Daytona 08/01

SCCA Double SARRC Regional

This was my first ever race on the full course at Daytona International Speedway.  This was an experience I won't soon forget.  The car was in great shape and everything was ready to go when I arrived and unloaded on Friday afternoon.  I spent the extra $20 to get a spot in one of the NASCAR garages.  Being August, it was probably the best $20 I've ever spent.  I arrived back at the track bright and early Saturday morning.  There were several groups ahead of us before I went out, so we were not in a bug rush.  There were only a couple of things to do that morning, check air pressures, torque the wheels, and warm up the motor, and try not to get nervous.
pit lane
On pit road for the morning practice

I headed out to pit lane  when we were called for our practice session.  I'd driven the infield section of the course during an SCCA driver school many year before, but never on the banking.  I'd talked with friends and fellow drivers asking what to expect.  The general consensus was that once you get over the "ohhh ahhh, gee whiz" factor, it is pretty boring.  I can agree to that to a point.  During my first session, I came as close to wadding the car up into a ball of scrap metal  as I ever want to come again.   When I was on the banking and slowly coming up to speed, my mind said that you are in a corner, you need to steer.  I quickly found out that minor amounts of steering will move you all over the place.  On like my 3rd lap I inadvertently dropped the left front down below the white line while in the middle of NASCAR 1/2 and the next thing I knew I was sliding across the grass at a pretty good rate of speed, with the brakes locked down, heading for who knows what.  The car finally spun around enough that I could see where I was heading.  There is a LARGE expanse of concrete near the exit of NASCAR 2.  I could see that I was heading straight for it, so I released the brakes and rolled onto the concrete, no the worse for wear.  I continued on with the remainder of the session, making damm sure I never got that close to the bottom of the banking again.  After some more laps at speed, the banking did get comfortable.  After that the biggest problem I had was being able to see the GT-1 cars coming up from behind.  It's very difficult to see very far behind you while on the banking.  I leanred to just hold my position steady and they will go up and around you with no problems.

The rest of the weekend was pretty incident free.  The only other problem I had was a plug wire fell off during my race on Sunday, so I had to baby the car home to get enough laps to get credit for finishing the race.
start
Perfectly timmed picture of me coming across the start/finish line.

grid
Sitting on the false grid waiting for our race.

turn 4
Heading into NASCAR 4 wide open.

garage
Sitting in the garage next to a Viper that finished on the podium at the National Runnoffs.

garage
Sitting the garage trying to stay out of the August heat before our next session.