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Greg's Dark Blue 911Road America - October 16 & 17, 1999 |
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This Driver's Education event at
Road America
was sponsored by Badger Bimmers, the Wisconsin chapter of the BMW CCA.
This is my first time at this track as well as my first event with this group.
There were quite a few Porsches there, including several people I knew from
the Chicago PCA.
The weather was pretty crappy Saturday morning. It was wet and drizzly. I drove my first session with my wipers and lights on. I took it REALLY slow that session. I didn't want to drive an unfamiliar track in the wet too fast. Unlike the other tracks I've driven, there were concrete walls on both sides along the entire length of the track. I concentrated on learning the dry line, even though it was wet. The sun finally peeked out in the afternoon, the track dried out and I picked up the pace. There were three points on the track where I was at redline in 4th gear. Until I got more comfortable with the track, I kept it there and didn't shift up to 5th yet. The best part about this event was that everyone had an instructor, even people in the advanced group. There were four run groups, so we had plenty of down time between sessions, so novices and intermediate drivers attended classroom sessions followed by exercises in a parking lot. One of our instructors was Carl Lopez, the author of the book "Going Faster!". The exercises consisted of braking exercises, skidpad and on Sunday it was pretty much a small autocross course. My lap times were actually the best on the third session of the first day. I had gotten quite comfortable with the track at that point and was slowly increasing my speed. On my second session (the first dry one) my best lap time was 3:26.00, but my best lap on the third session was 3:11.63, with several laps in the 3:14 to 3:18 range. The second day was much colder, so the track, my tires and my brain were very cold. My best lap that day was only 3:17.83, with most of them in the 3:19 to 3:23 range. By the third session on Sunday I felt like I was coming down with a cold and the car didn't feel right either, so I called it a day after only 4 laps. It was actually difficult to get a lot of experience because I was only able to manage 10 or fewer laps per session. It took me 2 laps just to warm up and if I experienced traffic on a couple laps, that only left 4 or 5 hot laps per session. I kept feeling like the checkered flag came out just as I was really starting to fly! |
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) It took a while but I finally found the famous Road America. |
) My car on the paddock ready to go. I just had to get a before picture just in case something unfortunate happened. |
) The rest of the paddock was mostly BMWs, obviously, but there were several Porsches. |
) Here are a couple mean looking 930s. |
) Here is another 911 Carrera similar to mine. |
) Here's a mean looking 944 Turbo from the 'loud' group. |
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The following pictures of my car were taken by a professional photographer who took shots of everyone's car on the track. These photos are by Edmund Lacis and are posted here with his permission. He can be contacted at photobyedmund@yahoo.com or check out his web page at http://www.dougrippie.com/drm/edmund.htm. |
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) ŠEdmund Lacis 1999 |
) ŠEdmund Lacis 1999 |
) ŠEdmund Lacis 1999 |
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I took a lot of in car video at this event. Part of the reason was that this is a new track and I probably won't be back here for a while, so I wanted to have some video to review before my next visit. The other reason is that the Hotlap Transmitter someone else set up wasn't triggering the receiver receiver in my car, so I relied on my digital video camera to provide me with lap times accurate to 1/30th of a second. Anyway, here are some in-car pictures of interesting parts of the track. |
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) Ah, the fall colors in their prime. OH NO! Here comes corner 4! |
) Up the hill to corner 6 which is just past the Toyota bridge. |
) Down Thunder Valley to lucky corner 13, where you can't see what's past it. |
) Through the fast and dangerous corner 11, a.k.a., The Kink, you can see smudges on the left wall where all the Porsche colors are represented. |
) Later in the same corner. Note the tire marks and more smudges on the right side as well as the person in front of me pointing me by on the wrong side. Tsk, tsk, tsk. |
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By popular demand, here is some in car video of me taking a lap around Road
America. I know it's hard to hear the conversation between myself and my
instructor. If you download the QuickTime, please be patient, it's very large.
It could take over an hour to download over a 33.6K modem. If you're on
a slow link I highly recommend viewing the RealVideo version.
QuickTime Movie - Approx. 11.9M |
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There is a downside to track driving. This is a difficult sport and especially when wet, extreme care must be taken. And here is the hall of shame for this event. There were two unfortunate accidents Saturday morning alone! The first car was an M3 in my run group during our first session. That accident was in the carrousel and the driver apparently gave the car a little too much gas exiting it and ending up spinning out and slamming into the wall backwards. The rear end of the car was pretty messed up. The right rear wheel even shattered into several pieces. |
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) The tow truck dropping off the first crashed car of the weekend. |
) All the damage was in the right rear. |
) I've never seen an alloy wheel shatter like this. |
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The second incident occurred in a different group. I think that one happened in corner 12. There was fairly minor damage to the front and back of the car. I didn't get a picture of that car as I think the owner packed up and went home right away. The event organizers reminded us to be careful out there during the mid-day driver's meeting. They even threatened to shut down the track for the rest of the day if there was another incident. There was a third incident on Sunday. One of the advanced run group drivers lost his brakes coming into corner 3. Instead of going straight into the pea gravel which would have slowed him down quickly, he tried to make the corner and ended up spinning out just past the gravel then smashed into the wall backwards. The impact must have been straight on as the trunk was crumpled perfectly flat. I think each incident caused me to reduce my average speed by 5MPH. |
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) Ouch! That must have been some impact. |
) Is this where BMW got the idea for the 318ti? |
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I hung out for a while in corner 5 watching the "loud" group come around. Here are just some random pictures I took. |
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On the way home not far from Road America was this Buffalo Ranch! I took these pictures because I knew my wife would get a kick out of them. |
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