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Finally able to get on a track yesterday

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A friend and I went to the GoodGuy's event at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

First they had an autocross setup. We got there late so I only got 2 runs. My first time ever on an autocross track.

I did a 44.5 sec first run and the second run, halfway through I realized 2nd gear was much better than 1st and I was down to 43 secs.

The "ringers" of the event were running in the 39's. (These were mostly cars by tuner companies there. One guy in a 9x model vette ran in the 39's but he races and won the late model class. It definitely wasn't his first rodeo.

Note you couldn't run a tire with a tread rating less than 180. So I was running my Hankook V 12's. Even still, the car nor the tires were the weakest link of the equation on that day.

An older camaro busted a radiator hose and soaked the track and they killed the last 45 minutes.

It was fun. I got quite a bit of ribbing though from the announcer.

FYI for those worried about taking out the baffles because of noise, I wouldn't. My car sounded like an electric car compared to chargers, vettes, Camaros and late model cars out there. Car is much louder inside than it is outside. My friend was rolling when I came off the track. After watching the video and hearing the announcer; I was too after hearing the comment, "And the car with 14 catalytic converters completes his first run."

Also, I didn't adjust the shocks any and ran them on the factory settings.

For comparision, a guy went out in a new Charger before me. His first lap was 51 secs. He didn't seem to be able to make any of the turns. Course while watching, not sure much of that was the car's fault.

At the closing of the event we got to run 3 laps around the big track. I was torn about waiting all day just to drive around the track at 70mph. But I asked at registration if we were limited. The guy just said get in the back and hang back and let everybody go but he would never say if there was a limit.

So I got in the back with a new GT 500. First lap we waited for everyone to clear the back straight and went into the 1st turn at about 110. Fun but pretty much uneventful.

The next lap we picked it up and I'm guess we were going over 130mph through turns 3 or 4. I didn't take my eyes off the car in front of me to look. (We stayed behind them about a half a turn to be safe.)

Well we were ready to cook on the final lap. But they had a pace car truck behind us and to put it mildly he wasn't to happy judging by the hand gestures.

So the first day on the track, got kicked off for going too fast. (Apparently there was a limit.) But it was fun. I would think going around CMS at 155mph wouldn't be much of an issue with the banking and that would probably get old after a couple different times when you get used to the speed. But it is pretty cool to feel the effects of going into a high banked turn.

I think I liked the autocross better. Maybe because it was a competition. The hardest thing was trying to get the image of Eddie Griffin and the Enzo out of my head going through the turns with barriers outside them.
 

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