I, along with many of you, attended the BMW CCA school at CA Speedway (excuse me...AAA Speedway) yesterday. I ran in the A group. Amazingly there were only 10 cars in my group so there was TONS of track space. The weather was beautiful but HOT, pushing close to 100 during the afternoon.
One of the fun parts was that at the end of the day we got to drive over to the wet skid pad to play! That was GREAT!!! But OMG the car gets dirty doing that...
To prepare for the day I had my coolant drained and refilled with pure water and Redline Water Wetter. I also removed the kidney grills for the day. The car had fresh oil, fresh brake pads (stock), new spark plugs and a recent brake bleed. My tires are Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Spec in OE sizes. I was also running almost a full tank of 100 octane.
During my 3rd session my car went into limp mode at the start of the session. It was NOT temperature related so far as I can tell. When I restarted the limp mode went away. I suspect it was a low boost condition. The car was running fine (although somewhat down on power) so I completed the session in limp mode. Frankly I was still so much faster than the folks I was near on track that I didn't want to take away from track time to shut off and re-start.
In my final session it was the hottest part of the afternoon. My oil never got over 275 degrees and my water never exceeded 100C. The car ran flawlessly throughout.
Admittedly I drove conservatively due to not wanting to overheat anything. I was also in a bunch of traffic since the 4th session the club combined the A and B groups. The speed and competence differential between A and B was striking. One of the most troubling aspects of being on the track with the B group was the utter lack of courtesy...in the A group we are all pretty good about point-bys. The B's seemed completely oblivious to the fact that faster cars were behind. Frankly by the time a driver gets to B they should be able to manage their mirrors better.
Here is a link to a video from the combined A/B group. The SG 335i in front belongs to a friend of mine in the B group. I stayed behind for most of the session to capture as many laps as possible so he could watch and see what he was doing right/wrong.
I will post other videos after everything uploads.
I also want to say how nice it was to meet many of you yesterday.
Thanks for reading!