Track Day 55 -- ORP With Skip Days -- Open Track Day running both CCW and CW

Leading up to the Event

So this event appears to lilkely be the last event of 2025 for me. Not too shabby of a season with a bunch of Time Attack wins combined with a few class and track records. I definitely have made if further than I ever expected to, and so a nice unwinding track day at ORP with an open format seemed right up my alley.

No major modificaitons were performed. I swaped over to my ECF wheels from my Vitour P1... and I have been struggling a lot with oversteer. To try and control it, I threw on my full set of front canards and also increased my rear wing angle 1 degree.

As you can see above... I drove out to the track, got there at night and setup my truck bed tent setup. It's a nice setup that works well enough for me, but it's not always the most restful sleep. With how windy it was at ORP, I definitely could have slept better. Still though, I'm saving a fortune on hotel costs and I much prefer to wake up and be able to take my time getting ready at an event trackside versus driving all the way to a track at the butt crack of down, shredding all day, then somehow needing to drive a huge distance home without being drowsy.

How The event Went

This picture is of my friend Shane Borrowing my Corvette and passing some folks. The event is an open track day, which generally works out quite well, but there were certainly some very novice folks out there who didn't know the track. I think it's also worth noting that while some folks may feel they are intermediate to advanced at their home tracks... ORP is a double black diamond trail compared to most othe tracks out there. So much elevation and camber and blind crests. There are turns whever every single element possible doesn't just come into play in a turn, but can change from entrance to exit! Braking zones that if you go too deep the elvation begins to fall off and now you're in trouble as braking force is reduced! Then you enter a turn with no support but camber at the bottom to catch you... oh and did I mention the entry was blind?

The one saving grace to ORP being the most advanced track on the west coast is that it's also one of the most forgiving in the PNW. The runoff areas are positively massive. There's one tree within a half mile of the track, and if you hit it you deserve a prize.

So how did the car do.

It was definitely oversteering a bunch. Turn in felt lame, mid turn grip felt skatey, and the rear kept trying to come around on me. I totally spun the car once on cold tires as well. The rear is definitely just not planted.

Some adjustments mid day both in tire pressure and suspension settings really helped improve turn in though and tamp down oversteer on exit. I was also able to better manage throttle during exit to keep the car from having that much drama... but it was definitely a dance. My friend Shane drove the car (per the picture above) and his description of the car was "spicy". I'm inclined to agree. It shreds, but give it too much, it'll sting!

One thing I did different, was I worked with AI and gave it pictures of my tires while discussing my handling woes. In the first picture, you can see there's some diagnol "tearing" along the edge of the tires. This is indicative of the car trying to come around and oversteer. The second tire is after some pressure, suspension and driving style adjustments. The wear pattern on the edge is now much more uniform. So some nice improvements to be had there!

Something on the car though did break... my exhaust snapped!

The exhaust snapped in the mid pipe shortly after where the X pipe is. I believe this is because the front of this exhaust is hard affixed to the chassis (you can even see one of the bolts far right) while the remainder of the exhaust is on hangers. That means the exhuast can flex and vibrate towards the end, and essentially acts a a very long lever. Thus it worked it's way back to the end of the lever, which was essentially the X pipe, and it cracked where the metal had been a bit weakend by the welding in the area.

Here you can see the start of the trackside fix we cooked up... a coffee can and some hose clamps to keep it all attached. Award winning? Definitely not. Functional? Perhaps!

Here is the setup all attached to the exhaust. There's also one large hose clamp towards the back for good measure. This held for the rest of the day and I was able to drive about 1.5 hours of track time on it. I'll be getting the car in the air to fix this soon, so more information to come!

Track Times

I'll get specific pictures of my laps and information up here soon, but suffice it to say... I'm slower on the ECF tires, especially with the oversteer problems. To loosely quote Johnny over at 9 Lives Racing "We've never had a car feel less confident actually be faster on track".

With the slower tires and less confidence inspiring handling I was able to deliver a 1:56 or so going CCW. That's about 1.5 seconds below my previous best on Vitour P1's so within reason going from the premier time attack tire to more of a track day tire.

Running Counter Clock I of course set  a PB going that direction, simply becaused I've never driven the track in that direction yet. I was unaware we were even going to make the direction transition, so I didn't watch any video or even play around in a SIM for it. Needless to say... I was a bit lost at first, but I followed a friends car and started to develop my own patterns and habits. I'm sure there's room to improve, but I had fun, and I've got a new baseline to improve upon.