My First Media/TOV Track Day and a Day at the Dragon

[G.Irish]

So last Tuesday I flew on down to Atlanta to meet up with the Temple of VTEC team for a track day at Talladega GP and a day at the Tail of the Dragon with a few Honda press cars.

I got in Tuesday night, picked up a rental car (all they had for me was a PT Cruiser *bleh) and set off for Alabama. We woke up bright and early Wednesday morning and arrived at Talladega GP at about 8 or 9.

Talladega GP is a pretty short circuit (about the length of Jefferson at Summit) but is laid out a bit like CMP. Its flat but has cambered turns, and has 3 good hairpin turns of varying radii. Not a very stop and go course but it was short enough that you could overheat brakes fairly quickly...

The cars we had for the test were TOV's Project Si, a Si sedan, TL Type-S, S2000, and a Si coupe. Meeting us at the track was a Honda Manufacturing employee (Bradley was his name) who helped build and race the One Lap of America turbo Odyssey.

I didn't take a bunch of pics, mostly because we had a SLR and a bunch of video cameras for that task but here are a few:



We had lipstick cams for front, rear, and side shots and some in-car cams for uh, in-car shots


The One Lap of America Odyssey (all for you Jeff). Yes that's Imola Orange but no that's not carbon fiber on the hood. It has a GT35 turbo on it and some custom welded intake stuff and odds and ends. I got a ride in it and it was pretty damned fast, maybe around the same level of speed as a STi in the higher gears. In lower gears it would spin up a bit.




Notice the AIM dash, manual tranny, and...APC seats (apparently they threw them in there because they were cheap).


I'll post some quick driving impressions and part two with Tail of the Dragon laterz. I need to get some errands done.