The objective of the Vintage Auto Racing Association's University is to familiarize you with the basic techniques of vehicle control. This is accomplished through sessions in the classroom, on the skid pad, down a slalom course, and of course, around the track. In addition to the rules of vintage racing, we were taught about seating, steering, braking, and many other aspects of driving. Most of the instruction made sense and was quickly understood, though too many of us failed the on track red flag test.
We were divided up in four groups. Two were mostly street cars or new race drivers in lower powered cars. The other two were race prepared cars. For the most part this worked out well. Most of the cars in the street group were close enough in potential to exist on the track together.
We ran the skid pad both wet and dry. It was a good learning experience to get the back end of the car to come loose and start sliding out. Take your foot off the gas too fast and over correct and the car suddenly goes the wrong way. It was nice to figure this out in a safe controlled environment, without fear of a ticket. Those of us without anti-lock brakes also worked on threshold braking.
The highlight of the weekend was the time on the road course. We ran the east loop, which worked out well because that took out much of the long straights where the high horsepower cars could pull away. After the first two sessions, passing was allowed on the straights when the slower car waved you by. This helped a lot. It was nice being out there with some very capable cars and keeping up with them around the track, and even being waved by to pass after they realized my little 6 was faster around the track than their big V8. (Yes, I realize some drivers were more conservative with their cars.)
The Triumphs did almost as well as the drivers. Most of us wore away a couple hundred miles worth of tread on the tires, but at only 5000 miles per year, the rubber will wear out before the tread is gone. I had a problem with a wire coming out of the alternator connector. Fortunately this was a ten minute fix. Steve's tire failure cost him several sessions while he got a new tire, but fortunately did not cause any damage.
I learned much about my car and its driver. It's hard to believe that it was just over two years ago that I was driving white knuckled trying to maintain 60 mph on the freeway and get to a club meeting. Now I'm playing with tire pressure to fine tune the handling on my car. The weekend was definitely worth the time and small expense. The track was good and everyone was helpful. If you would like to try this next year, keep in touch with SCTOA's racers or check VARA's web site at www.vararacing.com.
Also, many thanks to the organizers from VARA - they put on a great event.