Whew, what a weekend!
Still trying to collect my thoughts right now because I'm beat from 2 days of hard driving in the Cayman.
Great to see the number of active Zone 1 Club members driving at this event! They included:
Cayman_Ken & his daughter in an Audi A4
diverdog
me!
doc_oct
Chris (owner of a beautiful Design Edition 1)
Retired_Teach came out on Saturday to watch and support us for a bit, can't wait to have him back on the track again soon!
Burned almost 2 tanks of gas and turned my exhaust tip into a new color (piss yellow?). The car exhaust also sounds different now, can't quite put my finger on it, it's just louder in a good sort of way.
The car is amazing and really comes to life on a track. I ran with
PASM on and
sport chrono off (I didn't want a jumpy throttle)
We ran two different track configurations. The first day we did the double infield and used the two NASCAR straights. Sunday AM we did two runs of the NASCAR "bowl" to test our top speeds and went back to the double infield in the afternoon.
The afternoon session was held in a driving rainstorm. My wipers on high were barely keeping the water off. But, at 90 MPH plus, water doesn't come in the side windows! Saw a 997 do a nice slow spin ahead ahead of me when they overcooked a corner. Too sharp a correction and the back end came right around.
The bowl was scary, Pocono turn 1 is banked 14 degrees and links the front and back straights. In the dry I managed to max at 135 plus, in the wet, I didn't bother looking. The Bridgestones are great tires in wet and dry. Unfortunately I think they're on their last legs at 4400 miles on 2 track days, autoX and a car control clinic.
I have these same tires on the G35 and they look OK at 10K miles also with autoX and 2 days at Watkins Glen. Oh well.
The good thing about running in the heavy rain on Sunday was that it saved some of the treadlife.
The AWE pedals did what I wanted, heel-toe all weekend with only 1 incident of tire chirping going from 3rd to 2nd.
We had some serious hardware in my group including 996 GT3, 997 GT3 and 997 Turbos. I got some very nice views of their bumper badges before they all pointed me by for some reason.
Chris in the DE1 was an amazingly fast driver. He was probably the fastest driver in our beginner group. We never saw each other the first day, but he did run up on me on the 2nd day. After giving him the pass, I never saw him again! Had a 997 hold me up for a bit, but after finally getting around him, Chris was a speck in the distance.
The best part of the weekend? No incidents and a sign-off for some solo time Sunday afternoon.
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PASM - Porsche Active Suspension Management
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This active damping system offers continuous adjustment of individual damping forces based on current road conditions and driving style.
The driver can choose from two setup modes, ‘Normal’ and ‘Sport’, using a separate ‘damper’ button on the center console. ‘Normal’ mode is designed for general road driving and circuits with uneven tarmac. ‘Sport’ mode is intended for smoother track surfaces, where the harder settings help eliminate pitch and roll.
In either mode, PASM continuously evaluates the current conditions while automatically selecting the corresponding damper rates from the respective set of mapped values.
A range of sensors are used to monitor the movement of the body under acceleration, braking and cornering maneuvers, as well as on poor road surfaces. The PASM control unit then evaluates this data and modifies the damping force on each individual wheel in accordance with the selected mode. The result is a significant reduction in body movement as well as a better grip on the road.
For example: if ‘Sport’ mode is selected, the suspension is automatically set to a harder damper rating. If the quality of the track surface falls below a certain threshold, the system immediately changes to a softer rating within the ‘Sport’ setup range. When the quality of the tarmac improves once more, PASM automatically returns to the original, harder rating.
Need more information about PASM? Click this link: FAQ for PASM |
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