- Date: Saturday January 18 2020
- Club Hosting: Impreza WRX Club of Victoria
- Track: Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit
- Car: 2013 Subaru BRZ
- Class: Clubman (Member)
- Weather: 29°C maximum, strong winds and smoke haze all day
- Modifications since last event: Nil
Round 1 of the WRX Club’s 2020 calendar was my first venture back out to the Island since Subinats at the start of July 2019. I’m not even going to pretend I hadn’t been avoiding it, because that would be a blatant lie.
After a rushed morning both in terms of getting to the Island and having the car scrutineered (The WRX Club implemented new safety requirements in terms of use of Frontal Head Restraints and requirements for modified vehicles commencing round 1, which exceeded the minimum requirements set out by Motorsport Australia), we were fortunate enough to start the day off with some cooler weather.
After an unfortunate mishap by one of my 86 bro’s at the end of session 1, we lost just over an hour of track time to a significant oil clean up coming in to Turn 1. In that down time, the surface temperature of the track increased by over 20°C, meaning that once we got back out we were faced with limited opportunities to optimise times on cooler setups.
My day was spent being consistently inconsistent (standard). My times were hovering virtually spot on the 2 minute mark. This is a decent side-step away from my pre-oopsie PB of 1:59.07, which was put down in June 2019. It’s going to be a while before Phillip Island becomes an anxiety free track day for me, so I spent my day trialing different cornering and braking techniques. The perks of the passenger laps that were had at Rexmas at Sandown in December was that I was made aware that I have a tendency to both brake and initiate turn-in too late to the corner. Late braking was something I knew I did, but I was less aware of the late turn-in, so having that fresh in mind it was great to be able to head out to a big track and search for smoother, faster lines.
Despite being a complete spud, my trial and error on the day showed I was doing something right, somewhere on the track. My optimal lap time on RaceChrono was consistently dropping each session, halting at 1:57 on my last run for the day. Natsoft shows that I wound up 9 out 15 entrants in Clubman class, and I beat some Rexy’s on a track that favours power. Not the world’s worst result.
All in all, it shows there’s plenty of room left for improvement. I have hope that my next venture to the Island will let me notch closer to my goal of a 1:55 in Natsoft time, not just living in RaceChrono optimal dreams.
The Track Edit 