Fun at The Glen with S2K Takeover - Setting a new PB

October at Watkins Glen can always be a bit of a dice roll. You know it's going to be gorgeous because upstate NY in the Fall is always a spectacular sight but the weather can either be amazing or completely terrible. Either way, I was determined not to miss the only trip up to The Glen with S2K Takeover. My original plan was to take Bumblestook but with recent issues including the leaky catch can drain line, I wasn't sure if I'd have time to fix so I started getting Kay ready. I ended up resolving all my issues with Bumblestook but I was now also curious how Kay was going to do. 

Watkins Glen International - 10-18-22
Photo by: Peter Levins

My last trip up was in the summer of 2020 which now seems like an eternity ago. Since then, I had replaced the MCS dampers with Bilstein B16 damptronic coilovers and had a GT3 brake master cylinder installed. I also fitted the DSC sport controller and 3-axis accelerometer to make the most use of the active dampers. And most recently, I had switched from 235/265 Advan A052 tires to 255/295 Bridgestone RE71RS. 

Watkins Glen International

The event was on a Monday and Tuesday so I got there on Sunday evening to get registered and inspected so it would be one less thing to take care of in the morning. The first day had a thread of rain in the forecast so it was largely overcast the whole day. It did drizzle a few minutes here and there but not enough to actual really wet the track or cause any issues. 

Watkins Glen International

I took it a bit gingerly the first two session since I had done so many changes I wasn't sure how she'd feel. I was pleasantly surprised by how awesome she felt. The dampers felt incredible in sport mode. It kept the body super controller, resisting diving under braking and soaking up curbing where I felt comfortable driving over as much of it as I wanted knowing it wouldn't upset the car at all. The brakes were predictable with incredible pedal feel and the tires were consistent lap after lap.

Watkins Glen International
Photo by: Dennis Um

Unfortunately I misconfigured my AIM SOLO2 DL data logger when I left so it wasn't reading my OBD2 port and wasn't triggering since I had configured it to only start recording after 25000rpm and a speed of greater than 15km/hr. Thankfully, Steve Jin let me borrow his laptop and I was able to reconfigure it to use the correct OBD2 setting. For reference, you need to set the ECU to OBD_II - ISO9141-2 for the 987.1 Cayman S. The other Porsche options are for later generations. Now I was able to see if I as improving my lap times but I was terribly disappointed. Despite the car feeling excellent, I was lapping a 2:23-2:24, a whole 3-4 seconds slower than my previous trip up. It didn't make sense, these were ideal conditions to set personal best times. We had cool temperatures and I had arguably a better setup this time, why was I slower?

Watkins Glen International - 10-18-22
Photo by: Peter Levins

Day two rolled in and the morning was exceptionally frigid at just 36F when we got to the track. I was extremely timid, worried that the cold was going to cause my tires to slide a lot. The Glen doesn't exactly have a ton of runoff area and I wanted to end the season on a high note, not on top of a flat bed. While it was a bit sketchy the first session, the cold turned out not to be an issue and the temperatures eventually started to rise anyway but the wind was incessant. 

Trying to get warm
Photo by: Ben Tiu

S2K Friends
Photo by: Ben Tiu

Was supposed to be the yellow S2K bay lol

I went even slower, putting down 2:25-2:206 lap times. To be fair, I had a lot on my mind with issues at work I was dealing with from my laptop track side but I still shouldn't be this slow. I went to lunch and when I came back, it had at least warmed up to the low 50s. I was having a lot of fun but I was determined to at least feel like I had put some effort in. I looked at some videos, discussed the track with friends and understood where I was losing all my time. I had a plan of action and went out for the first afternoon session and said if I didn't go faster I'd just pack up and go home. It's generally a bad idea to be on track while having your mind elsewhere so if I couldn't get my head out of my ass, I knew it was time to go before it would turn into an inevitable accident.

Watkins Glen International
Photo by: Peter Levins

I set my cold pressures to 29psi all around and took off. The two areas of focus would be turn 1, carrying more speed after the front straight, and slowing down less going into the bus stop and being more aggressive coming out of it. A few people had started to leave at this point so I had more clear track to just focus on my own driving and not worry too much about cars in front or behind me and I started to see the lap times drop. This gave me new energy and focus and ended the session finding 5 seconds from yesterday by getting into the 2:18 territory. 

Watkins Glen International
Photo by: Peter Levins

She was feeling fantastic and things finally clicked in my head. I knew the car had plenty of grip. The Cayman is such a perfectly balanced sports car, able to rotate so effortlessly at speed while being extremely stable and having the weight in the right spot to have plenty of traction when you get on the throttle. I decided to push harder on my final session. I had lap after lap of pure open track and I was able to set a fast time, and do a cool down, then do another fast lap to optimize my tire temperature. The times kept dropping and I finally ended the day with new my PB of 2:15. 

Watkins Glen - PB - 2:15

I was super happy. I had significantly improved on my previous time by 5 seconds and the car was in great shape with zero incidents. I'm confident the car had at least another 5 seconds in it. Reviewing my data, I was able to sustain almost 1.5Gs on the new tires setup and there were plenty of spots where I could've been more aggressive. That's fine though, I love having room to improve. This isn't a race for me. I go to these events to improve my own driving and to build my confidence so as long as I'm going in the right direction with each event, that keeps me excited to do more. It's too easy to go from a great day to a terrible day at The Glen so I'm satisfied making incremental improvements. As always, I had a terrific time with friends and I'm looking forward to coming back again next year. Big thanks to S2K Takeover, NorthEast Track Club and Metro Track Addicts for making this event possible.