Saturday, October 11, 2008 |
12:37 - Grand Touring
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Yesterday we took a brief break from trucking cars all over creation to do another track day at New Jersey Motorsports Park.
That's me in our turbo Elise, on one of the Light Touring sessions, which is what comes after the low-speed instructional groups (I've had one full day of instruction to this point) and gets the speed up to a nice pace-car-enforced intermediate level (70 mph or so max, which is lame on the straights but quite decent through the twisties), without an instructor on board except for fine-tuning various drivers' technique. Drivers spend several sessions in Light Touring before they get the nod from the staff to be bumped up to the full Touring class, in which the pace car leaves the track and everyone goes flat-out, drastic differences in their cars' capabilities be damned. You're sharing the track with Porsche GT3s and Lamborghinis and race-tuned Mitsubishi Evos—everything except open-wheelers and prototype cars and NASCAR cars and other such really insane stuff (which gets its own Open-Wheel or High Speed class).
They had me out in Touring by lunchtime.
And from the limited experience of someone who's had a total of one track session at speeds that actually exercise the car's limits, I can say with certainty that nothing quite prepares you for the transition—no amount of instruction or Light Touring practice can really give you the sense of how much each of those curves changes when you're going through them at 80 mph instead of 50. Those fun little compound esses where you can aim leisurely from cone to cone? Now you're hanging on for dear life while the rear end of the car swings out and you steer with the throttle to get yourself hooked back on the tarmac and pointed in the right direction. The transition at the end of the front straight where you have to downshift twice and brake before turning hard right and powering over the first inclined curve? Now you find yourself hurtling for the opposite apron and regaining your traction instants before you're off into the weeds, and your wheels are fishtailing back and forth while the engine yowls into the top ranges of 3rd gear. The Lightbulb, the big long 180-degree banked turn before the straightaway? No longer is it a Ferris Wheel ride, where you just pick your line and sway gently through it; now you're clutching the wheel and feathering the throttle seeking the optimum rate of medium-high speed at which you can keep ahead of the guy behind you and on the tail of the guy ahead and aim for an efficient line through the apex while not losing your precarious footing and having the inertia spin you off into the embankment pitched high above your head.
People were passing me, but I was passing people too. There were better cars and better drivers on the track... but there were also worse ones. And I feel I made a decent rookie showing.
I'm also looking forward to improving on it next time.
Because it's a virtual certainty that there will be a next time. To say the least.
(Yes, I would like to get the Esprit onto the track one of these days. As a matter of fact.)
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