J. Patterson

Yeah it was a blast, but nothing to be taken lightly. Imagine being up on the banking in Nascar turn four at about 130 mph making your 5th to 6th shift while laying your head over to one side so that you can see around the bowl of the banking under our low roofline and giving a 150 mph GT3 a passing signal to go around you on the right side all at the same time. Makes one pay attention. The infield section is just a flat road course with nothing unusual, two 180 degree turns where you have to wait---wait---wait so that you don't apex too early and understeer the front end wide at the exit. They are divided by a left hand kink that you can just barely take without lifting, but when you do that, you have to start braking before you completely get back across track in the chute before the second 180 and the rear end gets a bit light and wants to come around to the right just before you need to initiate your turn in back to the right and settle the car. Tedious. Few were doing that and it was a good place to make up time on the higher horsepower cars. In my rungroup alone (the slowest one) there were 2 RS6s, 2GT3s, an M5 (blew his engine) 2 Cayman S s, 2 ZO6 Vettes. A Lamborghini, 2 or 3 S4s, It just goes on and on. The run groups were large, 30-35 cars but the track is huge and there is so much passing zone on the banking that it never really got crowded. It would be frustrating when you were faster than one of he higher horsepower cars and could hound him through the infield , then he would pull up onto the banking and give you a passing signal but accelerate away from you to the chicane where you gained back up on him then he would do it again from the chicane to the infield where you caught him again and started the process over. Did this with one of the Z06 Corvettes for a whole 30 minute session on Sunday. It would have made no sense for him to let me by because he was so much faster in the banking that he would have felt like he was stopping to slow enough to allow me to pass there. If he had been a bit more experienced it would not have mattered anyway as I'm sure the car was capable of leaving me just as quickly in the infield section with a different driver.

Craig Liechty and the Audi Club guys did a super job of organization The event went off smoothly and no one got hurt. There were three or four engine failures, an S4 lost a clutch, and a 911 blew a rear tire on the oval at 140 mph and took off the whole right rear quarter panel. The DE student driving it did a great job of keeping the car under control. Could have been bad.

At dinner tonight we were counting it up and we got in nearly 100 laps on the 3.59 mile course. 300 plus miles in three days is a lot of track time. Burned a lot of fuel. My trip computer showed 6 miles to the gallon for each session! Oh-- On Saturday I had some power loss later in the sessions and I was blaming it on heat soak. Chris Smith from Ohio suggested that I try some 100 octane fuel. I picked up close to 10 miles per hour on the banking running a mix of half 100 octane and half 93!!!! At $6.00 per gallon and 6 miles per gallon though that stuff was costing about $40.00 per session! Look at that photo of me crossing the finish line. Whats that commercial about priceless? That's sort of how this was.



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Seeing double???? Two of three blue TTs there.
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Is this cool or what? 137 mph at this point. LOTS of braking ahead.

snowpunk_AGTT

that looks like a ton of fun....

BTTI

Looks fun! Nice pics!

AchTTung--Vollgas

Great shot at the finish!

artinmoTTion

awesome.....well done!

coasTTal

Nice write-up, Nice Cars. Alot more appreciation for those nascar guys too, I bet.

TTinCT

very cool.....

SereniTTy

Looks like Jim brought his Carerra GT. Sounds like you had fun.

ITALSKIER

must have been a hoot!!!! n i c eeeeeeeeee

as350

Wow, that looks like lots of fun