused them. Some think the alignment of the front axle is not right, others think I was running too high pressures. Most agree however, that the Goodyear Eagle F1 GSD3 is a less than optimal track tyre. And the general consensus is: Get a set of dedicated track wheels! I will, and I will probably even opt for proper semi slicks. Despite the fact that 15″ tyres will have a little less grip than 16″, I will get the former to keep costs at least reasonable. 205/50-15 seems like the best choice for now.

Semi slicks will not absolve me from being more disciplined on the track, of course. On the contrary. Knowing that semi slicks will be twice as expensive as road tyres, I’ll probably be nursing them around corners. Well, probably not, but I will keep a better eye on them, making sure I’m running the right pressures and avoiding too much power-on understeer. Which is good, because it will probably make me a better driver (might also be that I’m just trying to find as many excuses as possible to justify the expensive purchase).

I’m not sure if the video of one of the fast laps is very telling, but it does at least give an idea of my driving on that day. It’s not great. And especially in the tight triple right-hander called the Omega, it’s obvious that I wasn’t exactly smooth (you will know where that is, when you see it). Also, the line is too tight. But it’s noted and I’ll promise to be better next time:

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I’ve uploaded two more videos to Sevenload which are maybe a little more exciting. There’s one where I am following an Audi S6 (could also be an Audi 100 S4, but I can’t really tell the difference). I was clearly faster than him (which is not surprising, seeing his line), but he didn’t really want to let me by at first. Then he pulled over on start/finish, but gave it full beans at the same time, apparantly expecting I could out accelerate him. It won’t surprise you that I couldn’t considering he’s got at least 280 hp and over 400 Nm of torque. The other video shows the proper racing line really well. At least if you concentrate on the Smart Roadster in front of me.

The Smart driver took me for a spin in his car at the end of the day and it’s a surprisingly quick car if driven right. The corner speeds are amazing and braking is phenomenal. Too bad it only has around 100hp, which makes it a little weak on the straights. But good fun, nonetheless. And the drive showed me that I can really improve on braking a lot (although I won’t achieve nearly the same decceleration with the Clio).

I made a note to myself not long ago, to refrain from using the classic weather intro again anytime soon. I changed my mind: When I set off to the Spreewaldring yesterday it was grim and grey. Dark clouds and drizzle made checking oil and air at the gas station a less than pleasent experience. But it was to get worse. Only a few kilometres south of berlin, drizzle changed to sleet which even seemed to transform into hail at one point. And it was gushing down. I wasn’t all that worried, though, as I had more or less counted on a “wet race” beforehand. And I was sure it wouldn’t quite stay like that permanently. Which it didn’t. When I arrived at the STC, it had not only stopped raining, the track was actually perfectly dry thanks to rather high winds.

After my last attempt at a track day, when my rear silencer fell off at the end of the second lap, I was confident this time that I could finally find out, what my little Clio would be capable of on summer tyres – or rather: what the driver would be capable of. I think I mentioned that I was hoping to get my lap times down by four or five seconds compared to winter tyres. Well, not quite. All I could manage was to shave two and a half seconds off my previous best. I put in three times of 1:48.6 (over the course of two turns) with most of the other laps – the ones where I didn’t screw up – not too far off. Theoretical best now is a 1:47.9, which gives me something to aim for. I don’t know if the low temperatures (around 3-5°C) had a negative effect, but I doubt it. It did feel like I could get the tyres up to temperature after two or three hard driven laps. On the first turn, it even felt like they were starting to let go towards the end. Although it could have been my driving.

The handling of the Clio seemed overall unchanged compared to winter tyres. I could carry a little more speed into the turns and accelarate a tad earlier, of course, but my main problem remains unchanged: Understeer on turn-in. So I still have to work on trail braking to cure that, it seems. And I have to admit that I didn’t this time around. Also, there’s a disconcerting clatter coming from the front right on hard left-hand turns. I previously blamed it on the winter tyres, but it’s still there. And the fact that it does not occur under hard right cornering makes me suspicious. Maybe there is something wrong with the front right suspension?

Here’s a little compilation of three laps from both turns. First and last laps are both a 1:48.6. Inbetween is one where I am following a Toyota Celica which is less powerful than my Clio but runs coil-overs, so suspension is a lot better than my standard setup:

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When analyzing my footage, I noticed that on both the fast laps I have a tendency to turn in relatively late, which is in accordance with the “slow in fast out”-theory and tells me that I should concentrate on that before I start working on high turn in speed and on carrying more speed through the turns. Mainly because it’s the easiest (and safest) way for a beginner to gain time. What’s also interesting is the comparison to the Corolla. When I followed him, I was running a best of 1:51.2. His previous best was a 1:50 something. You can’t really tell from the lap in the video (I just chose to show that for the close tail gating, erm, “action”), but on faster driven laps, I am not gaining on him in turns. Whereas on the straights I really have to hold back. I reckon I’m gaining more than just 1.5 or 2.5 seconds on the straights. Which in turn means that he is quite a bit faster through the twisties. And after analyzing his data he said, that he was even running a 1:48 himself on the last lap. Not bad, I’d say. Now I want someone to follow who is just those two seconds faster than me.

I’ve kept it a secret until now, but two weeks ago, I bought some new springs and dampers for my Clio. Originally, I wasn’t planning on doing this until summer, as I felt there was no real point in uprating the suspension until I’ve come at least close to the limit of my current standard setup. But they tricked me into buying early. An internet-shop was giving a 25 percent discount on all Eibach products and I couldn’t resist, although I didn’t really have the money lying around. Of course, that was before my rear silencer disintegrated. Oh, well.

So here it is, the Eibach Pro-kit (klick for larger size):

A rather unpretentious looking kit, I must say. And it won’t lower the Clio much either. Maybe 20-30 mm maximum, probably even less. But that’s not what I am after. I hear the pro-kit is improving handling considerably while not making the ride harsher. Less roll and better feel, is what people say they get from the Eibachs. And I have yet to hear a bad thing about them. I won’t have them fitted just yet, as I’m still thinking about getting some aluminium top strut mounts to go along, but I won’t wait till summer either, I suppose. I’m looking forward to finding out if all the praise is really justified.

Wouldn’t you think you’d notice if your silencer was on the way out? I would. Or I did, rather. But not so in this case. In fact, when I lost my rear silencer on the Spreewaldring today, it was more a case of spontaneous disintegration.

And it could have been such a nice day. I had my summer tyres put on last friday and was really looking forward to trying them out on the track for the first time. I was expecting to shave around four or five seconds off my previous best of around 1:51.1. I took it easy for the first timed lap and went pretty much at winter tyre speed. I wanted to get used to the new grip level and see how the tyres would alter the handling of my car. Second lap I picked up the pace a bit. When all of a sudden I heard a loud droning noise. Actually, it was more like I felt it rather than hearing it. It happened somewhere at the end of the lap and took me a little by surprise. Well, obviously. I didn’t think of turning into the pit lane immediately. So I dragged the hanging muffler around the track for one more lap, which grinded a nice hole into it.

Back into the pitlane, I saw it hanging there. The pipe going into the rear muffler was obviously pretty much rusted through and simply snapped. The exhaust pipe burned a small hole into the inner fender and the silencer melted a small part of the rear bumper. Nothing too bad, and not visible from the outside, but annoying nonetheless. I cut the rubber mounting from which it dangled to get it out from underneath the car. That seemed like the easiest solution and the mounting was not in good shape anyway, so that will be replaced along with the muffler. Hopefully soon.

Funny that it happened without advanced notice. Previously, whenever my exhaust was about to go south (happens quite a lot if you’ve got a habit of driving rust buckets), I’d hear it well before it actually broke. It started to rattle and gave me that sporty exhaust note. Luckily, the Clio does have a mid silencer, so the way home across the autobahn with the rear silencer in the trunk wasn’t bad at all. I kept it below 120 kph and I’m sure most people didn’t even notice that there was something wrong.