First competitive event of the year, and it was intense! The weather went from monsoon to nearly 100degF. I love this track. Even in the heat, it is so much fun and there is always so much to improve upon. The surface is WAY better than last year, as evidenced by all the track records that fell. The China Beach repave seems nearly identical as long as you get down near the apex.

On Sunday, I found a 1:35.76 - 1.2 seconds faster than last year and good enough for the Gridlife Street Class RWD track record! Still only 8th place(!) - further proof that I have no chance of keeping pace with the turbo (& especially AWD) cars this year, so my goal will be RWD records, not outright wins.

The lap - it's scruffy, I think a decent chunk of the improvement has to do with the track surface improving, but I am extremely happy with the results after numerous suspension and drivetrain changes. Nearly every metric has improved upon a year ago - higher top speed, harder acceleration, higher lateral Gs. Almost a 5% improvement in all areas except braking.
Now that the tangibles are there, i just need to learn how to setup and drive the car. I can feel the diff working, but i'm not dialed in to it yet. I'm losing speed on corner entry due to an imbalanced setup and entry oversteer, needing lots of correction. I'm not trusting the car enough under hard lateral G loads. And I need to regain some confidence in braking. All in all, a decent runway leading into Road America at the end of July.

Congrats to everyone who podiumed and improved this year. It's shaping up to be an extremely hard fought season in Street class!

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