GoPro Camera, Laguna Seca, I-10 is horrible.

So I started experimenting with this GoPro camera that everyone rants and raves about. I bought one at Buttonwillow Raceway back in April, but the lens was broken right out of the box. That, and the next week when we were racing in Phoenix, someone busted out with the GoPro "Wide", which has a wide-angle lense... and of course, that's way cooler. I sent the broken one back to GoPro, then bought a wide angle version which is a lot more fun.

We've been working on perfecting the BMW kits for a while now. Looking for another venue for testing, Laguna Seca served a few purposes aside from seafood, nice weather and a break from the Phoenix and SoCal tracks we've been to a million times. First, Laguna Seca is smooth like glass, so it was a perfect opportunity to experiment with different spring rates and really check the range of adjustability with the dampers on that type of surface. Buttonwillow, Willow and the tracks in Phoenix are pretty bumpy, so we have plenty of that sort of testing under our belts. We learned a lot at Laguna Seca in 2007 with the Type R on damper tuning... before the car blew up, that is.

And as odd as this may sound to most, the 700 miles between Phoenix and Monterrey offer some of the best highway ride comfort tuning situations once can imagine. I-1o out of Phoenix is nice and smooth; I-10 into Palm Springs and LA is like washboard rough, and a perfect setting to try different adjustments in the typical customer market. I know, it's hard to believe, but more than 90% of the customers never see the track. We tune dampers for the street, then get an earful from the guys on the track.. if you tune it for the track, then the street car guys complain. Hard to win these days. :)

This was taken with our '97 BMW M3, using off the shelf Kontrol Pro dampers. 3200lb car, 240hp, Nitto NT05 street tires. Typical tuner car, but it just happens to be fast around Laguna.

Laguna Seca - The Chase from phoenixR34 on Vimeo.