Sorry about the partial posting yesterday, I meant to
save & append, but the editor here is a bit clumsy at
times.
Anyway, driver's school at Laguna Seca:
We made it into the paddock by 7:15am, found a
suitable place to park & unloaded. By the time we had
the cars tech'd quite a collection of cars/people had
arrived. Just off the top of my head I can recall a new
Testarossa, a few Panteras, a gaggle of Porsches, a few
IT & Production cars, and the street cars (510s, CRXs,
etc.) I was one of only two Sprites, the other being
fellow SOLer & Fizzballer Jeff Zurschmeide in his
bright orange H-Prod. Bugeye. All in all it was looking
like the beginning of a great day.
I would be running in the intermediate class,
which meant I was supposed to have some idea of what to
do out there. We would be the second group out (after the
advanced) and the idea was to (slowly) follow our instructor's
car for two laps and then we'd be cut loose. That was
the idea anyway.
What transpired was an instantaneous and
terrifying free-for-all, as our instructor's car was
immediately black-flagged for sound and pulled from the
track, which gave this group of (mostly) weekend warriors
free reign to run. Which they did. Away from me. Now,
Redcar isn't slow, but it isn't a 300zx or a ZR-1,
which *were* in my group. So understandably I felt that
for this supposedly being a pace lap, I must be doing
something terribly wrong to be so far behind. Only
after realizing what had happened did I calm down a bit
& enjoy. Soon however, I realized that our session was
ending, as when I passed the pits I could see members of my group
pulling in. Then panic struck when I realized I DIDN'T KNOW
HOW TO GET OFF THE TRACK !!!!! By some wicked twist of
fate we had never cover *exiting* the course. I
suddenly felt like I was going to hear Rod Serling as
the track announcer, "Picture this if you will .."
I knew generally where the exit had to be, but not for
sure, and by the time I had come around and identified
where it was, I WAS PAST IT AGAIN !!!!!! I'm trapped,
alone on the track, with the entire driver's school
watching me as I attempted to look like I knew what I
was doing ! "Hey, he's in the intermediate group, he
knows hoe to get off the track." Nope. Next time around
I slowed way down, snuck off, tucked into the pits and stopped.
Remarkably no-one came over to chastise me, and in fact
later I heard someone else say they didn't know where to exit
either. Whew.
The rest of the day went *much* better. Our
instructor never fixed her car, so we remained the
do-it-yourself class all day, but we learned. I became
much braver, and managed to shave a few seconds off my
times, and even had someone come up later & comment on
how hard Redcar stuck in the corners, which made me
feel pretty good. About the only bad points were the
300ZX from my group getting stuffed (driver unhurt),
and a high-db repeat offender shutting down an entire
session by ignoring his black flag(s).
High point of the day was a combo of riding with
Larry Colen in his IT Cortina for one session and
holding off various cars in the corners that were
*much* faster than me. All in all, a day well spent.
cheers-
dstone@sc9.intel.com
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