Please contact me to learn more about the Drive & Race Club in Monticello, N.Y. Introductory membership opportunities are now being offered. I can be contacted at 914-474-4151 (cell) and at [email protected] Ron Cohn Ferrari Track Instructor
Please answer these questions here on Fchat: Do you have all the permits in hand? Are you laying the tarmac yet? If someone does join and the track is not built within a year, do you provide a full refund? You see, have invested into a track before and so far... nothing. No tarmac, and worse still i am cautious about signing contracts that have vague mention of 'fees' that are not specified. It is like paying for property you never own nor have any rights to. Worse still, you can be eliminated with no notice, for almost any reason, and not receive a refund. As i understand it, most of these tracks will probably offer track days to clubs such as FOC/FCA, and that seems more attractive. Please reply here so others can learn about the permits and if the tarmac is being laid down. Many thanks.
As i see it, he comes here and DIVE BOMBS posts and then disappears. He has NEVER answered ANY questions that i have posted as best i can recall so it makes me truly wonder if they are being 100% honest. If they are honest, i am sure they will answer my simple questions here on Fchat shortly. BE WARNED GUYS, there appears to be a HUGE market for taking LARGE sums of YOUR money with vague contracts and no tarmac. Anyone can own land, but look at what you pay and what you get to OWN. Do you OWN anything? Do you have ANY solid legal rights to anything physical or that the market values and can be resold? ALWAYS SEEK LEGAL ADVICE BEFORE SIGNING ANY CONTRACT! Am sure your lawyer will get a kick out of their contracts and offer quality advice. Mr. Montecello track guy, would you agree to seek legal council before signing your contracts? Oh, wait, he never seems to reply to these threads. My apologies and hope he does reply.
I am the Sales Director for The Drive & Race Club in Monticello, NY. I found this thread by chance today as I am signing up Ferrari owners on a weekly basis and thought I would search FerrariChat to see if anyone was talking about us. Ron Cohn has been helping us network. I apologize that your questions went unanswered. Today is the first I have seen them. I can be reached via the website www.driveandrace.com Some Facts about the Drive & Race Club: Approvals are in hand. We are privately funded (except for the mortgage on the land). We have cleared over 3 miles of the circuit in 6 weeks. Care for a tour? The track will be over 3 miles in length. We are at the site of the former Monticello Airport. Noise restrictions are not in play here. We are not hosting club events nor are we running any sanctioned racing events because the members get the track 6 days a week including Saturdays and Sundays. We have hired Mark Hales as our Racing Director and Chief Instructor www.markhales.com He will live at the track! If you would like to speak to him, I can arrange it. We will have excessive run-off around the track with soft barriers at the perimeter. Drivers will be grouped by vehicle type and experience level. We will also have Touring Sessions with a limited number of cars and limited or no passing. We plan to have over 100 cars available to rent from a variety of sources to give members the opportunity to drive the widest variety of sportscars and racecars. If you have a track car that you want to rent to others, we can help you recoup some of your investment while maintaining ownership of it. We are seeking 100 individuals to make up the Founding Members. The current Initiation Fee is 100K. This buys you a 99 year lease for use of the track and facilities. An initial deposit of 25K is submitted and placed in a segregated account. If we (for some reason) do not attract 100 members by December 2007, your deposit is refunded. Once we reach 100 members, we will call on the balance of the Initiation Fee. There will be a limit of 500 members. The membership is transferable or sellable (at market rate) once the club has 475 members. The developer is an attorney and has painstakingly made the membership agreement as explicit and detailed as possible (14 pages). The mild Winter has allowed us to exceed our expectations and move ahead of schedule in our 30 phase project. We will have a drivable path of the circuit (in an SUV) this week. The track is scheduled to be open in the Spring of 2008. I have been in the racing business for 7 years and invite all of you to contact me to discuss this amazing new roadcourse. I am conducting tours of the property regularly. If a new racetrack wasn't enough, the Catskills is going through a resurgence with the pending approvals of a casino at the Monticello Raceway, a Ritz Carlton at the site of the Concord Hotel, and the just opened Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (anyone heard of Woodstock?) yup, 8 miles away. All this 90 miles from NYC! Sincerely, David O'Hara www.driveandrace.com
Ha. I've already raced there when it was still an airport. Hold the 2WD fastest time runway time when it was a special stage at Rally NY. ZoomZoom. Image Unavailable, Please Login
We all wish you well in building the track. This is not a new idea and I can think of at least 6 different attempts at this concept within 100 miles of the Metro NY area. A number of these have been very well funded and not one has ever made it to the point of laying asphalt. I don't want be negative but while you may believe you have all the permits in hand, have cleared all the land and you are well on your way to realizing the dream of every track enthusiast. This project obviously hasn't yet made it on the radar screens of the groups like the Sierra Club, and other tree hugging, save the spotted owl nut cases. Add to that the fact you are trying to do it in a liberal state that blindly follows Al Gore's delusional rants that cars are the cause of global warming and that they should all be destroyed. They have tied up other such projects for years even though they had all the permits too. And after you get past those groups there are at least 4 other ones that will rear their ugly head. And that is before cheering bunch from ELF turns up. All I can say is good luck, we wish you well and hope you succeed. But forgive us if we take a wait and see position. Joe Beware a Liberal with a cause.
AMEN! -Peter (too tired of trying to teach people how to drive and race on Alan's "technical" course designs...)
I fourth that motion. If you've driven any real road courses and then drive an Alan Wilson design, you will know.
Alan's first commercially successful design in this country was Gingerman Raceway about ten years ago. Then, he was hired to do Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, South Carolina. He called it "Gingerman on steroids." It has a nice, reasonably quick and flowing Eastern section combined with a terrible, tight and very abusive (on the car and on the driver) Western section. After that, he became "course designer du jour" for the road course "building boom" in this country. Part of it was because he was "in the business" and "recognized" so that he could guide track owners through the laborious approval, construction, sanctioning body morass and insurance underwriting process. His more successful designs include Barber Motorsports Park and BeaveRun. His less successful designs include CMP and some say MMP. He gained his experience managing Brands Hatch and now runs Miller Motorsport Park. His wife, Desire, is a recognized driver. His design for the Salibury, NC track, High Rock Raceway, ran into such strong resistance from drivers that the owner replaced Wilson with EFR!
yeah i have never really driven any "real road courses" so i dont know. but i was just curious since i had seen his name around. it seems Alan Wilson really stresses safety, atleast what i have seen. which i guess isnt to bad, probably makes him sleep well at night. who are some of the best designers out there if you want a true road course? who in the usa designs road courses that one might see in europe? and finally what are the costs for such a project like this? design/construction of a road course say 3.5-4.0 miles in length. Thanks for any input/advice.
You got it, it's all about safety and liability these days. Places with character like the Glen, Mosport, Laguna Seca, VIR, Road America will never be built again. Exclusive Elements of the Alan Wilson Design Rulebook: - decreasing-radius corner combinations - one long straight - one increasing radius corner Given today's legal climate, perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on the guy...
"His more successful designs include Barber Motorsports Park and BeaveRun." Peter! Yikes! BeaveRun???? Have they finished the build-out of the long course? I've been there a couple times for SCCA events, and I found it to be two straights plus an autocross course. I'd choose Nelson Ledges over BeaveRun - at least Nelson is fast.
How about this place by the folks that brought you VIR, for those of you willing to travel to this area. It should be a blast. http://www.njmotorsportspark.com/html/in_the_news.html Chris syncspeedinc.com
I don't know, I've been to BeaveRun once for a double race weekend, got outside pole once, class pole twice and led both races until I went off at T10 passing a backmarker in the 1st race and until oil went down and I pussied out in the 2nd race. <grin> I was driving a quick car under 1 minute laps, so that might have had something to do with it... <very big grin> I thought the T1-T4 complex was a lot of fun and I LOVE T7, falling off the other side of a blind brow and coupling that with a camber loss at 80 mph is my idea of fun, but you're right, it's still a piddly track until we see what the rest of it looks like. I remember "crazy man" Pfeffer! You know, Steve drove a wicked fast 356 in vintage before his Pro career. He was a LOT of fun to have around. Did you ever see his 911-powered 356 street car? Awesome! -Peter (man, I'm getting old...)
Don't think so, but ..... These "country clubs" are popping up all over the place. Was approached about a BIG one just east of Dallas and the one in Georgia seems to be for multi-millionaires only. Feff Feff
"and I LOVE T7, falling off the other side of a blind brow and coupling that with a camber loss at 80 mph is my idea of fun" I completely agree about T7, that one was well designed and fun. "I remember "crazy man" Pfeffer! You know, Steve drove a wicked fast 356 in vintage before his Pro career. He was a LOT of fun to have around. Did you ever see his 911-powered 356 street car? Awesome!" My wife is a distant relative of Steve, we saw him occasionally at tracks - and crazy he was! We've lost touch now, I hope he's well.
