Photo by Arsenio Locsin 

First (of many probably) bonus winter track day and had an amazing opportunity to drive at Pacific Raceways in Kent.  Projected to be wet the entire day and ended up running with the stock wheel/tire setup (245/35/19 Michelin PS4S).  No other performance changes to report, but a catch can has been installed in the car with the last oil change, so I am interested to see what that picks up over time.  Pacific is an extremely different track compared to the Ridge and I honestly underestimated how difficult it was to learn a new track.  To prepare, I had watched footage from some of the quicker laps there, but I did not want to overthink or overload myself before driving the track.  I was excited to experience a new track and the goal was to learn the course to prepare when I can return when it is not raining.

Morning showers ended up dampening the track and ended up staying that way for most of the afternoon.  I used the damp laps to learn my lines and figured out very quickly how fast some sections are.  One of my favorite sections of the track included exiting T3b through T5a, which is not only quick, but you can have some fun jumping the curb.  

Within my first two sessions, I had a rough idea for how I wanted to drive and what to work on. Ended up lucking out a bit as we had a couple hours of relief from the rain, and I was able to get some semi-dry lapping in.  The back side never dried off, but it was enough to have some quality laps from the other sections. I ended up managing a 1:41.46, slowly progressing after each lap, and sadly the rain returned after I filled up with gas.  I was not super confident with the grip of the stock tires (mainly under hard braking), but there were lots of little improvements I could have made in my driving.  With a few more clean dry laps, a sub 1:40 was definitely possible.  I concluded the day with a solid rain session, even clocking up a solid wet lap time of 1:52.89.  

At the end of the day I felt much more comfortable and look forward to more track time at Pacific in the future in dry conditions.  Pushing myself to learn a new course was a great experience and it gave me a sense of what to expect going forward with regard to learning new tracks.  Pacific is an amazing course and I hope to be back soon to build upon my first outing!