LOL!!! Yes! That's me! I seem to have a gift for screwing up in front of the track photographer - I have a great series of shots from Chuckwalla where I lost it in my Plan B car and took out some cones in a giant cloud of dust. I was actually happy to see this shot because it shows my rear brake bias isn't too bad, although I've adjusted it another click towards the front based on my pad wear.

Well I still haven't finished pulling all of the videos or completing my post track analysis but here's what I've got so far:

1. With the passenger's side ball joint properly bolted on again the car is back to handling normally - still not a lot of oversteer, but I'm leaning towards that being the driver not pushing the car to its limits because...
2. Maplewood Very Graciously agreed to take my car out for a test drive, and the organizers Very Graciously just handed him a wristband so he could take it out with the intermediate group (first group after new driver's class, point-by's required, etc.)
   Thank you Sooo Much Maplewood! (And Event Organizers too!) Since my car is a single-seater as currently configured I couldn't go with - he came back with incredibly useful information (which hopefully I won't screw up too much here)
   1. The Vmaxx coilovers on the car are shot. He said it was like driving his Miata back when he had blown-out stock shocks if I recall correctly. He said he went over a curb as part of the normal line and it threw the car's balance off tremendously. Lots of fun, but not so good for keeping up speed.
   2. The car is handling fine otherwise. We have considerably different driver setups but get this. He was in what is effectively the beginner's group. He couldn't pass without a point-by and the beginners are awful about noticing that someone behind them needs a point-by. He couldn't shift the car into 5th (it's really stiff/notchy with the short shift kit and it gets harder as the transmission gets hotter - sometimes I can't get it to shift into 5th myself), he wasn't driving it that hard because it wasn't his car and it was his first time out in it...
      and he STILL turned a lap time 2 seconds faster than I had up to that point!
   3. The rear wing isn't really affecting anything at least at the speeds he could get up to in 4th. I'm not noticing any significant differences in steering at the end of the long straight in 6th either so it doesn't seem to be an issue/doing all that much anyway
3. I owe Maplewood even more thanks because during one of my Absolutely Mandatory post-session walkaround inspections I noticed that my rear brake pads were, well, all but gone. The fronts? Still had material left. The rear passenger's side? Paper-thin pad amount left. In my defense I had asked the guys at the shop to check the brakes as part of the pre-track work they were doing including replacing the differential. I guess they were busy or just looked at the fronts because the front brake kit was actually put on before the rear brake kit was and who wears out their rear brakes first?!?
   
   Pad? What pad?!?
   So even though the car supposedly had a clean bill of health I had a spare set of pads because you never, ever go to the track without a spare set of pads! The rotors seemed to still be in good shape, but I didn't know how to change the brake pads until Maplewood graciously talked me through the process. It's easy once you know, but like they say...
   
   1/2
   I had to borrow a jack and a torque wrench (I swear, every time I forget to bring my torque wrench I need the bloody thing) but happily I had brought along my squeaky-new 1/2" High Torque Impact Wrench I had just impulse-bought from Home Depot because Memorial Day Sale. The job went really fast, had relatively few hitches, and the brakes seem to have bedded in nicely. Before you ask, the picture Roda dug up was from before the pad change.
4. Videos! I do have a few so far - here's one of my faster laps from Saturday's Clockwise sessions, and a fun (if impromptu) lead/follow session with one of the better Miata drivers from Sunday's counterclockwise sessions.
   
   
   
5. Oh, and for the record, no offs. That was as much luck as anything else since there were a few times where even I didn't know if I was going to make it around the corner but it was still gratifying. That shot Roda found was one of two times where things really went squirrely and both times I managed to recover without going offroading. Woot!
6. Yes I finally got the 2020 Hotwheels Miata Livery on the car - I've only had it sitting around for, like, a year and it would still be sitting around but I bumped into a guy who installs vinyl when I was walking around my neighborhood for exercise a few months ago.

We're through with the Time Trial season until we go back to Inde in September so next on the list is:

1. Buying another set of brake pads for the next time this happens
2. New Coilovers and Sway Bars - I'm looking at (ab)using the PayPal Pay in 4 process to get the SuperMiata “Big Grip” Suspension Kit - buy once, cry once. Cry a lot, but just once.
3. Pulling the exhaust and getting it ceramic coated - It still gets plenty hot in the car even with the heat shield.
4. FINALLY cleaning up the ducting - no heat issues this trip but it's still worth doing, especially here in the lovely Phoenix Metropolitan Area aka the undocumented 10th circle of Hell.

Stretch Goals:

1. Fixing the mostly dead gauge cluster
2. Installing the replacement dashboard
3. Installing the replacement rear bulkhead cover
4. New Splitter and Wing

Ok, that's enough of an update for now. Had a lot of fun on the track, getting more comfortable with the car, and I'm finally starting to turn some times that aren't unbelievably bad at least. Well, until you look at the next-slowest driver in my Time Trial group who was running laps 10 seconds faster then me. Oh well. It's still fun.

P.S. Oh! The gearing change. Ugh, I had to move everything up a gear and there's this big dead-spot at the lower end of 4th that I have to slog through before the churbo kicks in. It's pretty much forcing me to carry more speed through the corners so it's not all bad but I really do want my 3.63 rear end back.

 

Just to put it into perspective, some people are just really good at working on cars, and some people are really good at driving cars.

And then there's our buddy Johnny!

 

God's truth: On the track wavier where we're supposed to put our role - you know, driver, or passenger...I put Comic Relief.

 

^^

Great stuff dude. Glad to hear the day was mostly incident free and glad that you caught those pads before they ceased to continue being brake pads lol.

One thing I feel like is worth bringing up after watching your in-car vid. HAND POSITIONING! Keep that sh*t at 9 and 3. Even if it takes some getting used to, eliminating your hand-shuffling will allow you to make quicker corrections and take a bit of load off your brain.

 

Ah, Nuts

And Johnny locking it up is one of the focus shots for the entire freaking event. "Here's a bunch of pictures of cool looking cars doing cool stuff on a racetrack...along with a Moron in a Miata smoking his tires! Hur Hur Hurrr."
(It is a good shot though.)

Adding a driving computer and a pair of gloves to the mix appears to have exceeded my mental capacity - I keep forgetting to close my visor on top of everything else I have to do when we head out on the track (as evidenced by the first video.) Heck, when I got to the end of the first session I realized I'd never even put the gloves on. *Sigh* Baby Steps. At least I've got other important things pretty much down like fastening the chin strap on my helmet, connecting the HANS, and tightening my harness. One of the areas I'm trying to work on now is tension - I'm so used to having to hang on for dear life while cornering that I keep finding myself bracing with my left leg and white-knuckling the steering wheel when I don't need to any more. That seat combined with a 5 (and soon to be 6) point harness do a pretty decent job of keeping me where I need to be. Now I need to learn to relax in corners. At least now I'm at the point where I have started to recognize I'm carrying huge amounts of tension and consciously force myself to relax while cornering. Which lasts until the next corner. More Baby Steps.

Ok, hands have come up again. As I mentioned before, my left hand is actually really good at staying planted at 9. Mostly. Thanks to that I don't have a problem with reference, but since that right hand is soooo out there (maybe because of that 13" wheel paired with a depowered steering rack and a car that takes a lot of force to carry around corners combined with limited elbow room on the right hand side or something, I dunno) I'll take a stab at getting it to stay put. To be honest I've paid absolutely zero attention to my hands thus far because I've been tied up with watching entry points and other cars and stuff, but I recognize that having a good foundation is, well, important. Plus good racers keep pointing it out so I really should listen, despite being a bear with very little brain.
So!
I have ordered some silicone tape in bright colors - should get here Thursday. I'll put a band around the wheel at 9 and 3 so if I move my hands off it should be a bit more obvious and hopefully provide a mental cue to get my hand back over the tape, while hopefully not being so distracting that I fall off of the track.

 

My Car is a Chonk.

Chonk...


...Moar Chonk.

That is all.

 

With that cross, you should have significantly different handling left vs. right turns. That being said, those last few videos looked much better than a few pages ago, car wasn't plowing like crazy. Yes you've got ~200lbs to lose, but at least we're going in the right direction. You seemed to miss quite a few apexes, whether that's experience or the desired line, I'm not too sure, but it didn't seem to be complaining about going where you were requesting it to go, so that's great. I'd focus on cleaning up that interior too, the cool shirt box was all over the place, and in general there's a lot of loose wiring and switches.

If that corner weight is with sway bars connected, make sure they're disconnected or zero'd, then go down a full turn on the LF and RR, and up a turn on the RF/LR, and recheck. But sort out all your changes first. That's a great baseline to start with.

 

There. Yellow tape in place where I won't see it until I move my hands out of 9 and 3. Or when my steering goes out of alignment. Which happens a lot. But it's something I can try and I can always peel the tape off if/when it becomes an issue.

Tape!

Curly, Thank you for that info! I reviewed the videos I posted and the car was going exactly where I wanted through all of that. I was trying to follow and learn the lines Jeff (man there are a lot of people named Jeff in my Miata world) was taking so things were a bit weird in the second video, but in both cases, no issues with the car. I actually ran 2/10ths of a second faster than Jeff in our respective fastest laps. Regarding the car weight, the sway bars were connected when those corner weights were taken - it was after 10pm and I really needed to get the car's weight so that's what there was time to do. I'll follow the steps you outlined as soon as possible.

The cool shirt cooler didn't shift like that when I had carpet on the passenger's side - It's on the list of things to address just like the horrible wiring situation I've got right now. "Time, time!" like Bilbo squealed.

Speaking of which, I'm out of it again.