Nashville Super Speedway track event

I picked the hottest day of the year (~100F ambient; track temp 130F?) and went running today with a big group of ZR-6 Corvettes.

The Phil Wicks Driving Academy (www.minidriving.com) put on a driving school for the Corvette guys and I was able to tag along. Other than the Vettes, there were a few Porsches, Mustangs, and one Lotus Esprit rounding out the field. I was the only F-car. Several women drivers, including the owner of the Lotus.

I learned a couple of things today. I honed up my driving skills for sure. It was a tricky layout - part asphalt road course, part cement oval. The transition area from the cement to the asphalt was very bumpy and tough to take at high speed. I kept feeling the my front spoiler was going to ground out although I never did see any sawdust in the rear view mirror from my legality plank

I also learned that, after doing a couple of these track events with a hodgepodge of other (generally more powerful) cars, some of these drivers are going to blatantly ignore passing instructions and get around you whenever they want. Several times I was passed without giving the passing signal. Sometimes I was passed in no passing zones (I was in the Intermediate Group). It got me extremely pissed and I confronted one of the guys after the session. I basically tore him a new butt-hole; trying to impress on him the danger of passing me on the left when I was coming up to a left turn. Don't know if it made a difference.

We did eventually clear the air and left as friends, but I learned that A) this will happen at these type of events, so be prepared for it and, Roman numeral B) it'd be better to go out in the Novice group if the boneheads in the Intermediate group can't follow the rules. Much less testosterone in the Novice group... but I'm not implying that the Novice group had any more women than in any other group: After our last session, one woman got out of her Vette, livid (and rightly so) that another driver (also a woman) had passed her on the wrong side. I don't blame her for being pissed! Just goes to show you that the brain dead do not favor one gender over the other.

The guys at Phil Wicks were great, though. I got some excellent instruction from a fellow named Dimitri who races Formula Vee when he not busy showing us 'pokes' how to drive a little less slow. We talked about Formula 1 all afternoon

I only had a chance to take a couple of pics with my phone. Not great but, hey... it's a phone!
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Make that Z06... I don't know Corvettes; can you tell?

 

Would love to. Maybe you K-ville guys could put together something this fall??