AROCA Sprints - Sandown

21st September 2014

Thank you to Ying for this photo.

It's been a very long time since I last drove at Sandown, more than 2 years in fact. I was keen to get back to Sandown as the Z has changed in terms of its setup, so I signed up again for an Alfa Romeo club track day. Compared to last time, the Z is running soft Hankook Z221's and has the 1.5 way LSD, so theoretically should be faster straight away (all other things being equal).

The results of the day are below.

Session 1
This was a practice session and untimed. RaceChrono reported that I did a string of 1:29.xx laps.

Session 2
Achieved a new personal best lap time of 1:27.69 although the lap itself was not optimal as I had to overtake a Skyline off the racing line before a corner. See the video in my previous post.
1:51.0322 1:29.7741 1:28.8864 1:32.4086 1:31.9004 1:31.1671 1:28.5430 1:27.6940 1:28.2113 1:31.6460

Session 3
Too much traffic and couldn't find a clean lap.
1:52.2643 1:30.5932 1:32.0691 1:28.7007 1:31.8187 1:28.9151 1:29.6133 1:30.4816 1:28.6240

Session 4
Due to another car coming off the back straight and crashing into the barriers, the sessions in the afternoon had to be run under yellow flags at the corner after the back straight (possibly because the safety barriers were damaged). Thus we all couldn't run at 100% pace through that corner, resulting in me being about 3 seconds off the usual pace.
1:59.9605 1:35.0703 1:32.2190 1:33.0796 1:32.1231 1:34.0424 1:30.3375 1:30.6891 1:30.1433 1:33.2398

Even though there was at least one more session in the afternoon, I decided to call it a day and conserve tyres for Winton next month.

Looking at the comparison of speeds between my previous PB lap and the new one, we see that:

• The new setup helped to find speed through turns 4 and 6.
• The speed into turn 9 was affected by having to overtake the Skyline off line.
• I need to shift gears faster going up the back straight.

RaceChrono reports that I have a theoretical best lap of 1:26.6 so there is more potential in the car's current setup if I can get cleaner laps.

Left: 1:27.87 Right: 1:27.69