I spent most of last weekend in the passenger seat at Calabogie Motorsports Park. Honestly, the weekend was pretty uneventful. This isn't a bad thing, in fact it's what you hope for from an HPDE (High Performance Driving Education) event. It just doesn't make for good content. Also, predictably, I didn't take a single photo over the weekend. But here goes.
Calabogie HPDE double header
I've been coaching at Calabogie Motorsports HPDE days since mid last year. In my first post I talked a little bit about how I got to be a coach at Calabogie, so if you're interested in going that route, you should give that a read. Long story short, it starts with your Motorsports Safety Foundation Certification. I don't want to get to much in to what that is, but if you have questions about it feel free to reach out. Once you have that, you can start the process of getting signed off at Calabogie. The MSF certification is a stepping stone towards being developed by the head coaches, and eventually hired on as an instructor.
As an instructor, I have the option to sign up for HPDE days to declare my availability. If they have need for me, I get in a email. If not, then I have the weekend off. Last weekend I signed up for both days, Saturday and Sunday. Early in the week I received an email confirming I was signed up for Saturday and had been assigned a student. It wasn't until around 10 am on that Saturday that I was asked by the lead Instructor if I was free to coach a late registrant on the Sunday. So it's very much late notice. But I still recommend it.
For the purpose of these posts, I want to be clear that I won't be talking about the specific performance of my students. I don't feel like it would be right to write up how they did, or air out their mistakes to an audience without their permission. This has left me scratching my head for what to write about this week.
As a coach, I often get the chance to drive the students car at the beginning of the day to do sight laps and get a feel for what they're dealing with. For my half day on Saturday, my student had brought a Mk8 Golf R with a manual transmission. On the two laps I did, I was impressed with speed and handling of the car, but a bit underwhelmed by the lack of road feel it had. The car seemed to float around and it was very difficult to understand what was happening between it and the road.
The next day, my student had rented one of the Calabogie GR86s. Most of these rental cars have automatic transmissions, except for one. Of course the manual one was missing for some reason that day. But it didn't matter because the student had requested one of the automatics. In the morning, during sight laps, I left it in auto mode and it was predictably bad. In normal mode, it struggles to find the right gear, especially in corners. The exhaust is also quite loud, which makes it a bit awkward when your starting to squeeze the gas exiting a corner and the car downshifts twice on corner exit.
After lunch, I decided my student had progressed enough that I should take him out for more sight laps at a slightly higher speed, since he was now acclimated with the track layout. This time I put it in "manual" mode, and was pleasantly surprised by the smoothness and quickness of the shifts when pressing the paddles. I was enjoying myself so much I probably could have burned away my student's entire session, but reluctantly, I pit after 2 laps.
The Sunday session was so quiet that in the afternoon, they removed the run groups and left it at open track. All the advanced drivers in yellow group had gone home, so we were allowed to go out whenever we wanted. Since it was Mother's Day, my student and I agreed that if we could get all of his track time with shorter breaks, it would be nice to be done a little early. So thats what we did.
My student had come with a friend who was tracking his own Kia Stinger. Throughout the day I had talked with his coach, and we both helped to feed their interest in driving on track. By the end of the day, they were asking us where the best places in Ottawa were to buy things like brake pads, alignment hardware, or in my student's case, a track car. This to me is the most rewarding part of the day. We were able to successfully get others curious in our passion for high performance driving. I hope to see both of them back at the track soon.
That pretty much sums up my coaching weekend at Calabogie. Like I mentioned before, an uneventful coaching day is a successful one. I encourage you to check out the Calabogie Motorsports Park schedule, and come out for a novice day to experience the track.
So what's next?
Maybe a little update on the car. The BRZ is no longer leaking oil. I had it looked at when I arrived home from the first Ontario Time Attack event last weekend, and we narrowed it down to a few seals on the front of the engine that had gone bad. I went over to the Subaru dealership the same day, and then had them in stock. I picked up a full set of them (8 seals total) for more money than I wanted to spend, and replaced them myself. Since then, no oil smell and no more smoke. I'm looking forward to getting an opportunity to get the car back on track.
I also mentioned in my last post that I discovered that at least one of my friend wheel hub bearings were bad. After a long internal battle, I finally decided to purchase the parts, and do the replacement in the driveway. I had been skeptical about attempting the job after what happen with the single rear bearing I needed to replace, but I'm told that the front hubs are not quite as stubborn. Worst case scenario, the front knuckle is also easier to remove, and I have no axles to deal with. What could go wrong?
Coming up
On May 31st is Ontario Time Attack's second time attack school. This time, we're at the Canadian Tire Motorsports Park Grand Prix track. Yes, the same track that IMSA races GTD cars, famous for being the second fastest track in North America (Watkins Glen being the fastest.) I highly recommend that you check out the registration links for the school, because the time attack event 2 is at the same track, the following day.
If you already have experience at the big track, and looking for some practice, open lapping slots are open for the School (at the time of writing this.) These slots go fast so don't wait!
See you at the track!
Cat Tax
