This time, both Thomas (purple R33 GT-R - his blog) and Terrance (white R33 GT-R who ran with me at Tsukuba in September) decided to run in this track day. So we convoyed to Fuji and arrived a bit past 0800, checked in and proceeded to get our cars ready for the run.
Here is how we looked, ready to go.
Oh, you may notice one "mod" here - I was one of the lucky few to be able to order, and purchase new, these limited edition Nismo LMGT4 rims. Of course, me being me, before I put them on I spent some time in my garage apply some glass coating.
The wheels:
The glass coating.
This worked great on my stock 17inch rims, which to this day I can blast with water and the dust just rinses off. But on black wheels, I have to say I am not sure about its effectiveness - first because black actually doesn't show the dust as badly as a silver wheel, and also because, in its application, I found that it's very easy to leave minute scratches in the gloss black.
But, in the end, it was worth it - and here is a close up of the front wheel and the R35 caliper and rotor.
On this day, SSCT had blocked off two full hours - one at 1100, and the other at 1300. However, I chose to run only 30 minutes at a time, for a total of one hour. In retrospect, I probably should have taken advantage and run the full 2 hours, but I was worried about putting too much stress on my car. In part, I was worried about how the new brakes would hold up - but that turned out to be NO PROBLEM at all, I ended up being able to easily slow down for the first corner with no fade, every single lap. Best mod ever?
Temperatures were cold that day, I believe the track surface was about 2 or 3 degrees C, and it took a while for the tires to warm up. But I was fiddling with a few new items - one the DigSpice GPS track data recorder, and also the new iPhone app called "Harry's LapTimer" which allows video recording (of every other lap) plus GPS data plotting. I also had on board my trusty old Panasonic video camera, as well as the LapShot laptimer device.
Needless to say, my first 30 minute stint I was more concerned about getting all of these working properly than setting my best time! In the end, I discovered I had gotten the DigSpice and LapShot to work, but not the iPhone app the first time out. And second time out, I got all three to work, but the iPhone holder failed, resulting in video taken at various weird angles.
Howver, I plan to have the data and video from the above items processed soon, and will post an entry with these materials soon.
Anyway - here are photos from Adam of me in action:
At speed:
Finally - here is video of me (third car) flying by on the Fuji straight. I was probably still accelerating on my way to about 260kph - not as much boost that day - about 1.2 I think - meant a lower top speed. Enjoy!