stripethree

Three days at Virginia International Raceway.

Two days with the Potomac-Chesapeake Chapter of Audi Club North American followed by the inaugural NorEast R32 track day.

I have to say I was thrilled to have an instructor that drove an R32. Granted, his was a turbocharged, roll cage equipped track car, complete with TRCKSLT plates. Regardless, some of the insight he was able to provide about driving the R32 on track was invaluable. The last track weekend of the year was certainly a blast. I remembered the track fairly well from April and was able to work on holding the correct lines and getting faster through the turns. I made a lot of passes in green group and really started to get comfortable at this particular track. I had numerous discussions with my instructor and certainly stayed away from getting too comfortable. Saturday and Sunday sessions were great. Sunday morning it was barely 40 degrees when we went out in the morning, so my instructor had me try something different. I ran the entire session with ESP on, and kept it from kicking on through the entire session backing off speeds only enough to not overdue the tires that just were not going to get warm enough. Second session was an eye opener. With the help of some very enthusiastic trackaholic friends, I won an auction (proceeds to charity too!) to have one of my track sessions accompanied by 2006 24 hours of Daytona Winner Randy Pobst.

He drove a couple laps of my car and then rode shotgun and provided some instruction while I drove. The few laps he drove were certainly the fastest and most aggressive the car is ever seen, and as he noted, the brakes needed some attention once he was done. I drove, cautious not to try and impress and overdrive my ability, but when you have a professional driver in the passenger seat you are never going fast enough. I ran well, and ran fast, and saw lots of blue flags come out to the cars in front of me. It was a hell of an experience, both as a passenger and a driver. The last two sessions of Sunday went well also.

Monday was a whole other ballgame. I was in the intermediate group and because of experience at this particular track, approved to go solo. I thought better of it and grabbed an instructor to confirm my sanity for the first run out, and it was a good thing I did. I don€™t know if I was not taking into account the temperatures, which were colder than Sunday morning, or if I was just off my game, but I sure was not driving as well as I knew I could. I walked away from that session knowing that it was in my best interest to keep someone in the passenger seat for another session and to also keep a short memory about the events of the morning. After an early lunch caused by an R32 dropping coolant on 1/3 of the track, it was time for session number two of Monday. I recruited Ed from Induktion Motorsports to ride shotgun and off we went. It was a much, much better session than earlier in the morning, returning to the better form of Sunday€™s sessions. I was able to hang with many of the more advanced drivers in the intermediate group while Ed kept up foreign relations with one of his employees and another of his loyal customers as they passed us by. The session went well, really, well and any confidence that had been dinged up was restored.

Then there was the last lap. Remember my mention of coolant on the track? Well, as a result, there was a lot of kitty litter out on the track to absorb it and when the session went out, there was a standing debris flag in portions of the track. On what turned out to be the last lap, at the end of the braking zone after the front straight coming into turn one there must have been some coolant left because while braking I went into a slide and ABS put the pedal on the floor. I began to turn in, realized I was not going to save it, and just put the wheel straight again and took the car into the grass. I was not going that fast when I went off and I didn’t have much time to think about it because the track was clear so we were waved back on. I took it easy that last lap, got the checkered, came in and checked out the car. Car was fine, didn’t even take out the lip that I expected to be gone from the agricultural adventure. All’s well that ends well.

Then the real fun began. Next session came up and I took the plunge and drove solo. It was a whole different ballgame without having ballast and an extra voice of reason in the passenger seat. It was fun, a lot of fun, and I think I certainly held my own. I even gave a few certain turbo R32s a fun for their money. Sure they passed me, but they certainly had to work for it. I survived a solo session and was elated.
However, I was also dead tired after three days or track time, and the car was beat up as well. Tires were worn, brake pads that were new on Saturday would not have survived another 25 minute beating, and the brake fluid was nearly done as well. Thus, I decided to shut it down. Why risk ruining a perfectly good weekend in order to stretch out for another session where neither car nor driver were at the top of their game. So we packed it up and headed home.