Living the Dream...

ok so its race time.

i live in durban, so its quite difficult for me to keep travelling for the races. thanks to ajt for helping me out with storage and every damn thing u have done for me.....anyway, so i wont be getting any practise going to each race meeting. with my studies i have no time to travel inbetween races just to practise the track, i just gotta rock up there race weekend and figure shit out.

this weekend is the 1st race of the season at wesbank raceway. the itenary is a bit staggered, i think due to overflow of other categories with us at this meeting. practise day was on saturday 10feb, and practise and quali is this saturday 17feb, with the race (two heats) on sunday 18feb. i travelled up from durban and staying the week here in jo'burg so i could make that praccy day and the race too. missing a week of varsity but hey its my 1st race, sacrifices and priorities :P

that practise day was the best day of my life. until this sunday anyway ;) i wasnt nervous at all, just excited. everyday after that zwartkops run of mine, i was itching...ITCHING...to get back on track. and the time had come. any thought of crashing the car were gone. i couldnt give a shit anymore, time to trust myself and what i can do. i've seen a bit of an onboard camera shot of wesbank, and it looked quite technical!! its this bit of an oval circuit, with a damn long straight which breaks off into a tight midfield section. there were quite a few fvee guys here this time, getting things set for the race the next week. i wasnt the only noob there, there were 2 other guys....kids....children. they were 16yr olds, that just come out of karting. they both had a few more outings than me in their cars as well, but i couldnt care, none of us had seen wesbank. their names are dean and courtney.

it came time for the 1st 15min session....some guy offered to show us noobs the racing line for the 1st couple laps. yay, they went off and i was left trying to find 1st gear grrrr...the damn thing was stuck. oh well, who needed to know the racing line anyway. once i got away i put foot down the straight. immediate feeling was that i was gonna get sucked out the car and get thrown into the stands. aerodynamic forces were incredible....it was logical not to overdo things into the corners....but i soon caught the noob-train. i dont know why that guy was going so slow, he mustve thought we were real idiots....i think dean got pissed off and overtook the "leader" lmao....courtney started moving his ass, i just thought i'd stick behind him, coz he knew more limits of the car than i did, so i would learn anything i was sure......1st couple laps i got annoyed. tried to get 2nd gear but failed again....so i just used 3rd and 4th gear, coz i was definitely damaging that gearbox by trying.....some formula ford guy abandoned his car in the tight stuff, so they red-flagged the session (formula ford guys out with us coz its a 'single seater'session)....i followed courtney into the pit entry....which was highly fuckn confusing. he ended up taking the wrong entry, we ended on the other side of the pits hhahahaha....oh well, we found our way back sumhow.

dean nel (not noob karter dean) was helping me out prepping the car....and thats when i found out why i was grinding the damn gears....he told me i wasnt using heel and toe!!! SHIT....i dreaded that thing...heard abt it, and it sounds fucked. so i decided to stay in 3rd/4th gear while i learned the track. nxt session i pushed hard. i got the right shoes, so my foot wasnt catching on the steering column anymore. i came so close to putting it into the wall a couple times, car just got out of shape going into this one chicane....managed to collect it. tried it again nxt lap and almost threw it off again....3rd lap i managed to get it stable. going into the hairpins i tried some racing lines i'd learned in games....hey i think it worked. the sliding was almost the same to the FormulaBMW mod of rFactor (for any1 who's played that) and felt comfy. almost spun off in the hairpins couple times trying to get that sliding line down, but it felt like a computer game really lol....when i came in, dean said he followed me thru there and learned sum things. so i guess thats simracers 1point, karters 1point? hehe. a private joke for the simracers with momo wheel: i caught a huge slide, and the steering wheel was still pointing straight HAHAHA i had a good laugh abt that in the cockpit. no fps problems either :P

getting that heel-toe thing down was hard. i practised doing it going from 4th to 3rd gear first, coz those dont grind. once i got the feeling, then i tried going into 2nd gear....still not perfect, but i managed to hook it. im def losing seconds in the braking zones coz of this, i'll hafta get used to it fast...no laptimes, i had nobody to time me. championship winner alan holm rocked the track in 1m16.9......dean ended up on 18.5 and courtney 19.3 or something....i mustve been 21's, who knows. i'll see with official timing this weekend. but i was really pushing, and felt comfortable catching the car when shit got out of shape.....it was fun to push, i had other drivers to gauge myself against, and that whole zwartkops thing was just pansy. im liking that oval bit, every1 seems scared of that thing, coz if u lose it there then theres no coming back....its just concrete wall.

in the 4th and final session, it started to rain. oohhh my eyes lit up :D i tell u, i've never had so much fun that day and looked like it was only getting better....raindrops streaming off ur visor, car was sliding everywhere. car has natural understeer already, and in the wet its just terrible....then u put the power and it tries to swap ends.....wow what a challenge, i loved it. every1 else was just cruising, i guess they didnt wanna crash....i felt comfy on that "limit" (im sure i wasnt going that fast)...things dried out quickly tho :( i found some guy my pace who i was trying to race. it was very cool, i gained on him in that infield bit, but every 2nd gear braking zone he gained a lot....i just suck at that heel-toe shit lol...down the straight i felt slipstream for the 1st time. not that satisfying, coz i think he had more power than me...i hadta stick in his slipstream just to keep up!! but after 3laps i got my 1st overtaking move ever ahahhahaha....into the 1st corner...after which i noticed his wheel was wobbly :/ i tried to wave him down, but he kept pushing....after 2laps the thing just shredded and his wheel was totalled....shame man.

the next day i could barely walk. i was so bruised and exhausted.....ah felt good.

ok so i gotta learn to stop talking so much. this is way too long geez....but i havnt really talked abt much :/ race coming sunday, i CANT WAIT. i wanna practise a few different lines, get heel-toe better, try some car setup, and just generally have FUN :D wont have new tyres like every1 else, but its ok. i am so amped to push my fucking arse off. really. the time has come...