I get down to the track a little after 7am and there's already quite the racer crowd. Lots of trailors, motorhomes, and REAL race cars. Not a bunch of Honda's and other inexpensive enconomy cars with big wings and lots of stickers! I'm pretty intimidated and now I'm thinking to myself good thing I signed up for the "Beginner" class and not the "Experienced" group! I find a pretty good spot unload my stuff and head over to the registration table. Good god!!! Talk about unorganized! I think the people there took about 5 minutes a person to get registered and there was a HUGE line. I'm thinking to myself, why did I even bother to PRE-register? Finally they open a line for pre-registered people only and I jump in that quickly. With only 2 people in front of me it still took 15 minutes or so!
My group was the first up so excitedly I get suited up and get my car in line to head out on to the track. I have almost no idea what the track is like so I take it very easy for the first lap as is everyone else while they warm up their cars/tires. I try to remember as much as I can the first time through but it isn't until the end of the session that I think I've really got the track down somewhat. It's really a simple track though the first turn is a decreasing radius and as long as you know that's what it is and don't go flying into the turn real hot it's no problem. The next tricky part is the blind turn rounding the time slip booth. I found you can get on the throttle pretty early but it's freaky stepping on the gas BEFORE you can see the exit. Especially when you know a brick wall greets you on the other side. Next is the most technical part of the track which really isn't that technical if you look ahead. It's a little chicane and you need to trail brake into the first little turn and sacrifice your speed some for a better position and exit of the 2nd turn. The final part of the track is the last turn coming on to the straight. You need to stay wide and make sure you get back on the throttle early. The best lap time that Brandon was able to get was a 1:18:8x.
I used my street tires on my first just to see what the track was like at speed and to find the line and reference points. My 2nd session out I swapped wheels to my race rubber and really turned the wick up a notch. The problem was everytime I got going on a good pace I would catch up with a slower car and mess up my lap time. Most of my laps ranged in the 1:2x:xx times and even as slow as 1:33:xx. There were two laps however where the traffic was low enough for me to turn in a 1:16:19 and a 1:15:29 second time so I was happy with that.
By my 3rd session I had the track down well enough to take a passenger out for a little fun. My wife had brought a couple girls from work to be the trophy girls at the ceremony for the endurance race. Needless to say they were all giddy about going out on track. I gave Andrea a good ride for her money but also took it kinda cool to make sure I didn't wreck or spin. I still ended up pulling a quite a few 1:16 second times as well as a low 1:15 second time. She was really scared the first few laps and then she got quiet. For a while she was having fun but it turned out towards the end I made her sick to her stomach from all the G forces. Ooops!
Mike Schmit the director of this event wanted to make sure the girls got a ride in a car for coming out and presenting the trophies. He told me to take them out since I was the only one he trusted. Not because he knew me, because we just met a few days before but because he knew I knew the girls and wouldn't be getting stupid out there on track and smack a wall. My reward was he let me get in even more track time by letting me run in the advanced group as well. So after I dropped off Andrea I picked up Courtney and we headed out with the OS-A (Open Street Advanced). She was a great passenger yelling and screaming and having a good time. He even talked a bunch of shit about the cars in front of us about how they sucked or they were slow or what not. That group was a lot more fun to drive with too because they were much faster so the pace was quite a bit more fun. I never got passed and no one ever got close to doing it either but I did manage to pass a couple cars including a Camaro SS!!! The slowest lap was a 1:20:49. There were two BMW M3's that I would get on their ass in the twisties but every time we hit the straight they would pull away. Since we weren't allowed to pass anywhere but the straight I never could get by them. I'm pretty sure I was pulling faster lap times than them though. Oh well. They passed the Camaro SS pretty easily but I got stuck behind him for about 3 laps. When I finally did pass him though my lap times improved by like 4-5 seconds and ended up pulling a best of 1:14:17 for the day.
All in all this was a great day. No damage to my car, no broken parts, no corded tires (besides my street tires but they were dead when I got to the track anyway), and I learned a lot about the track. I used just a little more than a half tank of gas and my car only used about 2 quarts of oil. During the 2nd session my tachometer starting freaking out and I thought it was my ignitor going bad, but all it turned out to be was a loose connection on it. I'm really looking forward to the next event at Firebird and hope to turn in lap times of 1:13 or better.