"There is another....."
I treated my son Zack for his High school graduation gift to his first day of driving on a race track/ HPDE driver's school. He as been with and working in the coupe since he was in diapers. As a reward for graduating hs and getting into college, he earned the opportunity and was now old enough (18) to drive on track.
We took the coupe to Northern California's Thunderhill Raceway 'big 5 mile track' HPDE event hosted by NCRC.
The big 5 mile track, their two road courses combined, makes for a special day. He and I first did 6 years ago when it was only 3 days old....now he was old enough to be on track.
The 50 year old coupe was the oldest car in attendance by decades represented admirably. It was 109 degrees....
I ran in the Open Class and Zack in Novice group with an instructor. The coupe soldiered through my severe floggings and zack's doing nine 20 minute sessions. Only other car doing that many sessions was a NA Miata racer be shared by two drivers like us.
My 'Arctic Wind' cooling set up did its job very well, but the brutal 109 degree heat did show its hand in that oil and water temps got pushed to 220 in the last sessions. We noticed a loss in power towards 5000 rpms. Power did come back on the drive home after the old girl was aloud to finally rest for a couple hours as we very leisurely broke down camp. We were ALL tired, but we survived the brutal heat.
As for my son's driving, well let's just say 'There is another...' .He took me out for the last session of the day where we had the entire track to ourselves (Sole Suvivors of the Novice group). His coach showed him some nice lines through some corners where he's was going faster through than I was! "Yeah! Go Son! Get some!" It was fun learning/seeing his 'coached' line compared to my 'improvised' one.
We both learned about the track and car yesterday.
Truly , another grand day out.
I treated my son Zack for his High school graduation gift to his first day of driving on a race track/ HPDE driver's school. He as been with and working in the coupe since he was in diapers. As a reward for graduating hs and getting into college, he earned the opportunity and was now old enough (18) to drive on track.
We took the coupe to Northern California's Thunderhill Raceway 'big 5 mile track' HPDE event hosted by NCRC.
The big 5 mile track, their two road courses combined, makes for a special day. He and I first did 6 years ago when it was only 3 days old....now he was old enough to be on track.
The 50 year old coupe was the oldest car in attendance by decades represented admirably. It was 109 degrees....
I ran in the Open Class and Zack in Novice group with an instructor. The coupe soldiered through my severe floggings and zack's doing nine 20 minute sessions. Only other car doing that many sessions was a NA Miata racer be shared by two drivers like us.
My 'Arctic Wind' cooling set up did its job very well, but the brutal 109 degree heat did show its hand in that oil and water temps got pushed to 220 in the last sessions. We noticed a loss in power towards 5000 rpms. Power did come back on the drive home after the old girl was aloud to finally rest for a couple hours as we very leisurely broke down camp. We were ALL tired, but we survived the brutal heat.
As for my son's driving, well let's just say 'There is another...' .He took me out for the last session of the day where we had the entire track to ourselves (Sole Suvivors of the Novice group). His coach showed him some nice lines through some corners where he's was going faster through than I was! "Yeah! Go Son! Get some!" It was fun learning/seeing his 'coached' line compared to my 'improvised' one.
We both learned about the track and car yesterday.
Truly , another grand day out.
