Let’s get back to DE for a moment, he really didn’t have much race track experience, especially in a full-fledged race-car. He has ridden motorcycles quite a bit on the track but not automobiles, which I feel can give a driver somewhat a Superman like syndrome. Once you get in a car, you’re all wrapped up in a cocoon of steel or Aluminum in the case of the modern Porsche, which can give you a false sense of security, maybe allowing you to push yourself farther than you actually should, who knows.
DE had attended a couple of Callas Rennsport track days and even spent a full week at the Porsche advanced level driving school at the Barber Motorsports Park. So, needless to say, we had our work cut-out for us. DE is a fearless street racer who likes to let it all hang out, but on the racetrack the loosie-goosey hang-it-all-out way is not the fastest and for sure not the safest way around a street course, not to mention it’s not so good on those big black round things, you call tires.
Taking all this into account, I decided that we had three things to do:
- Hire the best driver coach, Craig Stanton without a doubt.
- Start with the POC (Porsche Owners Club), a good safe entry level place.
- Get lots of testing in, which is costly.
After going though the whole new car, I will write a few chapters on my steep learning curve and what all I did to the new GT4CS MR, I set-up a track day with the POC. We only had DE’s Ford pick-up truck, the new(ly) prepared race car, a 10x10 easy up tent and my tools. Neither DE nor I knew how far he would take this, so we took it in baby steps and day at a time, as we still do.
Through this whole process, DE and I have become very good friends, where we have full transparency, I’ll talk about that more later.
The POC track weekend started with a brand spanken new 2020 GT4CS MR with 1km on the clock. I knew from my pro racing days that as with any new driveshaft axles and new rear end (ring and pinon), that these new parts needed to be bed in. You never want to shock load a new set of axles or crown wheel and pinion-head in the gearbox. Since we had to bed in these new components and especially since DE had never driven on stickers (new race tires), we went out for about 100 miles at a max speed of 125mph. This was what the new components needed and helped DE to get to know what stickers felt like. I went around the paddock and explained what our plan was so people would know what was going on.