Roebling Road is definitely a different type of track than Road Atlanta, Sebring, or CMP.  Rather than multiple straightaways and tight turns, Roebling is a series of rather high speed gradual sweeps and carousel turns with only one significant straight to speak of.  I was able to drive up on Thursday night after work, managed to catch a few hours of sleep, and be at the track Friday morning for an event called Seat-Time run by Jon Krolewicz.  My instructor at Seat-Time turned out to be the son of the instructor I had at my very first track event down in Sebring two years ago.  The Seat-Time event runs approximately the same as the NASA HPDE events, but since there are a total of 4 run groups everyone gets a lot more track time during the day.  The run groups are also much smaller which helps reduce traffic jams on the course.  And Roebling is a course that is more susceptible to traffic jams since there are very few passing zones.

The course feels much simpler as you drive since there are no exceptionally difficult curves, but it was extremely apparent that driving at an average speed was the equivalent of driving the other courses extremely poorly.  The difference between doing poorly on this course and doing well was a simple as a foot or two on a sweeping apex or turn-in.  There are many, many different lines that will get you around the course, but to find the correct line for your car takes some serious fine-tuning.  I was able by the end of the day on Friday to get some general ideas of the line I should be driving, but I wasn’t quite able to implement it fully.  There were absolutely no landmarks to speak of except for one light pole outside of Turn 6.  That made it difficult to find turn-in and apex reference points which is why it takes so much fine-tuning.

My instructor for the NASA event on Saturday and Sunday had me start with a slightly different line around the carousel.  I spent most of Saturday trying to figure out exactly where that new line should be and adjust it according to the car’s response.  I also spent most of Saturday morning giving point-by’s to almost anyone who was out on track with me.  I don’t say that because I want to compete with others on track, but it was a way to gauge how much potential speed I was leaving on the track.  After lunch on Saturday I was given my first point-by- an indicator that I was finally improving.

As I improved my overall speed throughout the track, I also improved my entry speed coming around Turn 8 into the front straight.  This entry speed really picked up on Sunday and I was almost maxing out 4^th gear for probably the first time ever, although I am still not heel-toeing, which means I’m still chirping the car as I downshift at Turn 1.  Between just mentally being all too aware of a corner approaching at the end of the straight and knowing how rough my downshifts are, I was unable to push myself to a point where I needed 5^th.

I’ve been running the other courses at tire pressures of 34/32 (front/rear) and after feeling the performance of the car, my instructor recommended increasing the front tire pressure to help along the turns.  After some adjustments, I found I could take turns much more comfortably at 38/32.

My laps improved by over 20 seconds between midday on Saturday and my last runs on Sunday.  Granted, it’s easy to get such drastic improvement when I obviously was sluggish at the beginning of the weekend, but I was nonetheless extremely encouraged to have another way to gauge progress and see improvement.

I just found out that I will be moving to HPDE 2 for next month’s event at Barber Motorsports in Alabama.  Although it is optional for all DE 2’s, I will still drive with an instructor in the car as I have a lot more learning to do in general, as well as being on yet another unfamiliar track.