After an extended summer break I’ve finally gotten back to the track for a few days. In September it was for one day on the main circuit at Summit Point instructing for the Colonial Challenge Cup charity event, then three days this past weekend instructing with the BMW club.

Here’s a picture of my car at the skidpad.

(My car is the blue one…)

The CCC events are fun if a bit chaotic, but I really like the BMW events. This time I was instructing on the skidpad. I had forgotten what it was like to work with beginning students and how much fun it is to see when they start to get it: you really can’t add more steering when in understeer…

I had an interesting moment under heavy breaking in turn one when I ran through some anti-freeze just as I started to turn in. In the first part of the video, you can see my normal line through this corner. In the last part, you see the fluid-induced lane change. If you pause it, you can see me pointed about 15 degrees to the right at 80 MPH.

I ran the GeorgeCo 325is Powered by Beano on Friday, but have a front wheel bearing starting to go so chose to run the MINI for the rest of the weekend. For the most part I could hang with the E36 and E46 M3s. I lose about five car lengths on the front straight to the higher horsepower cars and the make it up under braking into turn one. I’d have to be careful through the chute not to run up too quickly on the heavier cars. I think the larger JCW brakes made a huge difference to how late I could brake.

Here’s an interesting video comparing the MINI to the E30 on the track. They are remarkably similar.  May take a few moments to load. Here’s more video from Saturday.