Happy New Year.

High Plains Raceway held their annual Customer Appreciation Day for 2012 yesterday. It was originally scheduled for last week, but was postponed due to the weather.

Scott and I met at the park and ride and drove out together. I think we first met at last year’s free day. The video I posted from that day has him waving me by at the end of the lap. He was quicker on the straights, but I had him in the turns. Since then he’s replaced worn brake parts and is now turning lap times a couple of seconds faster than me when I’m on my street tires.

Yesterday was a later start than usual – track opened at nine with a drivers meeting at 9:40 and hot track at ten. Two sessions were run each hour with the “slow” group for the first half hour and the “fast” group for the second half hour. I always run in the slow group on these open lapping days as there are quite a few race prepared cars. Yesterday I ran in four sessions, with the last session in the fast group. There were quite a few more cars in the slow group than the fast group, so I switched groups hoping to get a little more open space. I haven’t put a video together yet. Perhaps I’ll do a montage of all the times I got passed in that last session.

The weather was fairly nice for the first week of January. Sunny and in the low 40’s, but with a bit of a breeze that made things uncomfortable. Most folks were sitting in their cars to stay warm when they weren’t on the track. In the noon hour I took my picnic to the lunch area but retreated back to the car after a few bites of my sandwich. Too blustery for me.

There was quite a good turnout. I didn’t even try to count the cars. There might have been as many as 80. A fairly good variety with only a few familiar cars and faces. I was the only Elise but two Exiges showed up after a while so I wasn’t the only Lotus. There were several BMW’s, Porsches, and Corvettes. I don’t normally see any Honda S-2000’s but there were two yesterday – a black one with a giant wing on the back and one with a matte purple paint job and red wheels. A Ferrari showed up, but I don’t think he ever went on the track.

There was snow on the ground but the track was clear. There were quite a few places where the snow was right next to the track and occasionally somebody would cut a corner a bit and pull snow onto the racing surface. I had to modify my line all day through turn 1 as some snow kept melting on the inside of the turn. Hitting that little bit of water at speed in the turn was a real thrill; got a big wiggle there once, so I steered clear of it after that. Snow or water was in a few other places as well, so each time out started with a slow lap to make sure I knew where the danger spots were.

Everybody I talked to seemed to have a good time. But I guess that’s to be expected – every track rat will smile if you give him free lapping.

I hope to put a short video together in the next day or three and will post it here.