The Viper Days Club ran out at FIR this weekend. On Saturday they ran on the big course and Sunday on the East "test" track (the one you can see from I-10 heading South). Apparently they didn't have enough corner workers for the weekend and were looking for volunteers for exchange of some free track time. WAHOO!!!

Saturday I couldn't help out because I had already RSVP'd to a Birthday party and since it was family I couldn't really blow it off. Brandon, Brian, and Chad however headed down there and ended up working practically 9 hours straight and didn't get ANY track time due to lack of workers to cover for them. To make up for it though, they let them come back on Sunday and run all day. Turns out Sunday was the day to be there anyway.

My friend Justin and I were signed up to work on Sunday and they told us to be there at 6:30am. 5:50am on the dot I'm at Justin's house and we head down to the track together. We meet up with the other corner workers, load up into the truck and get dropped off at the appropriate corner work stations. Justin and I pair up at station number one, next to the first turn after the pits. Working was a breeze as we could cover for the other if one of us had to go the bathroom or whatever. I worked the corner from 7am until around 11am or maybe a little later. Since there was two of us, Brandon suggested that one of us jump into one of the run groups before the lunch break. Justin said he didn't care so I jumped all over that one.

I had never seen the entire course or even a map of the track. Because of this I was going to follow Brandon at a moderate pace to get a feel for where he thought the proper line was. We took off and I opened up my mind to pull in as much data as possible in an attempt to memorize the track in only a couple short laps. Not sure what happened to my common sense but after only ONE lap around the track I decided to just go for it and blasted past Brandon on the straight. I really had no idea what I was doing and I'm still amazed that I didn't go flying off the track into the dirt. Apparently I was doing something right as Brian Weikert was behind me in his 99 Mustang Cobra and could not get close enough to even attempt a pass. Granted he does not have as much seat time as I do, but this was his 3rd session on the track vs my first time. Brian had a transponder in his car and his best time was a 1:11:xx so I figure I was running similar times.

Brandon was done for the day so during the lunch break we swapped out his camera equipment and transponder into my car. With the knowledge from my first session I turned up the action a bit and did much better. Several of the high speed turns I could get the car to go into a 4 wheel drift quite easily which really upped the fun factor as well as gave me quite an addrenaline ride! The results was a best lap time of 1:10:486.

My car was holding up great and I really wanted to break into the 1:09's so I went out for the last session of the day and gave it everything me and my car had. BTW, I corded two of my race tires at the last autox so I was running this event on my street tires with my street alignment and even the spare tire, jack, and tools in the car! In this session I had the car drifting almost every time in the high speed twisties and even took a turn a bit too fast and got some good oversteer at about 75 mph. I'll have a video of that lap for sure! Unfortunately I forgot to add oil before this session. It ran so low that pressure was dropping in the corners forcing me to pit early and call it a day. The results? 1:10:012! Doh! I bet if I had remembered to remove the spare tire and jack I would have made it. :-) Anyway, if I ever do that track again it will be on my race tires with lots of negative camber and minimum weight. I should be able to squeeze off a 1:06-1:08 lap time then. For reference most of the full race Vipers ran times around 1 minute flat! I ran in the beginner session which was mostly other corner workers and inexperienced Viper drivers in mostly stock Vipers. I ran about the same times as them and ended up passing more than what passed me. All in all this was a great day!

NOTE: All pictures/video taken by Brandon Smith of autocrossing.com.