Quote:
Originally Posted by Pekingduck
I say buy harry lap timer, it cheap and gives you reference point of where to improve.
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I would disagree with this for a first timer. A beginner should have an instructor in the car with them for every session, and they will be able to provide much more useful feedback than a newbie trying to analyze lap times without much point of reference. Not to mention, when you first go out you'll be so slow that lap times probably won't really give you that good of an idea of where to improve, since there'll likely be lots of time you could be picking up all over the course. And once you start taking lap times, then you're racing. Not anyone else, but yourself, and HPDEs aren't a race. I understand that they're a useful tool for measuring improvement, which is what HPDE is about, but I'd argue that until you've at least been running in intermediate for awhile (or even bumped up into advanced) that you'll have large enough areas of improvement that they should be pretty obvious beyond noting a few seconds or tenths on a given lap.
I know the same stuff doesn't work for everyone, and for some the lap timer is perfectly fine. But I think that for any beginner's first few track days that lap times should be the absolute last thing they're looking at. Learn to drive safely, learn the racing line, learn proper steering inputs, reducing braking zones, etc. Then later worry about how to make all of those into faster times.