Published by hothatch on 22 Apr 2008
Track Day 5 – On Mika’s Marks
Admittedly, it was almost a year ago when Mika Häkkinen won the DTM race at the Eurospeedway Lausitz. The rubber he and his competitors layed down there in May 2007 has probably long been washed away by the heavy rain that often frequents the region of Lausitz. But you never know, there just might be a few ounces of Häkkinen’s slicks left somewhere in the pores of the tarmac. If so, I had them underneath my Toyos last weekend – and, frankly, I didn’t give a toss. I was more concerned with other things.
The Lausitzring is a full-blown FIA approved race track with several different configurations. At certain dates throughout the year there are Speeddays and it is open for the public in the evenings. And a couple of times per year the Speeddays run from morning till evening, as was the case last saturday and sunday. Anybody with a drivers licence and a street-legal car (or motorbike) can just show up there and take fifteen-minute turns around the 4.5 kilometer Grand Prix circuit.
I went there on saturday and sunday, which was not what I had planned, as it’s a one and a half hour drive from home.
I was initially only going to go there on saturday, but when I arrived, the weather had turned grim and it was about to start raining. No big deal, usually, but I was on semi slicks and felt it was not such a great idea to have my first outing on unknown suspension and unknown tyres on an unknown track in the wet. Still, I got in line for one turn before the rain would pick up and made it back to the paddock safely, if not exactly fast. The rain had just started when I was waiting in the pit lane and the track was still dry when the light turned green. By the end of the turn, the track was damp and slowly got wetter. The uniform greyness of the sky left no doubt that it was only going to get worse. So that was pretty much it for the day. I hung out there a little longer with some Honda drivers one of which and his Integra Type R I knew from the Spreewaldring forum but had never met in real life. It was a nice bunch but after a while the cold and the rain got to us and I went home rather dissatisfied.
I returned on sunday to make up for it. This time it stayed dry and apart from the ITR driver there were also a couple of other guys from the STC, namely the driver of the green Celica previously mentioned and the driver of a black Opel Speedster. It was a fun day and although I only took two turns driving and one as a passenger in the Celica, I had a good chance to evaluate my new setup.
It’s a little hard to draw a comparison to the standard setup, because I had never been to this track on it, but first
impressions are good overall. Body roll seems indeed reduced by a fair bit and the Toyos certainly do seem to give a lot more grip under power on track-out. How much more grip there really is, especially on turn-in and through the turns, I can’t say just yet. The Lausitzring is just so different to the Spreewaldring. Most corners are much faster (which is great, of course) and the track is a lot wider overall with large run-off zones and thus gives a totally different feel. What I can say for sure, though, is that the sidewalls of the Toyo R888 is much, much stiffer than the one of the Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 I was using previously. I didn’t fully explore the limits of the Toyo, but considering that I have virtually no negative camber on the front, I see it as a good sign that the sidewall remained unscathed. Still, I will need camber bolts or dampers that give some negative camber by design to evenly wear the Toyos and to maximize grip in the turns.
I feel there’s no need for any analysis of my driving this weekend, as I see all three turns basically as shake-down laps to get to know the track and the new setup a little. I still had a blast – despite the fact that there were some numb nuts around who were obviously suffering from impulse control disorder. Here’s a video with a couple of laps from saturday and sunday:
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Only on the last run did I start to push a little harder (there’s no video footage available as I again screwed up when trying to turn on the camera). But my attempts were hampered by a disconcerting hopping and juddering under hard left cornering. I’ve always had this and attributed it first to the tyres. When it didn’t change with different tyres, I figured it might be due to the soft suspension. But now, with the Eibach springs and the stiffer Toyos it’s still there, so it must be something else. What exactly, I have no idea, I just
know that it keeps me from cornering hard. I basically can’t get any kind of slip angle in left turns. As soon as I exceed a certain speed and a certain steering angle, the car starts to judder and I have to let off. It doesn’t feel healthy at all.
Next Speeddays on the Lausitzring are scheduled for May 20th, and from the 3rd of June on the track will be open to the public almost every tuesday evening. Which means I’ll have several chances to run over Ralf Schumacher’s DTM-rubber this year. I’m really looking forward to that.