Just got back from weekend in Shepparton and the DECA event. I am absolutely totally exhausted! We drove up on Friday night so we could wake up fresh on Saturday without having driven 2.5 hours the morning of the event, however everyone was so anxious and the aircon was so crap in the motel that there was not much sleeping anyway.
Temperature was around 35deg for most of the day but with a light breeze so it was bearable.
First off the morning consisted of Indian file through the back road tracks and then individual runs of each circuit and skidpan at 80% speed which was untimed.
Overall I think I did pretty well with the back road tracks (coarse bitumen surface), I believe I was hitting the tyre's limits before the car's or my limits. I'm really happy with the new suspension setup as the car is really easy to throttle steer through long sweeping corners and extremely stable through quick zigzag chicanes.
On the skidpan I was getting a decent amount of understeer due to the smooth concrete surface, 90deg turns weren't too bad. I tried handbrake turns but having to memorise the cone positions and everything else it was all information overload and after 2 failed attempts I did not try them anymore. First time I bogged down and second time I grinded the clutch. Some of the GTRs seemed to have the same problem and they ran very very wide on the 180s due to their heavy weight and long wheelbase.
After my first few runs I started using the feint manouvre to get the back around. It worked brilliantly and the front was tucking in very close to the corners plus I didn't lose the engine speed from trying to handbrake turn. It worked so well that on one run I oversteered massively and couldn't catch it time so I ended up facing backwards only meters from the finish box
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After reading of some of the hazards they have on the side of the back road tracks (metal bollards, trees etc) I decided to crank up the rear camber from -0.5deg per side to -1.0deg per side. This surely would have reduced the "chuckability" of the back but I think it is a good amount now as it is otherwise very very stable unless I intentionally want to get the back out.
As for the skidpan battles I ran against a 2000'ish BMW 328i coupe and it was pretty even finish for most of the runs. The one run that I thought I had beaten him by a recognisable amount I overshot the finish and just tapped the cone at the end! (5sec penalty).
The times should be posted up in the next few days I'll copy them once available. Also there were quite a few professional photographers/video crew so I'm sure they will be putting media online and I'll link that up once available (there are a few of me on the track and skidpan I belive). Here are the few photos I manage to take (Cars #5 and #6 are my mates who I went with).
This is a great event, good value for money and a good place to learn the limits of the car within a relatively safe environment which has minimal wear and tear for the car. Each run only goes for around 40-60secs so you don't kill your brakes or tyres. The next one with the Skylines AU club is in February we should get some more Liberty AU members to come up
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on a damp day in a carpark with no-one around. Practicing hand-brake turns help alot.
