The 24 Hours of Autobahn
I had the pleasure to recently attend an AMS organized event at the Autobahn Country Club that ran the South Course for a six 30 minute session day. I drove there friday night which took about 10 hours thanks to a fatal accident closing down the main entry from the east to the Chicago area. There were literally hundreds of cars and trucks sitting on the highway and nobody really knew how long it would be. So I moved a few construction barrels out of the way and did a U-turn hoping I could challenge my Garmin Navigator to find a way around the mess.
Turns out Central Ave was a pretty good shortcut to another on ramp except that it was closed for construction. This sent me north of the highway into a “financially challenged” area of the city where you actually would really need an SUV to navigate these rough roads… and a bulletproof vest probably wouldn’t be a bad idea either! Luckily I made it to my hotel in time to have 4 hrs of sleep before heading to the track in the morning.
After arriving at Autobahn I had enough time to unload the car and get the car teched. Already it was pushing 80* F and the sun was bearing down with no relief in sight. After the drivers meeting to make sure everyone was on the same page, they sent the Intermediate and Advanced group out for some parade laps to get a feel for the course. Then I decided to follow some of the lines that the more seasoned drivers knew for this road course and ended up driving the car so hard that the brakes boiled about 20 minutes into the session. Luckily I was able to slow the car down with my feet out the door and bring the car into the pits for inspection. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Girodisc 2 piece rotors and Raybestos ST43 pads were so good at stopping It might have ended much more dangerously.
Luckily just a quick re-bleed of the Racing Blue brake fluid seemed to have brought them back to life and the second session was fine assuming I got some cooldown laps after doing 4-5 hot laps. Plans are to get another set of ducts to cool the rotors directly in addition to the ducts that cool the caliper area, swap to higher rated brake fluid, and swap in some titanium shims. By session 3 I started to feel more comfortable again but still decided to stick with learning the proper line and not really going for absolute best lap times. One thing that reared it’s ugly head again was the fuel sloshing around in the tank during longer G corners. The Evo X just does not like running below half tank or less on road courses and I was forced to let a race prepped BMW go by when it just wouldn’t hold the turns when powering out.
Session 4 was interesting in that I rounded the corner to the back straight and spotted a red waving flag. This can’t be good! I scanned the area and noticed a white Evo planted up on the tirewalls, apprently his brake line(s) ruptured at ~120 mph and he was unable to stop. It also turns out that 3 laps before I lost my oil cap after not screwing it down all the way and getting distracted by onlookers in the pits. Apparently Pep Boys sells an oil cap that has a threaded end but they had to look it up as a 2009 since the 2008 just failed to list it!
Hopefully I’ll have time to run another track day at Road America with AMS as I had a great time and got another track under my belt reasonably well. Basically this was “The 24 Hours of Autobahn” for me since I drove ~20 hours round trip, 1 hour extra to reach the open house at AMS. and spent about 3 hrs total out on the track. It turns out that 24 hours of driving in 3 days really takes it’s toll and felt worse than the One Lap trip since there was no co-driver to share the overload of driving!
Session 3 video (available in 720p):
I started to have fun with the car and avoided abusing the brakes too much knowing I had to drive home after this event!
Session 4 video (available in 720p):
This video has a few laps with a passenger along for the ride, then as we round the turn to the back straight I noticed a red flag waving and spotted a white Evo up on the tire wall.
