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7th Matt Ammon Memorial Driving School at Bremerton Motors Park on Sat/Sun 5/18-19

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Sounds fun!

I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't done something like this.

I did a local Race driving school this last weekend and autocrossed on Sunday. Now I plan on getting some wider wheels and tires and actually trying to kick some ass since I did pretty good at my fist attempt and beat a few people with quick small cars. I pushed my car so hard both days that my tires are pretty toast.

During the practice laps on Saturday there was a little stretch that I managed to get up to about 85mph on and tried to get into a spiral S curve while hard on the brakes and ended up in a perfectly balanced sideways slide until I pretty much stopped in laughter :smile: (next time I'll come off the brake and try to push it into the turn now that I've managed a pretty solid sideways slide quite a few times and it balances really well ) It is a heavy car but actually managed pretty well in the AC.
Can' t wait till the next event in May- and I plan on beating most people. It's on!
(free street legal drag races this weekend too from 5pm till dark wohoo :cool:)
 
I am doing the "One-day price of $100 for Saturday-only Driver Education and DE Autocross." I have a friend who is doing this the first time so I will do the DE portion again with him.

After chatting with Doug, the event coordinator, I switched to "One-day Saturday All-day Autocross", he said I should not hold up a DE spot as I have taken it before :)

So if you are eligible for all day auto cross and are not required to do DE, that is the recommendation.
 
Mileage FYI.

From Bellevue mall to the hotel without taking the ferry (i.e. via Tacoma):
- Bellevue -> Bremerton: 67 miles; 82 rated consumption
- Bremerton -> Bellevue: 69 miles; 87 rated consumption

This is with climate control off (the weather was nice and I wanted to have a range buffer) but driving at 5-10 above the speed limit most of the way both directions.
 
Mileage FYI.

From Bellevue mall to the hotel without taking the ferry (i.e. via Tacoma):
- Bellevue -> Bremerton: 67 miles; 82 rated consumption
- Bremerton -> Bellevue: 69 miles; 87 rated consumption

This is with climate control off (the weather was nice and I wanted to have a range buffer) but driving at 5-10 above the speed limit most of the way both directions.

Thanks, Brianman, I'm definitely taking the ferry all the way... 6 am ferry that is! \-). They recommended that first-timers be there for a chalk talk at 8am. Gates open at 7 am. Maybe if all works out I can make a pit stop and top off the battery in Bremerton before heading over to the track.

Rob
 
I'm happy to report there was no Tesla drama at the track. To my knowledge the only drama was an Audi that blew a fuse (apparently it was the same fuse he blew last year). The fuse was replaced and the car was rolling in the Sunday events.


There were 5 Tesla's on Saturday -- 3 @ DE+Autocross and 2 @ All-day Autocross. On Sunday, two of us with P85s stuck around and did lapping. For the 4th (and final) round on Sunday, I was alone as the other Tesla headed out early to catch the ferry.


Friday night I charged up to standard, thanks to Blink and my friends that came down with a Mini that shuttled me to/from the hotel.

On Saturday, I juiced at lunch on a 14-50 at the track. I don't think it was strictly necessary, but it did allow me to continue auto-crossing until only 3 of us remained and they made us stop at 5pm. I left the car at the track milking on the 14-50, so I had a standard waiting for me in the morning.

On Sunday, I charged twice for about an hour each throughout the day and ended up with ~85 rated at the end of the day. I took the Tacoma route back to Tesla Bellevue -- arriving with 12 rated remaining (13mi from home). The 14-50 gave me another ~20 miles rated while I had dinner for an hour.

More details (perhaps) as I remember and regain energy. Also, I should have lots of dashcam footage (and hopefully some telemetry from REST and from the dashcam GPS data) but I need to find some brain power and time to filter through it and sanitize/get-approval-to-post portions with other cars.


Quick summary of how (P85) Model S fared:
The car did great and everyone who I talked to was impressed (and sometimes astonished) at how it performed throughout the event. The driver needs some practice and experience, but that's a different and solvable problem.
 
"Pictures or it didn't happen." I know, I know...

I still need to wade through the videos, but here are my phone camera shots (after some cropping and rescaling to make them sanely sized).

Morning line-up for Auto-cross
Autocross1_Begin.jpg


Random snapshot of consumption (morning)
Autocross2_Consumption.jpg


(About an hour of 216V/39A charging in between.)

Random snapshot of consumption (afternoon)
Autocross3_Consumption.jpg


My personal worst consumption for 5 miles
Autocross4_Consumption.jpg


Random snapshot of 30 mile consumption
Autocross5_Consumption.jpg


Acceleration limiter kicks in at 55mph rated (so it seems to be a projected-range-based limiter)
Autocross6_ConsumptionRangeLimiterAt55Rated.jpg


Trip meter for the afternoon and final rated range for the day
Autocross7_ConsumptionForAfternoon.jpg


First 20min lapping session consumption and trip meter
Lapping7_ConsumptionRound1.jpg


(About an hour of 216V/39A charging in between.)

Second 20min lapping session consumption and trip meter
Lapping8_ConsumptionRound2.jpg


Forgot to take end-of-day picture for sessions 3 and 4. :(


Random observations:
  • I left Woodinville (to Bremerton) with exactly 6,000 miles on the odometer Friday evening.
  • My lifetime average energy rose from 412 to 418+ during this event. Heh.
  • In the fourth lapping session, despite having 90+ miles rated range I was running into an acceleration limiter. At one point it stuck hard at 160 kW and stayed pegged at that for an entire lap (at least 1 mile, maybe 2).
  • During the 3rd or 4th (I forget) lapping session, the right rear wheel/tire was bouncing around such that they made me pull off to make sure everything was ok. Both me and my instructor passenger didn't notice anything peculiar in the ride. Later discussion conclude with suspicion that it was traction control kicking in.
  • I left traction control enabled the entire weekend. For the next event, I'll probably consider trying it off for some of the time to compare the experience.
  • My recollection is that Francis's 85 caps out around 1100 kW whereas my P85 reached 1800 kW during the Auto-cross.
 
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I did my best to cut out portions with distinguishing marks of other vehicles. Hopefully I succeeded. The stitching midway is a bit meh; sorry I suck at editing so far.


Morning session.


Afternoon session. The audio was a bit scratchy (I guess 8 is too loud for my dashcam) but overall came out better than expected.
 
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