I drove the Model 3 ten hours up to Lime Rock Park in Connecticut for an event with NASA on Friday and Saturday.
My best lap of the weekend came in at a 1:01.5. I was really wanting to crack the 1 minute mark, but I also have to drive the car back home, so I wasn't going 10/10ths.
I've been learning how to use the data from the AIM to analyze the laps and figure out where I can find time. There was about 1.5 seconds that I left on the table, so I do think a sub minute time is entirely possible given good conditions. My line through Turn 1 was quite slow, I was shaving off too much speed coming in to Turn 5 before the up hill, and I was shaving off too much speed coming in to Turn 6.
We had a wet session on Friday and the car performed extremely well and far exceeded my expectations. It's the first car I have driven in the wet that I did not feel was trying to toss me in to a wall. Unfortunately, an E92 M3 in my group ended up doing exactly that.
I had driven my F80 M3 at Lime Rock back in 2015 (last time I was there) and set a 1:01.09 on R-Compounds. The F80 was about 14mph faster on the front straight, but was a bit slower through the corners. I keep coming back to this comparison because it is surprising how well the Model 3 handles despite being 4,100lbs. Spec E46 is running about the same lap times and those cars are about 1,200lbs lighter. In fact, I passed a Spec E46 at the end of the video above.
One great thing about Lime Rock is that I could go run full 20 minute sessions at near-full power, drive to the V3 Supercharger 15 minutes away, and come back and run the next session. I ran all 5 sessions on Friday, and 3 on Saturday (I was worn out). The 20 minute session would take me from 90% SOC to ~45% SOC, I would usually drive through the pits at ~60% SOC as a quick "cool-down" and then get back out. I was consistently able to turn 1:02's and 1:03's even with limited power. A short track with only one real straight is absolutely favorable to the Model 3 and the cooling system.
My best lap of the weekend came in at a 1:01.5. I was really wanting to crack the 1 minute mark, but I also have to drive the car back home, so I wasn't going 10/10ths.
I've been learning how to use the data from the AIM to analyze the laps and figure out where I can find time. There was about 1.5 seconds that I left on the table, so I do think a sub minute time is entirely possible given good conditions. My line through Turn 1 was quite slow, I was shaving off too much speed coming in to Turn 5 before the up hill, and I was shaving off too much speed coming in to Turn 6.
We had a wet session on Friday and the car performed extremely well and far exceeded my expectations. It's the first car I have driven in the wet that I did not feel was trying to toss me in to a wall. Unfortunately, an E92 M3 in my group ended up doing exactly that.
I had driven my F80 M3 at Lime Rock back in 2015 (last time I was there) and set a 1:01.09 on R-Compounds. The F80 was about 14mph faster on the front straight, but was a bit slower through the corners. I keep coming back to this comparison because it is surprising how well the Model 3 handles despite being 4,100lbs. Spec E46 is running about the same lap times and those cars are about 1,200lbs lighter. In fact, I passed a Spec E46 at the end of the video above.
One great thing about Lime Rock is that I could go run full 20 minute sessions at near-full power, drive to the V3 Supercharger 15 minutes away, and come back and run the next session. I ran all 5 sessions on Friday, and 3 on Saturday (I was worn out). The 20 minute session would take me from 90% SOC to ~45% SOC, I would usually drive through the pits at ~60% SOC as a quick "cool-down" and then get back out. I was consistently able to turn 1:02's and 1:03's even with limited power. A short track with only one real straight is absolutely favorable to the Model 3 and the cooling system.
