The story of an amateur racer, part two

"Will Race For Food" (willraceforfood) 08/03/2015 at 08:45 • Filed to: racing, amateur racing, bmw, tires

2

0

For those who missed the first part, it can be found !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Now, the first story concluded with my first winter race at the very end of 2014, and this story will take us through the remaining winter season, and, judging by the length of the first part, I have a feeling that this is going to be a long one.

Still, there are a bunch of bad quality pictures and even a video to spice things up a bit, so I hope it’ll be alright.

On the very next day after my first event, I headed out to another race (called 333 winter cup, using the name here as I’ll refer to this series a bit later on as well) which was just a 20 minute drive from my home and at the track where I actually had practiced a few times. Still, judging from the results of the previous event, I was not really expecting a whole lot (to put it mildly), since I was on the same miserable tires and probably had not turned into Sebastien Loeb overnight. Well, turns out that there are certain situations (such as when part of the track is just asphalt, without ice) where old and relatively bald winter tires are actually good, and this was one of those instances, proving to me once and for all that I’m completely useless in predicting my own performance. I finished fourth in my class (from a total of 33 entries), which was simply an amazing result, and quite unexpected.

Buoyed by that result, I figured that maybe the tires aren’t really that bad (oh, how wrong I was), so then, on the very next day, I went to yet another event to try and see what’s what. Surely, now that I was fourth in my last race, this would mean that I’ll be at least somewhat competitive today as well, even though the track is 100% ice/snow, right?

NOPE. I was second to last in my class even though it felt like I was close to the limit at all times, due to the crappy tires. One thing that caught my mind, however, was that I saw a girl, obviously taking part in her first race, drive around the track really slowly, not even coming near the limit of the tires on her car, yet still managed to be just a second or so off my pace. Of course, I then had a look at the tires her car was equipped with and it all became clear - I need dedicated winter tires for racing, otherwise I’ll just humiliate myself in the following events.

Well, now that I had come to this understanding, it was time to actually find some tires that would be good for winter racing. The particular tyre I was looking for is Nishp Rally 2000, which is a Russian made winter rally tire that can be used on the road as well - it can be bought new, but the wait time was around one month, but I didn’t want to potentially waste all winter just waiting for the tires, so I went out and bought them used.

These tires are very soft and have a very deep and blocky thread, which makes them perfect for snow/ice and mud. Unfortunately, I could not use these tires in the 333 winter cup where I managed to finish fourth, as they are banned there. What this means is that I still had to use my regular tires in that series, but was hoping that I’d get the chance to test these out in the other events soon enough.

Well, as it happens, all the snow melted and I did not get to test the tires in snow, with the exception of doing an hour or so of practice on one weekend. Still, at least I’ll have something to race on next year, if there’s winter.

Now, getting back to racing, it was time for the second event of 333 winter cup, taking place in snowy conditions with no asphalt section like there was in the first event. And this is the event where I could finally unleash the true potential of the ca..
Oh, right, still on crappy tires. Was 33rd of 38 in my class, now beginning to understand that bad tires typically don’t lead to awesome results, even though still didn’t quite understand to what extent this was the case. See, the thing with being slow and knowing that it is at least partly due to the tires is that you don’t really know your true pace, and that is annoying - was I actually quite good and just stuck with bad tires, or did I just drive slowly? This is what I then tried to find out during the next few events.

On the following day, I had the chance to test out my new tires at yet another event, but there was a small problem with the fact that the temperatures had been a bit above freezing for the last few days and while the 333 cup was in wintry conditions (the very top picture is actually from the second event), it was mostly due to the location of the track. Still, I was quite optimistic that there’ll be at least some snow and ice on the ground so that I can finally get a feel for how good these tires are in such conditions. Well, on my way to the event, while overtaking a large bus which drove into a large puddle right as I was next to it, my MAF got messed up because of the water getting in it, leading to the car wanting to stall if I didn’t give it enough gas. While this is a minor annoyance if you know what’s going on, it is a bit more stressful when you don’t know what has happened and only see that the car will die when you leave it idling. Still, I got to the track and, to my surprise, there was no snow in sight.

As you can see, the track surface is 100% mud and there were also some very significant water hurdles, or, as I called them then, miniature oceans, that we had to navigate through to get to the finish line. Still, since I was there, it would have been stupid not to compete, so I put on my new tires and went for it. Even though I held back quite a bit and was very slow through the puddles since I didn’t want to kill my engine, this was officially my first win in the BMW!!!

Sure, I was the only person dumb enough to even try to get through the track in a rear wheel drive car, but a win is a win, right? I was also fifth of six in the Open class, where I was beaten by three four wheel drive cars and a front wheel drive VW Golf that is set up for autocross ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! autocross, not the SCCA kind). Having cleaned up the car (as, even though it doesn’t look too bad in the picture, it was impossible to see anything out the side windows), it was time to go home. The tires were actually very good in the mud as well, but this was not much of a surprise, due to the thread pattern and depth.

Now that I’ve competed in a mud race, the winter season is surely over, right? HA, no.

There were still three events remaining in the 333 winter cup, two of which I was going to take part in. Since I have managed to find absolutely zero pictures of my car from the event, here is one courtesy of a local automotive portal (if you find my car in the picture, please consult with an eye doctor, as you’re seeing things that aren’t there).

Winter was back, yay! Unfortunately, I still had terrible tires, so a decision was made to try out my new tires in the conditions that should somewhat suit them (if I recall, it was quite warm outside so the track wasn’t quite 100% snow/ice), but this meant that I would be DQ’d from the results as these tires are not allowed in the RWD class this year. And I did pretty good for what was really my first time on these tires in the winter - out of 30 entries in my class, I would have been 15th in my first run, fourth in my second run and 15th again in my third run.

The reason why I was relatively slow in my first and third runs is due to the start list - I was at the back of the class, and the track got slower and slower throughout the run due to the fact that the snow covered track was cleaned by the first cars, making the surface more slippery. In the second run, however, I was one of the first ones to go on track, which explains the good result. Still, the times (disregarding the fact that I was DQ’d) were quite good and I was happy.

Having missed the fourth round of the 333 cup due to conflicting schedules, there was just one race in my winter season remaining, but the weather was getting progressively warmer, with the expectation that the last round will take place on a track with very little snow/ice on it. To get a better feel for the conditions, I went to have some practice a week or so before the event.

As you can see, the track was covered by a mixture of ice and asphalt, which is a really difficult combination to drive on, since you never know what to expect. In these conditions, it was no use in even trying out the new tires, as I would not only get the DQ (which isn’t that important since I wasn’t fighting for the top spots anyways), but would also be terribly slow on the asphalt sections (if there were any) and would destroy the tires, since they are very soft (which is also a part of the reason why they’re awesome on snow/ice). So, I practiced (and went to the race) with the old tires, not really expecting much, as there was very little grip in the slippery sections of the track. Still, this was going to be a good test of car control that should serve me well for the summer season, so I figured it’d be worth it even though I’ll likely be somewhere at the very back of the field.

With 24 entries in my class, the race started out somewhat like I expected it to - I was 20th in the first run and 19th in the second run, which seemed about right, considering the tires. However, I really wondered how I’d do with tires that aren’t useless. Luckily, I knew the guy who won the first two heats in our class, and asked him if I could borrow his tires for the third run. Since he wasn’t going to do the third run himself (the way the 333 cup is scored is that you are given points for your position in each heat, taking the two best positions from three runs. He already had two first places, guaranteeing a win), he agreed to let me try what (if any difference) tires would make on this track.

With that, here’s the onboard from my last run (you have 10 minutes to set the fastest possible lap time, by the way). The visibility is quite bad in a few spots, but I do turn on the wipers occasionally.

The discussion in the car was mostly about the braking points, turning on the wipers on the straights and boring stuff like that, but one thing did stand out on the first lap:

@1:15-1:19 - Holy shit, these tires actually have some grip!!

My clutch actually was slipping a bit towards the end there (most notably at 9:06), which is the reason for some seemingly long gear changes.

As for how I did in this run - my last lap was the fastest of the day for a rear wheel drive car, meaning I won the heat and, despite my bad results in the first two heats, was actually in eight place overall in my class. When it comes to the time difference between both sets of tires - while the track did get a few seconds faster for the third run (looks like around 3 seconds per lap, judging by those who were driving at my pace in the first and second runs), the difference in lap times between my second and third run was a bit more than 30 seconds . My best time in the second run was 2:44, but I managed a 2:13 in the third. With this, I got a clear indication that for a good result, having great tires is an absolute must, especially in winter.

This concludes part two of my miniature (or maybe not so miniature, judging by the length of these entries) series, with quite a bit more to go. Hopefully it was an interesting read - still quite new at writing, especially when it comes to doing so about things I actually care about. If there’s anything obvious that I skipped over or didn’t cover in enough detail (ha, good one, I’d be surprised if anyone managed to get through all the entry anyways), please ask in the comments and I’ll get into it in more detail.