It's September 12, 2015, and the Porsche Club's annual concours is at the Larz Anderson museum in Brookline, MA. So many amazing cars. 3 new GT4's! A 918 Spyder!! First time I've seen either of those in the flesh. And some other amazing items: a 997 GT2, a 996 GT2, an RS 4.0, a 911 Club Sport, a Beck 550 Spyder, and more 911s, 924s, 944s, 928s, 356s, and 914s than you could ever hope to own. Yet another amazing turnout.
As the kids settle into the new year in school, I'm hoping all of you adult types are also interested in more education - of the driving type, of course. The heat of summer is falling away (after this week, maybe, anyway) so the weather should be perfect for enjoying some fun with cars. The next couple of months have some good things in store so I thought I'd better do a quick review to make sure everyone has the info they need to plan for fun and education.
September is full of driving events for me - and hopefully for you too!! September 12 sees the Porsche Club annual Concours d'Elegance at Larz Anderson auto museum in Brookline MA. It will run all day and all the show-quality cars will be there for this one. The location alternates each year between this great spot and the Elms down in Newport. There is a Waterfire that night in Providence too, so make it a full weekend! Sunday, the 13th, is the summer season kid's karting championship race for my son on the joint track indoors at F1 Boston. He has finished up third in the points for the season and we'll see if he can add any additional hardware to his trophy case this time out.
There is an old debate rising up with new vigor lately: is high performance driving getting to be so dangerous that major changes need to be made? There has been a recent major incident (fatality) at Road Atlanta (RA) that seems to be spurring the online commentary and chatter. Heavy hitters like Ross Bentley (one of my favorite authors, of Speed Secrets fame) and Don Salisbury (founder of Blue Ridge SCCA region, Blue Ridge PCA safety head) have weighed in. And they say that horsepower is too high, speeds are too high, and danger is too high. And that changes need to happen.
These two highly-knowledgeable instructors propose that speeds on the straights at tracks for cars without roll cages be potentially limited. Ross Bentley says, "We either make cars have all the safety equipment, or we control speeds." When asked how he came up with the idea to limit speeds on track, Don Salisbury states, "That is easy: Structural integrity, kinetic energy and years of watching high speed incidents "tearing apart" and "balling up" cars in club and pro races with a large part of that being the heavier Showroom Stock cars. You have street cars without rollcages doing 150+ at some tracks. They were never designed to crash at those speeds."
There was an interesting counterpoint made by Mark Hicks, General Manager at Chin Motorsports.com, one of the largest private organizers of track day events. He contends, "In the last 5 years, I'm aware of 4 fatalities nationwide in track day/HPDE events: 2 involved running-off into trees after loss of control in a corner at tracks with inadequate safety barriers. 1 was a crash at corner exit that resulted in an injury that was exacerbated by an undisclosed medical condition (a normally healthy driver would have likely survived). And, the incident most recently at Road Atlanta, which happened on a straightaway. Applying a straightaway speed limit cannot be demonstrated to have a mitigating affect on a single one of the incidents described above. Even though the nationwide numbers of participants has increased in recent years, there's not a sudden spike in fatalities. In fact, fatality probability, as a factor of track miles driven, is probably at an all-time low."
Personally, I have enjoyed many side conversations (often on Facebook) on a related range of topics such as, "what exactly is the educational component of high performance driving education (HPDE)?" and "how is progress measured, especially if lap times are no longer applicable?"
It's mid-summer and hot. And a great time to enjoy driving! A few ACF members and friends took a trip down to Quonset Point to attend the July 19 session of ADSI's high performance driving school and autocross. I wanted to see how many of my cars I could get down there to experience so I enlisted the aid of Alex SdB and Mike M so we could manage three: the '07 997, the '86 944, and the '73 914.
Folks, one of our own from Providence and ADSI has had a spell of bad luck at a hillclimb at Okemo. Many of you probably know Jesse Whitsell, proprietor of Banchwerks - a great auto shop in Providence, fierce driver of an E30 M3 which spends most of its time going sideways, and all around great guy who is always ready to provide automotive advice and a helping hand.
Should you be so inclined, you can help him with medical bills and not being able to work for a while as he recovers from surgery.
I hope everyone is having a good summer and is getting excited for ADSI at Quonset on July 19th!!
Here is some breaking news! A very experienced driver–and a person I'm very happy to have recently met: Ron Savenor–has posted a much more in-depth look at the right way to get around Palmer Motorsports Park at speed. I found it pretty fascinating to compare his impressions to mine. The big takeaway for me is that I was throwing out too much of the theoretical line, thinking I was finding a faster way around the track. I now realize that it was faster largely because of my own limited skills! This info has helped me to see that I was on to something by observing the helpful camber in places on the track, but I was also leaving a lot of speed on the table by trying to cut corners too sharply. That was also probably hurting my tires a bit more than I should have been.
I hope you find it as instructional as I have. Thanks, Ron!
It's been almost one full year since I decided to put a helmet on my seven year old son and put him into a gas-powered racing vehicle for wheel-to-wheel racing. As he climbed into a kart at On Track Karting in Wallingford, CT yesterday, I couldn't help being struck by how much has changed and how much we've both grown in a year.
While you are all planning out your summer activities, block off this day on your calendars: 7/19 8am to 5pm. We'll be headed down to the autocross at Quonset Point in North Kingston, RI to be instructed by ADSI's crew. The morning will start at 8am with lessons until noon. From about 1pm to 5pm, the full autocross course will be up and running for timed runs and refining the skills learned in the morning.
Should anyone have forgotten how much you learn and how much fun it is, I'll just leave this here for you to refresh your memory (link to video):
What a surreal weekend with the Porsche Club at Palmer Motorsports Park in Palmer/Ware, Massachusetts this weekend! I still can't quite believe it actually happened. We had Thompson Speedway's road course come online last year in this region and had the joy of working to figure out that new track. And now this! And this one is unbelievably complex. How you ask? Try adding about 150 feet of elevation change per lap!! Let's take a minute to explore why that changes everything.
The fun of summer is well upon us folks! It's track season! And wedding season. And graduation season. And where the heck are my kids going to summer camp season. And all that fun too! But mostly track season! This weekend's main event is the ADSI autocross at Quonset. Most of you should be there.
I, oddly, will not be there. I'm going to be trying to not do anything stupid at the new track up in Palmer called Whiskey Hill or something like that. The PCA overlap with ADSI is rough this year for me, but such is life I guess. If you don't think it's quite so dramatic, take a look:
And here is Ron Savenor (those who've been on Charles Street in Boston may recognize the name) taking his Cup car around the course.
Our fellow ACF member Alex G. is supposed to be there with me so hopefully we'll learn this beast together. But in the mean time, I fully expect you all to get yourselves down to Quonset to enjoy the amazing driving at ADSI!! No excuses this time! And I promise I'll be a regular for the rest of the events after this one, especially when Anthony puts two in one month for July!!
So get this stuff on your calendars folks and get to some driving, will ya?