It started with my sick butt driving down to VIR thursday for the friday Super Comp school NASA was holding. 4 hours later I was at VIR getting teched, and with no real surprise the car passed without a problem. Friday was the comp school and taught me a WHOLE lot. But the biggest thing i needed was confidence, in myself and in the other drivers. Once i had that (which was not till almost the end of the day) I felt much better. During the mock race my friend was punted off track, sustained a lot of damage to his vette, and was out for the weekend. It hit me that even simple mistakes are costly in this sport. I was awarded my license that night and was as giddy as a school girl.
Saturday I missed all of practice installing the biggest convex rear view mirror i could find, since i lacked serious rear visibility. I was loaning the car out to a friend for HPDE, and all his sessions, were right before mine, :icon501: . This involved a lot more worrying but in the end i made it to qualifying, where i secured the 13th spot. I thought it was great considering i could not find a clear lap to save my life. I, however, did not know this. I looked at my times and all i saw was DNS
Turns out there was a bug in the data entry and my times were gathered, but not as my car... but in the course of later events that was all figured out. The race started with me being the LAST car to grid, but i made it in the nick of time. I was so overwhelmed i forgot to remove the seat cushion that my buddy uses, Ooops. I warmed up the tires again, and blew the green flag on the rolling start, going from 13th to what felt like last. BAH! I started racing and closing on people, but as soon as i did, the other race groups were with me. Miata's were flying around like pissed off bumble bees and didn't have a lot of courtesy for the slow rookie in the 944. But though steady driving I made up some time and was involved in some good racing. I was pushing the car SO hard in the end that i got my toyos greasy! I had no idea you could do that, I had never done that before, but i was not slowing down, i wanted to catch some other cars. That never really happened and I finished 10th. Making up three spots by being consistent and not going off is just fine with me :thumbup:
Sunday, there was only a race and the qualifying times were pulled from the race the day before. Only the weather added a nice twist, rain, and a little bit of sleet. I'd put three coats of rainX on the windshield the day before in preparation and swapped to my full tread RA-1's. I was ready to go, and this time my friend was in the car after me! I made it to grid and started 12th. I felt on top of the world moving up one spot, but i kept reminding myself that its the rain, and I've NEVER been in the rain.... uhh crap. Where is the line? where are the puddles? what do i do!?
I started saying go slow and feel it out. I took in the warm up lap to try to look at any puddles but it had not rained that hard. This time I was on top of things and had a good start. Only one car passed me but i got him back going into 1. Wow was it slippery!!! It was like trying to ice skate in tennis shoes. But it was fun, for the first time i felt totally on top of the car and in control. I had to feel the steering and the gas and the grip... it was SO cool! My soft suspension allowed me some fast times, but a rookie on rookie drag race down the front straight landed me in the grass at the end of turn one (for a minute i thought i had big reds and hoosiers in the dry
). I went off really slow and did the same coming back on, losing all the positions i had gained. I fought back and learned that passes on veterans needed to be timed, and required growing a bigger set. Once i did that, i was determined to pass a car in 4. I set him up, had a great run out of three and there we were side by side in 4, and 5 but I had the upper hand grabbed the line and off i went in 6. I quickly caught another car in oak tree, but he clearly had a faster car and won the drag to 14. I was not confident to pass down the roller coaster so i decided that I'd try to get him in 17. Sure enough it was another drag race out of 17, and I finished .2 seconds behind him, in 7th. After getting out of the car, i was on cloud 9. Not only had i survived my first track session in the rain, i think did well, and the car was in one piece at the end of the weekend. Overall I think I'm addicted to racing, so it will be hard to do HPDE's again. But I also learned one paramount thing, its no where NEAR as easy as it looks! After learning this, i really do have a new found respect for what every race car driver does, you all are my hero's!
I hope this made some sense, I'm a little tired and still really giddy. So thanks for reading and I hope to see you on track sometime
