traction

As frequent readers no doubt already know, I am a bit of a car guy. I like driving and I like cars, and so it was a natural progression to eventually find myself going to the racetrack, both as a spectator and as a particpant. I was discussing some of my track exploits with friends and thought, gosh there have been some great moments for me out there. So I thought I'd make a list and tell those stories. So here are my Top 10 most memorable moments at the racetrack.

10. Lincon Continental. A few years back I heard there was a track day at Sears Point (now known as Infineon Raceway at Sears Point). I didn’t sign up for the event but I decided to go and just catch rides off people for free. I arrived mid-day and heard that somebody had crashed and rolled their car earlier in the morning. They say that Sears Point eats cars with all of its concrete barriers, rolling hills, and challenging corners. But when I heard what kind of car it was, that really caught my attention. Apparently a guy had decided to rent a Lincoln Continental from Hertz or Avis or what have you, and take the car out onto the track! From what I gathered it was someone who was fairly experienced, and he was actually doing OK out there on track until he somehow lost focus, got distracted, whatever it was, and he ended up going down a hill and rolling the Lincoln a few times. The guy was OK, but the car was clearly a total loss. It would be a pretty tough story to tell the rental car agency, don’t you think? I think some of the other people at the track advised the guy to just outright buy the car from the agency and not get insurance involved since it was a racetrack activity that is in direct violation of most insurance policies anyways.

9. Toyota Formula 1 at Laguna Seca. Formula 1 only comes to the United States once a year, at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Earlier this year I caught a rare chance to see Toyota’s F1 race car at the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca. Hearing that fantastic V8 motor screaming around the track and watching Zonta break the all-time lap record for the track was one of my most memorable motorsports spectator moments. More on my visit to the Historics in my previous post “Pilgrimage”.

8. Airplane crash. This one isn’t really a great moment, but it was pretty memorable. We had just finished a session on track, and I pulled into the paddock and parked. The next group went out on track, but within a few minutes they announced a red and black flag, which meant that the session had stopped and all cars were coming back in. Apparently a small plane from the nearby airport had crashed into the field near the far side of the race track. I went over to a higher vantage point and using the zoom lens on my camcorder was able to see the bits of wreckage that used to be a plane and the ambulances and paramedics that had arrived on scene. I didn’t see the pilot of the plane but it looked like the paramedics had reached him and were working on him. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity as all the paramedics gathered around and did their thing. Then through my camera lens I saw several of them turn away and some of them dispersed back to their ambulances, looking grim. It looked like they thought they had stabilized the guy, and then they lost him. Pretty sad, and although we resumed the track sessions later on we all finished the day with heavy hearts.

7. Grilled cheese. At one of the track events we attended, there was no lunch served at the track and I was facing an inconvenient drive back into the nearby town to buy some food. My buddy H graciously offered me some of his cheese and bread which he had brought from home wrapped in foil. We were sitting there in front of our MR2s which were cooling off from the previous session on-track, and I was inspired. We tossed the foil packets on top of our motors, and in a few minutes we were enjoying the finest grilled cheese sandwiches you could ever want.

6. Spinning at turn 3. My first ever track day at Thunderhill, I was driving my MR2 Spyder in a High Performance Driving School put on by the SCCA. My instructor was saying something to me, I was busy trying to understand what he was saying, and not paying attention to where we were going. I missed my braking point, got on the brakes way too late, and as we started to slow down I had to start turning into the corner, which I did while still on the brakes. Huge mistake, and we spun off into the dirt in a rather unglamorous fashion. It was here that I learned by firsthand experience, the first commandment of driving a mid-engine car. Thou shalt not lift, nor brake in mid-corner. Always be even on the gas or slightly accelerating through the turn.

5. Making an instructor scream. This one was a great moment in my most recent outing to Thunderhill. “No no no, you’re going too fast!” The full story is covered in my previous post, "opportunistic".


4. First time driving down the Corkscrew at Laguna Seca. I’ll never forget my first time driving at the world-famous Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey. I had practiced driving the track in virtual form many many times on my PS2 because the track is in Gran Turismo 3 and 4, but to state the obvious, there’s virtual reality, and then there’s the real world. Simulations can prepare you by helping you learn the general layout of a track, but there are some things that just can’t be simulated, and being there in person was a completely different experience. Take the Corkscrew, for instance, also known as Turn 8/8A. This is the “signature” turn for the Laguna Seca circuit: the distinctive hard left turn, a dramatic drop in elevation, and immediate right turn into a high speed downhill ramp. I had practiced taking this turn countless times on the PS2 and thought I knew my way through the turn. So my first lap in my MR2 Spyder, I drive up the hill towards the Corkscrew, I brake hard to slow down, and turn in. And almost at that same moment, realize that I have not turned in enough. I also realize that the drop is pretty damn steep. I am headed straight for the dirt on the wrong side of the famous red-and-white curbing along the inside of the Corkscrew. Thankfully I am going fairly slowly and I make a quick correction to steer back towards the center of the road. I finish the lap and the session safely, and learn a valuable lesson: video games are no substitute for the real deal.

3. Spinout in a NSX. There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and I'm not sure which side of the line you are on when you voluntarily climb into a racecar and let someone else drive you around the track. I rarely ask others for rides, but when someone shows up with an awesome car and is giving rides, how can you resist? My racing buddy H. and I are at Thunderhill for a track day and this guy G. shows up with a completely stripped down and modified Acura NSX. It almost resembled a JGTC car with carbon-fiber diffusers and bodywork, minus the huge wing. H. catches a ride with him and comes back breathless, saying "You gotta ride with this guy, it was awesome." So the next session I jump in his car and we roar off onto the track. G. is a very experienced driver, and that combined with the potential of his very capable machine made it an awe-inspiring experience. Before long we found ourselves in the proximity of a very fast 996 turbo, and G. made it his goal to see if he could catch up with it and maybe even pass it. We were making some progress and starting to close in on it, but at one of the highest speed turns on track, turn 8, G. loses control and we go spinning at probably 80mph. Now most cars, when they spin they go off track and into the dirt or grass. Mid-engine cars like the NSX and MR2 however, tend to spin more like a top, i.e. spin in place. So we stop spinning and we are still on the track, albeit facing the way we came. I was looking out the windshield in total dread, expecting to see another car coming down that high speed stretch of turn 8 right into us. But fortunately there were no cars closely following us at the time, so we turned back around and continued on. I was pretty freaked out after that, but G. was just giggling in a high-pitched way. "Did you see that Porsche? I almost caught him!" This guy was a piece of work. Afterwards I thanked him for what was probably the scariest ride of my life.

2. Pelican Racing Beater Battle. My buddy H got into racing and motorsports right around the same time I did, and for a time we both owned the same sportscar -- the MR2 Spyder. We both tired of parking-lots-and-traffic-cones autocross fairly quickly, and became attracted to road racing at real racetracks like Laguna Seca and Thunderhill. You got much more bang for your buck in roadracing, you paid more but you got much more time behind the wheel of your car. But it's far riskier than autocross, with the possibility of a crash, rollover or other unsavory outcomes. We both realized it was a little foolhardy to track our relatively new MR2 Spyders when they were also functioning as our daily drivers. So we both sought out more inexpensive vehicles (“beaters”) to prepare for track duty. Something that wouldn't sting our pocketbooks too badly if we flipped it end over end, or crunched a bumper or fender into a concrete barrier. We ended up taking fairly diverse approaches to the same problem.

I had definitely caught the mid-engine bug after buying my MR2 Spyder. I was convinced that the mid-engine layout was the way to go if you wanted superior cornering and handling characteristics. As one of the most inexpensive mid-engine cars you can buy on the used car market, and also their reputation of bullet-proof reliability, the obvious choice for me was the older model SW20 MR2 Turbo.

H on the other hand had always been a bit of a Nissan enthusiast. With all the drifting craze that was blooming in the motorsports scene, he sought one of the very popular cars that was ideal for drifting and superb on-the-limit control, the front-engined, rear-wheel-drive S13 240SX. Not content with the weak 4-cylinder engine that comes with the typical American 240SX, he sought out and bought one that had a Japanese-spec turbocharged motor transplanted under the hood.

And so the Beater Battle was begun. MR2 vs. 240SX. It was a fairly even match, in terms of weight and power. It wasn’t long before we both signed up for a track day at Thunderhill and started to get our cars ready for the rigors and stresses of the racetrack. I remember both of us working into the darkness the night before our track day. Early the next morning at an ungodly hour, we drove our cars up to Thunderhill. It had rained overnight and the roads were wet and slick, yet we were flying on the highway at over 80mph to make it to the track on time. We needn’t have worried, we got there with plenty of time to spare.

By the time we arrived it had stopped raining but the track was still very wet. We both drove out for our first session with some trepidation, as neither of us were very experienced at cornering in the wet at speed. I took it very easy and followed H around the track. As the session went on we started to pick up the pace, and the gap between us opened up a bit. H was building up his confidence, but I was still taking it easy. I came around a nearly blind corner and heard the skittering sound of rubber scrubbing the road as I watched the 240SX spin slowly off into the grass. No harm to the car but I’m sure his confidence was a bit shaken. A few laps later it happened to me. A little too much throttle coming off a turn, or maybe too quick on the steering, and with a shuddering moan my tires let go and I rotated off track into the grass. I found myself staring stupidly at one of the safety workers who waved me back on the track when it was safe to do so.

After the session we were both seriously questioning our driving abilities in the wet. Was it even worth going back out there, and risk getting into even more trouble? Fortunately it had not rained all morning and the sun was coming out , so we at least had the hope that the track would start drying off. And so we ventured out again.

Our perseverance paid off. The track did start to dry, and gradually we picked up speed in our sessions. By the afternoon the track was nearly all dry and we were tearing it up like nobody’s business. We took turns following and passing one another and pushed our cars as far as we could comfortably go, and it was a blast because our cars were so evenly matched. I had higher corner speeds in my MR2, but he had better speed on the straightaways. I remember that track day as one of my most fun track outings.

1. Sneaking my Lexus into a BMW-only track day... for free. What’s better than a track day on someone else’s dime? Read the full story here in my previous post, "opportunistic".