Marc's Public Blog - Cars

quick stop on skyline

before long, we reached Pescadero beach

Caltrans nicely were closing all the beach parking lots as we arrived

We then drove down Hwy 1 to hit a few beaches:

found a nice surfer

the next beach

where skyline of the beach, ends up

We ended up going to Shark Fin Cove or lunch:

railroad to nowhere

I went to check out the cave which was really a storm drain

didn't smell so good :)

nice hole in the rock

After lunch, we drove back up on bonny doon road. which was find until we hite what looked like snow on the road. How as that possible? Turns out, it hailed so much that the hail accumulated on the ground and looked like snow:

it was melting, but super slick

Eventually, after driving not as fast as I wished due to the uncertain roads, we got to 236 and big basin redwoods, which was closed as expected:

After that, it was a fun drive up 236, and 9 back home.

The plan is that I'll be able to rent from Fast Toys Club in the future:

ideally that's the one of the cars I'll be able to rent/drive after selling mine

After a quick drivers' meeting, it was time to go on track:

Lots of Mclarens:

Justice took his SVJ, beautiful car:

Ken came with my car and gave me support during the day:

a few pictures for posterity

I had a bit of extra fun by taking my Tesla around the track for a few laps. It was of course slower, I boiled the brake fluid in a single lap, but it was fun :)

I had fun, despite my times getting worse throughout the day as the track got warmer. In the afternoon, all the rungroups merged, so it was interesting, but it worked out pretty well.
Thanks to Fast Toys Club for the good day.

trying to get some charge from the 50A/220V plug I found.

ready, all you need is stickers, right? (they fit nicely on top of the mud I got driving in the snow in tahoe)

Anyway, given that ignorance is bliss, I went out with all my crap in the car, I figured removing it wouldn't change much anyway, and planned on doing only 3 laps so as not to thoroughly destroy the brakes. I did manage to hit 119 mph on my 2nd lap, and that was just when the brakes started not working due to overheating. Stopping in turn 2 was going to be "fun" (I made it though).
After 2 laps and boiled brake fluid, but also having passed a lamborghini and a porsche on the outside of the corkscrew, and being blackflagged for it :) I figured I'd call it a day. My 2nd lap (which was far from clean) was 1:56.

Those were not fast drivers, but it was cool to pass a few of them:

I passed several cars on the outside after the corkscrew in my ferrari, but got one in my tesla too :)

Sorry to the driver, I must have scared him a bit, he likely never saw/heard me until 'WTF is that car doing here'

And then there was the lambo I passed fair and square :)

wee!

Here is the first "session": (really 2 full laps and then I got black flagged for passing the porsche and scaring it). I passed the porsche at 3:40 and the lambo at 5:00

I came back for 2 more laps later in the afternoon when the track was warmer, my tires still over inflated, and my brake fluid still boiled (no firm pedal), and I got 2 laps of 1:55. I didn't commit for more speed in the straights because honestly I didn't know that car would stop and I didn't really want to completely destroy my braking hardware. Had done my first lap right, now knowing how to drive that car, I should have been able to get a single lap at 1:50 before the brakes gave up.

4 laps, 13 miles, 35% battery used

Two cleaner laps at 1:55 each, obviously not that fast, but my brake fluid was alrady boiled, my tires were likely too inflated (55psi) and the track was already 3-4 seconds slower than it was in the morning when I started I wonder how much faster the car could have been (I was already 10 mph slower before 2 due to the lack of brakes):

Looks like a full battery would have given 36 miles and 12 laps or so. This makes me question the wisdom of going through the work of tracking a tesla with proper brakes and tires. 12 laps is not a lot, and if you don't have a supercharger nearby (which is still 1h charge), that's not a lot of laps.

Overheating stuff, made other stuff unhappy :)

1.5Kw/mile, it's 1.5H of my house's power used in a single mile

On the plus side, despite all the errors I got, the car recovered when it cooled down, and even the brake fluid got back in a state that my brakes work somewhat. Not as well as before, but enough to stop the car :)
At least I didn't ran the pads down to the backing plates while destroying the rotors. That said, it's still amazing how a single lap at laguna seca can overheat stock breaks and boil brake fluid (which is exactly what happened in my case).

This was stupid, but it was fun. For comparison I did some 1:31's in my Ferrari F458 Challenge GT3 that morning on used tires. Looks like a stock Model 3 Performance with proper tires and brakes, can go 10 seconds faster than my 1:55's, not bad!