09-20-2004, 10:40 AM
Well I guess I'll throw in a few words about the weekend...
The drive up (and around the Winchester area) on Friday night was pretty wild. Constant rain and wind, and of course radio announcements every 5 minutes about tornadoes touching down mere *miles* away. Interstate 81 was shut down just north of Harrisonburg - we (Jess and I, Dave, Jason, and Chris) were able to bail out onto 11 and continue north slowly. Just south of Winchester, fortunately on the other side of the highway, two semis flipped over and took out a couple of those big overhead signs. And then on the way from the hotel to the track (before finding out we didn't have to show up) we tried to take a little shortcut and ended up in Berryville just ahead of yet another tornado. When we finally made it to the track we just hung around for 30 minutes and discovered that no one was gonna register or tech that night. Crazy stuff...
On Saturday I had the unique pleasure of taking the "MM WRX" out as the pace car for the Legends race, so that was cool. If I'd known about it more than a few minutes in advance, I would've gotten the MM banner to display as we went around. And, I would've taken Jess along too (I'm sure she'll chime in :roll: )
Sunday brought absolutely beautiful weather and an abundance of NASA grid workers. There were like 8 people in the grid area, so I decided to try and score some rides. One of the instructors there had a black RX-7. When I first asked for a ride he mumbled something about the suspension being tuned for the driver only and he didn't want to screw anything up. Whatever - so I said "Thanks anyway" and continued down the line of cars. Well, as the group was leaving grid he yells at me to grab a helmet and meet him after a couple of laps. Sure enough, he pulled back into pit lane after a couple of minutes and I jumped in.
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
Going into turn 1, I actually closed my eyes because I thought we were going to die. I didn't see where he was braking because I didn't think it would matter - the wall would stop us quickly enough. But a quick jab of the brakes and then a quick turn in and through the apex. Passed 2 or 3 other cars before another quick stab at the brakes and full throttle from the turn in at 3 all the way to 5. Yes, that's turn 5. Maybe he lifted a little bit before turn 4, but I don't remember because all I could think about was not soiling myself or his nice seats (because the car is apparently a daily driver as well). The car stopped surely and rotated quickly through the carousel. We passed another 4 or 5 cars between turns 8 and 10. The front straight flew by and I made a point of looking at the speed-o-meter as we were coming into turn 1.
One hundred and thirty eight miles per hour. It was cool.
hock:
I got a couple more laps of this and then he dropped me off back at the grid. So, ::thumb up:: to the FD driving instructor who had a change of heart and let me ride along.
I also got a ride with Mr. Maengelito. While not *quite* as speedy as the FD, Christina made a pretty decent showing. Frankly, the ride with Brian was probably far more useful to me as a driver, because I wasn't too blinded by speed to concentrate on the line and how B was using the track. And the little detour at turn 10 was no big deal at all - I was really impressed at how controlled and calm Brian was through the whole thing. Well, except for trying to drive back out to the track through the gravel :oops:
So, all in all a fun weekend. I can't wait to get the Z out to one of these events! (by the way, the guy in group 3 with the 280Z - he just bought a Z32TT w/ 23k miles :evil: )
The drive up (and around the Winchester area) on Friday night was pretty wild. Constant rain and wind, and of course radio announcements every 5 minutes about tornadoes touching down mere *miles* away. Interstate 81 was shut down just north of Harrisonburg - we (Jess and I, Dave, Jason, and Chris) were able to bail out onto 11 and continue north slowly. Just south of Winchester, fortunately on the other side of the highway, two semis flipped over and took out a couple of those big overhead signs. And then on the way from the hotel to the track (before finding out we didn't have to show up) we tried to take a little shortcut and ended up in Berryville just ahead of yet another tornado. When we finally made it to the track we just hung around for 30 minutes and discovered that no one was gonna register or tech that night. Crazy stuff...
On Saturday I had the unique pleasure of taking the "MM WRX" out as the pace car for the Legends race, so that was cool. If I'd known about it more than a few minutes in advance, I would've gotten the MM banner to display as we went around. And, I would've taken Jess along too (I'm sure she'll chime in :roll: )
Sunday brought absolutely beautiful weather and an abundance of NASA grid workers. There were like 8 people in the grid area, so I decided to try and score some rides. One of the instructors there had a black RX-7. When I first asked for a ride he mumbled something about the suspension being tuned for the driver only and he didn't want to screw anything up. Whatever - so I said "Thanks anyway" and continued down the line of cars. Well, as the group was leaving grid he yells at me to grab a helmet and meet him after a couple of laps. Sure enough, he pulled back into pit lane after a couple of minutes and I jumped in.
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
Going into turn 1, I actually closed my eyes because I thought we were going to die. I didn't see where he was braking because I didn't think it would matter - the wall would stop us quickly enough. But a quick jab of the brakes and then a quick turn in and through the apex. Passed 2 or 3 other cars before another quick stab at the brakes and full throttle from the turn in at 3 all the way to 5. Yes, that's turn 5. Maybe he lifted a little bit before turn 4, but I don't remember because all I could think about was not soiling myself or his nice seats (because the car is apparently a daily driver as well). The car stopped surely and rotated quickly through the carousel. We passed another 4 or 5 cars between turns 8 and 10. The front straight flew by and I made a point of looking at the speed-o-meter as we were coming into turn 1.
One hundred and thirty eight miles per hour. It was cool.
hock: I got a couple more laps of this and then he dropped me off back at the grid. So, ::thumb up:: to the FD driving instructor who had a change of heart and let me ride along.
I also got a ride with Mr. Maengelito. While not *quite* as speedy as the FD, Christina made a pretty decent showing. Frankly, the ride with Brian was probably far more useful to me as a driver, because I wasn't too blinded by speed to concentrate on the line and how B was using the track. And the little detour at turn 10 was no big deal at all - I was really impressed at how controlled and calm Brian was through the whole thing. Well, except for trying to drive back out to the track through the gravel :oops:
So, all in all a fun weekend. I can't wait to get the Z out to one of these events! (by the way, the guy in group 3 with the 280Z - he just bought a Z32TT w/ 23k miles :evil: )
My two feet.