One reason I had decided to bring the trailer was so we could easily carry a pair of bikes. It would give us a chance to see the tracks before we drove them, some of which were around 3 miles long, and would pretty much be our only exercise the whole week. By the time we arrived at Memphis we had been towing the bikes almost 900 miles and hadn't touched them yet - it was about time to get some use out of them! It was a beautiful morning and using the bikes we were able to do about 3 laps of the track before it was closed for the start of the morning session - a great way to start the day, and we at least had a partial mental picture of what the track would look like.
Chris and I split the morning and afternoon sessions. Memphis uses the drag strip as the main straight for the road course, and turn 1 is a gentle right-hander at the end of the strip. The first time Chris drove the Fiesta down the front straight was easily the fastest that car had ever gone - you entered the staging area of the strip doing ~50 mph in 3rd gear, up through 4th, then into 5th where you spend another 10 seconds or so at WOT. Even after riding the bikes around the track in the morning, it was a bit intimidating to turn into Turn 1 at about 100 mph after a quick down-shift into 4th. Chris put down a nice, clean run in the morning:
Before Chris got in the car, I passed on this little nugget of wisdom from one of the autocross schools I had been to: "It's always better to brake too early than to brake too late. If you brake too early, you're still on line, and you might even be able to get on the gas earlier." Great advice - I wish I had taken it myself! Skip ahead to ~2:15 to see me completely ignore my own advice:
Not only were there two road course events at Memphis, but also a drag race elapsed time (ET) challenge and bracket drag. Chris did both of the drag race events since I did the autocross and would do both skidpads.
Does 3 seconds sound like a long time? No, right? Actually, 3 seconds is not-even-able-to-keep-both-cars-in-the-same-frame-for-the-video long 😜. Chris actually put down a great run. I had been to the track once before and only managed a 14.9 after several attempts...he did it on his first pass down the track.
Now, the top 5 cars in the ET challenge were all between 10.9 and 11.1...so 14.9 in this crowd was pretty slow...54th out of 64. But, we would have a chance in the bracket drag, which was a bit of a wildcard for everyone since there were few drag racing specialists on the One Lap. Chris managed to win his first round, but went out on the second round. The winner was a Mazdaspeed Miata driven by a couple of guys doing their first One Lap, but who obviously knew a thing or two about bracket drags.
Where do you eat dinner when you're traveling through the northern Alabama countryside? The "New INA" buffet, naturally.
Before Chris got in the car, I passed on this little nugget of wisdom from one of the autocross schools I had been to: "It's always better to brake too early than to brake too late. If you brake too early, you're still on line, and you might even be able to get on the gas earlier." Great advice - I wish I had taken it myself! Skip ahead to ~2:15 to see me completely ignore my own advice:
Not only were there two road course events at Memphis, but also a drag race elapsed time (ET) challenge and bracket drag. Chris did both of the drag race events since I did the autocross and would do both skidpads.
Photo: Highland Design Studio
Does 3 seconds sound like a long time? No, right? Actually, 3 seconds is not-even-able-to-keep-both-cars-in-the-same-frame-for-the-video long 😜. Chris actually put down a great run. I had been to the track once before and only managed a 14.9 after several attempts...he did it on his first pass down the track.
Where do you eat dinner when you're traveling through the northern Alabama countryside? The "New INA" buffet, naturally.
No comments:
Post a Comment