Buttonwillow Track Day Dec 29th!, GTR Owners READ THIS if you want to get on the track. Options

[Silver Surfer]

Ok, I will give you guys the second hand report from 2007c6z06...just got off the phone with him.
There are 14 GTR's on the track. Everyone had a great time. There was some media folks there too.

Fastest laps goto the white GT-R with wing...I am guessing that was Kunami, but could also have been neoseven. The second fastest laps were put in by 2007c6z06. 2 or 3 of the GT-R's put in sub 2:00 laps. woohoo!
That is the extent of my grapevine report...I am sure the truth is somewhere in between.

Thanks for the update Sharif! Hopefully tomorrow we will have some video, comments and lap times from the guys that attended the track day today.

[JohnTurbo]

Ok, I will give you guys the second hand report from 2007c6z06...just got off the phone with him.
There are 14 GTR's on the track. Everyone had a great time. There was some media folks there too.

Fastest laps goto the white GT-R with wing...I am guessing that was Kunami, but could also have been neoseven. The second fastest laps were put in by 2007c6z06. 2 or 3 of the GT-R's put in sub 2:00 laps. woohoo!
That is the extent of my grapevine report...I am sure the truth is somewhere in between.

How many broken trannies??? (I kid. I kid.)

[Greg S.]

Just back from Buttonwillow, and I have to say a great time was had by all. I'm hungry, so this will be brief.

12 GT-Rs. No other cars on the track except for an RS4 with a bumper camera shooting the line-up at the end of the day.

Kudos to Darin for setting this up. And for having a team of techs out there working on his car and sharing knowledge with everyone else. Darin's got a nice family, too, so he must be one of the good guys.

Shout-outs to James and John and Glenn who had track knowledge and smart tips on how to make the day a wonderful experience.

And hat's off to Gary, the pro driver from Cobb. His 15 minute tutorial made the fast guys faster and the less fast (slower) guys more confident. The only time my car passed Glenn (or anyone else) was when Gary was in the seat showing my son what the car could do.

Lastly, before I eat some re-heated pizza... For those who think the GT-R can't carry its own weight... John (NeoMicro) drove down to Buttonwillow with 4 mounted tires, a floor jack, 2 jackstands, a set of tools, a helmet and driving suit...oh, yeah, and clothes and a shaving kit -- all stuffed into his very fast GT-R. Brilliant.

One or two cars went off the track with no damage beyond a paint chip and a spot of dirt. Those guys can tell their own stories. No broken trans. No brake fades. No over-heating. The GT-R truly defies the laws of physics. I know this not only from my own experience, but we we had two MIT grads there to confirm it.

Happy New Years, gang. Wish you were there. I'm sure lots of pix and videos will be posted soon.




This post has been edited by Greg S.: Dec 30 2008, 08:27 AM

[Greg S.]

Oh, and James' yellow canary car looked as awesome parked as it did running sub-2 minute laps, and Matt's Super Silver looked, well, super.

[tyndago]

http://www.2009gtr.com/2008/12/buttonwillo...r-trackday.html

Some pictures. I have a couple videos outside the car, and some from inside John from JIC/Ziels car.

[PeterKL]

Had a great time with some great people.

We must do this again soon.

Peter L

Attached File(s)

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[PeterKL]

group shot end of the day

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[mywifeboughtit]

Greg you are a funny guy hahahaha! yes it was great the most awesome time ever. Thanks to darin, james, john and everyone else for being hella koo my brothers and I cant stop talking about it and hope we can have more events just like this one ! and for the story i will have another thread and pics of the MAGIC MOUNTAIN !!!!!

This post has been edited by mywifeboughtit: Dec 29 2008, 11:33 PM

[PeterKL]

http://s134.photobucket.com/albums/q107/peterc4c/

Here is a couple of more. I'm sure some better pics will show up later.

[Neoseven]

Thanks to everyone who showed up, thanks, Kunani for getting the ball rolling on this. Turned into just a bit more than a test day. I think we can call this the first official West Coast Nagtroc track day. Sorry I don't have pictures to post. I was spending to much time on the track. I have a few I will post when I get back home, but I saw a lot of video and a lot of pictures being taken so I am sure, given some time for everyone to upload the pictures, there are going to be plenty to see.

It was really great meeting everyone out there, and it really was a great day. Gotta say, this community of owners has some great people involved. Hope everyone had a good time, but from all the smiles I was seeing, it looked like everyone did.

Fastest lap of the day that I know of was 1:57.7 at the hands of Andrew Gillis from Gillis Motorsports on the factory Dunlop SP Sport 600 tires in my car. He was there with me today, feeling the car out for some upcoming suspension work. I was only able to put down a 1:58.9 on the Dunlops.

I did have a set of factory Bridgestones on hand, RE070R, and these tires are an easy 2 seconds slower than the Dunlops, meaning the Bridgestone, at limits on this track a 1:59 to 2:00 minute tire, well, yes, actually verified, 1:59.7 by Andrew Gillis on the Bridgestones but lets just say, on the Brigestones, that is not an easy accomplishment. Ask James from Axis Wheels about the Brigestones how the car behaves going under 2:00 minutes as he was also able to get Big Bird under 2:00 minutes on the Bridgestones. Nice driving James. Just think, if you were on the Dunlops, you could have knocked another 2 seconds of your best time, while still running on stock rubber.

I did my last long session of the day on the Bridgestones, and with fatigue setting in and huge glare coming in off the track right out of the bus stop, best I could manage on them was a 2:02 and multiple 2:03 2:04 laps. As tired as I was at that point I kept saying as I came down the front straight, I can do one more lap. That went on until I was running out of gas, and I started the session with a full tank.

My car has no power mods beyond the Amuse exhaust. I am still running four high flow cats so the car will still pass California smog. I have the front factory downpipes with primary cats, and the Amuse midpipe with secondary high flow cats. Only other change to the car was the Amuse sleeve/spring kit, AP rotors, and Carbotech brake pads.

This post has been edited by Neoseven: Dec 30 2008, 12:42 AM

[PeterKL]

BTW: Kudos to the guys with sub 2 min times. You guys were flying.

Some of you were only a second or two off of Steve Millen's time of 1:56.9

[Glenn]

Here are a few more. Thanks to Darrin for organizing. Sorry I had to cut our early, but I had to get back to San Jose for an appointment.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20440660@N08/...57611815384017/

Here is the start of the day leaving from the hotel to the track.

 3149923560_8bd04eb0fa.jpg ( 95.46K ) Number of downloads: 75

[700credit]

Greg hit the nail on the head. I got back to Santa Barbara a few hours ago and have to say todays event was incredible! I would like to give a special thanks to Gary for putting this thing together and to James for the lead and follow in the yellow GTR we nicknamed big bird It was great meeting everyone Greg and son, James, John, Glenn etc... As to the GTR it is truly an everyday supercar. Over the last 24 hours I drove from Santa Barbara to Bakersfield, completed 40 hot laps plus, drove to LA to work and back to Santa Barbara. No brake fade, no tranny issues, no check engine lights nada. Also, I to was was impressed with John (Neoseven) who not only changes tires faster than I can buy a cup of coffee but when went off the track didn't lift even for a second you sir have some big CAJONES!

[Neoseven]

Greg hit the nail on the head. I got back to Santa Barbara a few hours ago and have to say todays event was incredible! I would like to give a special thanks to Gary for putting this thing together and to James for the lead and follow in the yellow GTR we nicknamed big bird It was great meeting everyone Greg and son, James, John, Glenn etc... As to the GTR it is truly an everyday supercar. Over the last 24 hours I drove from Santa Barbara to Bakersfield, completed 40 hot laps plus, drove to LA to work and back to Santa Barbara. No brake fade, no tranny issues, no check engine lights nada. Also, I to was was impressed with John (Neoseven) who not only changes tires faster than I can buy a cup of coffee but when went off the track didn't lift even for a second you sir have some big CAJONES!

Yes, was definitely a fun day. Hope we will be able to setup another one like this. I am getting better though, I only went off track one time all day, well at least all four wheels off track. I did touch one, then two tires off track later in the day. Were you behind me when I went off at Sunset? I still managed a 2:09 after tracking off and pulling back on the track.

[aliasvfx]

Congrats to everyone and the great lap times! Photos look great! One thng though......... when's the next event ??????

[Glenn]

Greg hit the nail on the head. I got back to Santa Barbara a few hours ago and have to say todays event was incredible! I would like to give a special thanks to Gary for putting this thing together and to James for the lead and follow in the yellow GTR we nicknamed big bird It was great meeting everyone Greg and son, James, John, Glenn etc... As to the GTR it is truly an everyday supercar. Over the last 24 hours I drove from Santa Barbara to Bakersfield, completed 40 hot laps plus, drove to LA to work and back to Santa Barbara. No brake fade, no tranny issues, no check engine lights nada. Also, I to was was impressed with John (Neoseven) who not only changes tires faster than I can buy a cup of coffee but when went off the track didn't lift even for a second you sir have some big CAJONES!

I didn't think about it till you posted, but this GT-R does take it all in stride. I drove from San Jose to LA on Christmas day in non stop rain down Hwy 101, then drove a couple of hundred miles around LA and then drove up to Bakersfield in bumper to bumper stop and go traffic up the grapevine on Saturday. Drove quite a few laps at the track today and then drove back to San Jose late this afternoon. I probably put 1000+ miles on since last Thursday.

While I was in SoCal, I meet a fellow GT-R owner from Georgia at the Irvine Cars & Coffee meet, who drove his GT-R cross country for the holidays through some deep snow with the summer package Bridgestones and said that it handled it all without a sweat.

Simply an amazing car.

[mywifeboughtit]

Here are a few more. Thanks to Darrin for organizing. Sorry I had to cut our early, but I had to get back to San Jose for an appointment.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20440660@N08/...57611815384017/

Here is the start of the day leaving from the hotel to the track.

 3149923560_8bd04eb0fa.jpg ( 95.46K ) Number of downloads: 75

nice pics hhahaha saw you driving and taking pics very dangerous but great pics !

[Kunani]

My laptop died over a beer with payne so I'm on my
iPhone..

Big thanks to everyone who came out! Thanks to James, Neo, Gary for helping out with organization and some quick track lessons for everyone!

Thanks to everyone who gave ride alongs all day, you guys made it as exciting for the visitors as it was for us drivers (well almost!)

Dilan and Adam took tons of video and stills and everyone had a snap cam so I'm sure more pics will be posted soon.

We had some cool in car footage which I'll get to look at when I get back to Vegas tomorrow. I'll post some links as soon as I can!

Can't wait to see Lebermans video of my car from James' big bird!

We had great weather and everyone had a safe day and tons of track time! I look forward to doing round two soon!

[2007c6z06]

Just for the record, I was not driving the ZCG/SSP GTR at the time of our quickest laps which hung around low twos with miracle shots to break the elusive 2 minute lap. Our test driver Michael Ramies drove the car rmost of the day and put down some amazing times on runflat bridgestones...If any of you guys got a chance to watch him manahndle this car (he was the young looking guy spinning all four wheels all the way down pit row ;) and he might have passed you at very high speed . He even gave a half dozen forum members rides as well.Times were dne without an alignment (not changed sincine running 25 aspect ratio toyo t1r's at SEMA) and unfortunately without 100 octane fuel because they ran out (for a good part of the day as we were messing with video cameras and in car stuff for most of the morning).

On the regrets side... and trust me there are little to none!
I really wish we could have ran our HRE's with the Nitto Nt05's as our first of only three laps on a cold track without any warm up and on a unknown track was a 2:02 on these tires! But, the rubbing of the front fenders was so bad that it was cutting into the tires themselves so they were removed after only a few laps. Stickier tires really made the difference!

On another note, I have to say I was extremely impessed with everyone who attended both in their character and their cars. It was really a great time with a great group. No one was really that far of the pace and even those who started out early in the day slower, were making huge strides by the afternoon. I am not a great driver... I have nearly zero seat time behind te wheel of a car with this kind of power and very little track experience at all. Despite this, with just a bit of coaching I cut over 25 seconds off my lap times and ended the day within a stone's toos of breaking out of the twos. This just shows that a GTR in the right hands can cut ten seconds off an average drivers time easily... but I don't think I had any less fun despite it! I encourage all who can to get these cars to the track. My first lap was HORRIBLE. I was scared to death do destroy something I love or to look foolish. This lasted all of about three laps. This car is so forgiving and gives the driver so much feedback that by the middle of the day I was hitting the ss's at an excess of 100 mph and drifting at over 90 mph!

I was happy with the format as it was really non-competitiive (other than racing against your own time), but due to the format I can only report on those who had said they run sub 2 min laps. Anyone who did so, especially on stock tires, is a man among men! I do want to thank a few people for making this great day happen: Darin needs BIG PROPS for making this HAPPEN and to be encouraged as strongly as possible to make it happen again soon. I also want to thank all the drivers for not being overly aggressve and making the event fun and not dangerous (no crashes). I also have to thank all those who lended a hand in keeping these cars on the road for all who attended. For me, it was the ZCG pit crew, SSP for giving our motor all the air it needed to go FAST, and finally to the guys at COBB/Forged Performance for packaging a more aggressive tune as well as getting me a map at 1 am to get my car running!

I have a ton of pics and in-car video from this event and will post in the appropriate forum. I really hope to meet all you guys again and hope that more GTR owners make it out to experience the GTR the way it was truely meant to be driven!

This post has been edited by 2007c6z06: Dec 30 2008, 03:10 AM

[Forbes@ZCG]

What a great time today!!! Thanks to all who showed up as it was really nice to get to meet all of you in the flesh. The GT-R is amazing, there is nothing else to it. I have already put up a post on www.zcarblog.com about the event and I hope that you guys don't mind if i borrow some of the photos you have all taken for a future post.

Thanks again everyone,

Forbes
Z Car Garage