We at CarWale, have been covering the Polo Cup 2010 since the first round in Pune. this weekend apart from covering the race, we have picked one driver randomly and to show a race from the driver's point of view. Our driver for this week is Munjal Savla, a mechanical engineer from Mumbai University.
PRACTICE SESSION - FRIDAY
The weather forecast for the weekend said that it’s going to be really wet. So I arrived at the track early in the morning armed with an umbrella and an appetite for rain. We finished off our regular routine of the car allotment, weighing, seat positioning and other routines. The track was wet and the rain did another splash and dash before the first practice session. The mechanics changed all cars to wet tires, and even my car got a wet set-up.
Although, it wasn’t raining during the session, the track conditions were damp with some puddles of water. It took a couple of laps to just get a feeling of the track, and then we went ahead to set some times. Although, I was not pushing very hard because I didn't want to get trapped by the conditions and have an off-track excursion and secondly there was a bit of traffic around. Overall, it was a pretty decent session but hope to go faster than current always exists.
As the day progressed, the sun was shining and the track was dry by then. So, for practice 2 we were back again on our JK slicks. I had a mixed session.The good part was that I had a clear piece of track ahead of me for the whole session, so no traffic issue. The not so good part was that I had experimented with a different set-up, but it did not turn out too well. I couldn't carry much speed through the crucial high speed-corners and so the times were slightly conservative. But, at least I know what the wrong set-up direction is. That leaves me with both dry and wet data which should help me in qualifying and the races. The rest of the evening was spent analyzing the data from the data-recording system.
Watch this space for more updates.
