Thanks to Yoshi and Dan for letting me take their cars out. The R is truly impressive. No wonder every single press that reviewed it just raves about it. I don't usually trust most reviews unless it is done by guys like Mario Andretti and Bryan Herta, or Phil Hill... etc. But anyway, Dan has a bone stock 00 R and Yoshi has a mildly modified 00 R (stock suspension tho). Didn't time Dan's car; just had it out for a few laps and there were traffic so no clean laps. But I got a good session in Yoshi's car on late Sat. afternoon, despite 105+ F, street tires (Yoko A520), mild mods (stoptech 12.9" brakes, street pads, header, exhaust) and very much babying the car (short shifting at 8k, double clutched up/down shifts, and no riding curbs, I turned 2:19.x in it in config #13 CCW. the car easily had 2 seconds or so left. the car is totally tossible in high speed and even mid speed corners (~50 mph). no wonder it did so well in G stock... and is right @ home on circuits even in stock trim.
all of you guys that own an ITR have never tracked it (or never sat in a well driven bone stock R on track) is REALLY missing out. stock R + track pads + R tires would kick a lot of *** already.

it was good to meet you guys Dan, Robert, Hung (sp), Yoshi, Jay (was it? we didn't formally shake hands, i just heard yoshi say your name). thanks for letting me crash at the hotel and for all the water supply. i didn't get a chance to say good bye but i did see you guys take off (i was up in the towers). hope you guys take the R out back on the track soon. it's where it BELONGS!

datalogger says the remix did 2:19.64 in the 1st session when I asked Berry Hartzel (he finished 2nd in Mazda SpeedCup @ Laguna Seca recently) to sit in with me and give me some pointers... I was sure that I was even faster in the afternoon but perhaps the heat... (it was only 95F in morning. 110F in afternoon). The Impreza I seem to be running pretty much neck to neck with got it down to 2:15's, but my logger is only showing 2:19-20 in the later session... or perhaps the logger memory was full?? hmm...

the Falken Ziex ZE502 is so so on track, long time ago on the HPL list somebody said they were good. they felt fine on the street but felt similar to Kumho Ecasta 712's... decent, but only gets a 8 out of 10. it allows just about 1g lateral accceleration wheras the BFG g-force T/A KD's allow litlte bit over 1.1g, sometimes spikes to 1.2g on transition.

Pepboy's Raybestos ceramic enhanced pads held up well. Total of 5 track days and 700+ track miles and still has about 40% left it looks like. Provides .9g of deacceleration. Not bad for 55 bucks.