Practice, Practice and more Practice
It turns out we didn't get much practice with the Tarheel Sports Car Club last weekend at VIR. Our RX-8 wasn't ready, but the ROAR guys brought up the #26 RX-8. It was 35 degrees, and poured rain from the start. Then the snow started heading in, so the driver's school was cancelled after the first on-track session! So I don't have any good material to post on that.
Danny and I are plotting how we can get more seat time in the RX-8 before the upcoming VIR race. Pro racers on the top teams are probably getting on track every week, so we need to do the same, or at least more than once per month. You can't compete with the Michael Jordans of the sport if you don't put in the time. Driving the car has to be second nature, and for us its not (just watch our video and you can see that!). Plus the car has to be sorted out some more. Not only do we have to solve this fuel problem, but we have many small improvements to make. Getting the car on track will allow us to test our fixes.
Before the VIR Grand Am race, we'll probably just do some "drivers ed" type events - we're not sure we want to risk the car in a club race (but we haven't ruled that out). There are dozens of opportunities for such events, as you can see from Coco Strayer's website, www.trackschedule.com .
Therefore the next event for us will be the BMWCCA drivers ed event at Roebling, the weekend of February 25/26 ( http://www.firstcoastbmw.org/ ). We expect to have the #63 car there.
If all goes well, I'll most likely post another story on the main site, www.GrandAmAdventure.com/ga_main.html
Thanks for reading,
Mark