|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Activities
Nor'easter News
Car Care
Membership
Other Cool Stuff
Sponsors & Advertisers
|
Porsche
Club of America
The
Driver's Window
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
As I sit here in the last few hours before this article is due I am searching for a topic. My last article was kind of a disappointment to a few people so I decided to start fresh. In a week a few of us leave for our first time at Road America located in Elkhart Lake, WI. Unfortunately it is a good 2-day drive to the track. A few weeks ago Andy and I explore a number of different options for getting to the track. First we looked at finding a 2-car trailer so we could both trade off driving and we could make in a day. I contacted Gil at Atlantic Coast Trailers for his input. Since my race trailer was originally owned by Gil, he informed me that he could have it sold before I even got there and he could set us up with a nice aluminum Exiss 2-car trailer for about $17,000. Not out of the question but we decided it was not the perfect time to OWN a 2-car trailer. Although it would reduce our vacation time by 2-days. The problem came when I found out that even though I have a big F-350 Diesel truck the short bed that I have in not meant for pulling a fifth-wheel or gooseneck trailer. It is possible but it requires a special sliding bed hitch otherwise whenever I turned sharply the front of the trailer would hit the cab. Not the optimum solution! The sliding hitch allows you to tow in the correct position but if you had any tight maneuvering you would have to release the hitch so that it slides further back in the bed allowing the trailer to clear the cab. Gil didn't really recommend but would set one up if we needed it. Since the truck is a problem I have kind of half-hearted started to look for a used Diesel long-bed, duellie. Next solution was to have the car transported to the track and we fly out. Cool, the arrive and drive thing. This can be expensive. Original quotes were in the $1200-1400 range. Then if you had on plane fare, hotels and rent-a-car the arrive and drive thing all of a sudden looks a bit frightening. Since Andy and I usually camp at the track we hadn't made any hotel reservations and chances are we wouldn't be able to. So we figured that including hotels out and back we could probably get there and back for $600-700. Oh well, so we drive! Next is how do you get ready for a historic track that is a hair longer than 4 miles. Well, you can get in-car video from a friend that has been there (which I am doing tonight) or you get fancy. Andy, being a computer guy, has a racing simulator for his home computer. This isn't a PlayStation or anything like that. This is pretty cool. Andy located the track on the web somewhere and downloaded it. He has the steering wheel (complete with feedback), a sequential shifter, which took me the longest time to get use to, a gas pedal and brakes. No clutch! So we got together over his place a couple of Sundays ago to learn the track. Now I typically am not a video game kind of guy but this was fun. I never got good at it but I did learn the track layout. There are many things that can't be learned with this like elevation changes, actual braking and acceleration points and track feel. What we did learn is that there are a lot of fast areas, multiple straights or close to straights. Turn 1 is a less than 90° right-hander and look fairly fast. Turn 3 (Turn 2 is hardly noticeable) is also a right-hander and looks like a slight decreasing radius turn of about 110°. Turn 3A and Turn 4 are a slight bends in another long straight followed by Turn 5 that is a more than 90° turn that seems very tight and very slow. Turn 6 (I was never able to make this turn on the sim) is a slow 90° left-hander that leads you to Turn 7, which is called Hurry Down. This looks like it is a lot of fun, probably a 60° right-hand turn that drops down to Turn 8 that is another slow 90° left-hand turn. Next is turn 9 (or the Carousel) which looks like more than 180°s of right-hand turning that points you towards the infamous Turn 11, better known as the Kink. We have received a number of impressions about the Kink. Russell Castagna drove that track and never saw the Kink. I took it that the Kink is not a Kink but a full-blown turn. I guess Russell was looking for a little kink, you know small almost unnoticeable bend in the track. In talking to Karl Poetl of Racers Edge (a very fast 944 S2 driver) he informed me that the Kink is all it's crack up to be and more. Having totaled his 968 in last years Club Race he may be a good reference. Apparently some people get the feeling that it can be taken flat-out. I guess we will get to form our own opinion in a couple of weeks. Hopefully I get to put only one piece back in the trailer. After the Kink there are a series of quick bends known as Turn 11A and 11B that lead down to Turn 12 or Canada Corner. Turn 12 looks to be a looser 90° right-hander that was a lot of fun on the simulator. Turns 13 and 13A were also kind of fun on the sim with a kind or right-left, under the bridge thing going on. Turn 14 remindered me of Turn 10 at Summit Point. It seems to be a high-speed right leading onto what looks like the longest front straight ever. Of course the are all just pixels on a screen but as I go around the track on Labor Day weekend I will at least know what side of the track I want to be on. There is nothing worse than coming over a rise before a turn and being on the wrong side. We'll see but it should be a blast of a track. Next I would like to address some things from my last article. It seems that I have agitated a few people in the SCCA. Let me start out by saying this was the only SCCA race I have ever watched other than couple races at the National Run-offs at Mid-Ohio. I was meeting Don Istook (races Audi S4s in the Grand Am Rolex series) to buy his street-driven 944 turbo that I turned into a racecar. Those were great races, nothing like what I watched at NHIS. Perhaps I should have remembered the Mid-Ohio races and not concentrated on NHIS which can't be fun to race on. Then I may have written a more positive article. But I didn't even remember them until a few minutes ago. The reason I say this is the couple of PCA guys that race SRFs emailed my article to what appears to be the entire SCCA. I have been receiving email after email about my article. Some emails agreeing with a few of my points and some agreeing that I shouldn't be living at all. What can I say? I watched the race and it seemed too rough. As someone who is trying to race inexpensively and enjoys having a good-looking car I couldn't justify driving in that series. If you showed up at a PCA Race with some of the SCCA cars they wouldn't let you run because they have no way of knowing if those 9 big dents appeared before or during their race. If your car looks good and all of a sudden there is a dent they kind of have you. This doesn't mean that some people in the SCCA don't take great pride, as we do, in keeping their cars nice but it would require a lot more work when the paint that used to be on your fender now belongs to someone else and he wants to keep it as a momento of the race. So I apologize to all those SCCA guys for watching your rough racing. Hey I call it as I see it. So, til next month... |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright
1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 PCA/NER
Year 2000 Web Site Design by www.sitesofboston.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
