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.

The VIR experience began at 6:30am Sunday morning, when I set out from Columbia with Sco and his fast down to Sourthern VA. We stopped for breakfast and didnt really hit the road until 7:15. Cruised nice and easy on down to Danville VA making a couple stops for gas and restrooms and watching others blow by us only to later succumb to the long arm of the man. This includes a stock looking Ford Focus with a hideous DTM wing and Enkei Racing stickers all over it I certainly got a laugh. We arrived at VIR just before the start of the Rolex Series VIR 400 at 1:00pm, so we didnt get to see the cars up close in the paddock, but no matter. The race was amazing, especially knowing that over the next two days, we were going to drive the very same course that the professionals were currently attacking. I took lots of pictures with both my 35mm SLR and my point and shoot. It was amazing to be that close to the cars on the race track. The sounds were just as amazing as the sights. We were walking around the paddock and were about 10 feet from the prototype car pictured below started up and revved. The damage to our hearing that surely occurred was certainly worth it.

Listening to the German 6 cylinders roar down the track in the Porsches and BMWs, along with the booming V-8s in the GTOs and Vettes and the screaming prototype cars might as well have been the best symphony I’ve ever heard.

There was also some nice eye candy on display off the track; Ill let the pictures speak for themselves.

After the race ended, we get over to our hotel, go through Audi Clubs tech inspection, check into the hotel, check in with Audi Club registration to get shirts and event packets, then hang out until the drivers meeting. After the drivers meeting I find my instructor, who trailer-ed in his highly prepped 5.0 Mustang to run, I introduce myself and we chat for a bit. He asked about my car, so we walk over and take a gander at the R and he asks about what events I have done before (none!) and what I have done to the car (quite a bit). After we chat, I head off to dinner with Sco, Sperry, the Induktion crew and a few others. Bullshit and hang out for a while, then sleep, okay, honestly, an attempt at sleep. I was nervous and excited, and I don’t sleep well anyway, so you can guess how that went.

Get to the track Monday morning and unload, then over to the skid pad after a drivers meeting and a short classroom session. This is where the fun began, on a two hundred foot skid pad, adequately hydrated, with little danger if you lose control (in a spin, both feet in!) First go round was a blast and I think the instructor that rode along was having as much fun as I was because we ended up doing about 18 laps instead of the 10 we were supposed to do. Hey, he was the one telling me, okay one more, okay one more, faster. Haha. I couldn’t get the car to spin, but throwing it around in a big circle was fun, even if it sounds stupid. It was even more interesting when the instructor pulled the handbrake at various times. Second go round was even better. My instructor rode this time (5.0 Mustang, remember?) and really made me push the car. Again, no spin action, but played catch with it pretty well, getting the rear loose then bringing it back again with throttle modulation until traction returned. Stay off the brakes. Attempted to drift around the pad, at my instructors request (I swear!), but couldnt do it all that well, its hard in that kind of car. Left feeling good about myself and the car, helped by the instructor telling me he felt confident about my car control and how I would do on the track later in the day. Was I still nervous? Good grief yes.

First session comes and I took it easy, which means maybe 90 on the long straights and lots of brakes before turns. Man was it a blast though. Second session late in the afternoon I went at it a little more aggressively and concentrated more at working on the lines. I found myself getting more familiar with the course and more comfortable driving it. Speeds picked up and I passed a handful of other folks in my run group. First day I left with a huge grin.

The second day, was even better. By my second morning session I was pulling 120 on the front and back straights and was cutting through the turns more aggressively. I got a little rattled when the BMW in front of me almost lost it coming into turn 4 after he put two wheels on the dirt, but he (and I) kept things going. I was getting faster and faster around the track each run, which of course exposed some things I needed to work on: downshifts and braking. Third session, I started out taking it easier to work on these things and picked up speed later in the session. I thought I was a little sloppy, some of my turns it looked like I was trying out for a drift event, but the instructor was adamant that I just kept picking up speed and needed to adjust for it. Fair enough. I also needed to concentrate harder at the lines when I was in traffic; I had the tendency to pay attention to the cars in front of me rather than the upcoming track, with inevitably lead to some less than optimal driving on my part. Hard to fight the instinct to look at other cars around you, especially when you are pretty close together and moving at a pretty good clip. I wonder if this is what the crazy people on the beltway are doing, looking way ahead on the road and ignoring the cars around them, haha.

The fourth session, my last of the weekend, was the best and most fun. I got better at the lines in both sets of esses, was nailing downshifts coming into Oak Tree, and even got ballsy and started turning into the roller coaster later and later, inching closer to the line I should have been aiming to take. Hey, its intimidating to glance down that hill knowing that’s where you’ll be headed if you screw it up, but I guess thats why they tell you to look ahead on the track; look at the hill only if you want to end up going down it. Not my idea of a good time. By now the instructor had me no longer braking before the climbing esses, just easing off the throttle to modulate the speed I was carrying through the turns. Holy crap that was insane to carry 80 through those turns, it felt awesome to feel the car fly through it. One lap though, carrying a little over 90, things got a little hairy when the rear end of the car got light and started to step out from under me. I got a little freaked, but avoided the instinct to hit the brakes and instead played catch with it, just like on the skid pad. My instructor complimented my car control and camly advised, lets not do that again. I agreed, thinking, yeah, I’d like to take the car home in one piece, and only carried about 80 into the climbing esses the rest of the session. The close call, in retrospect, was one hell of an adrenaline rush, and I have to admit, I was quite happy with myself that I didnt lose it. The last session overall felt awesome, smoother for the most part and definitely faster. The entire weekend was amazing, I cannot say that enough and I cannot wait to go back. I learned a great deal about how this car handles as well as how I handle it. Not that this kind of at the limit driving occurs that often, but its still great to feel like you know that much more about the behavior of the car you are driving on a daily basis.

In addition to my own driving, observing and listening to the other cars screaming around the track was fantastic. There were C6 Covettes, 911s of various generations, E30 and E36 M3s, and 944s to mention a handful. And of course, how I could I leave it out, the Porsche ‘I’m going to make your jaw drop everytime I go down the front straight because it sounds that good’ Carrera GT. It didn’t matter how many times I saw it fly by, it gave me goosebumps each and every one. Sure, I’ve seen them before, hell, the very day before (the one running was not the same one I photographed Sunday), but how often do you get to see a near half million dollar street legal race car scream down a race track straightaway. It wasn’t overly loud, but just loud enough that you could pick the high pitched 10 cylinder whir out amongst the deeper notes of the higher displacement American cars and the off pitch notes of the tuned Germans and Japanese. Then to have it pull into the pits 3 feet from you (we were staging) and be able to see the heat coming off the engine area only to have it wow you again as it hauls away in first gear. ‘Hauls’ is about the understatement of the century, by the way. That car looked so smooth at high speeds it was scary. But that’s enough, if I keep going on and on about the Carrera GT, well, there’s a few folks that would drive many hours to express their envy in person :cough: Tim :cough:.

Lastly, I have an apology to make, and it is to my poor, poor Avon M550s. You did well my faithful all season friends, and I am sorry that I made you scream so much and in a matter of hours, shaved hundreds (maybe even a couple thousand, who knows) of miles off your life off that you will never see again. Just know that your sacrifice was appreciated and that it was definitely for the greater good.