High Plains Drifter

I spent yesterday at HPR. The day was sponsored by Emich VW. It was too good a deal to pass up – just $80 for the whole day. As you might expect with a price like that, there was a good turnout. I didn’t ask about the car count, but the morning sessions were about as crowded as I’ve ever seen.

The weather early on was gorgeous – a bit cool, but sunny and pretty calm. About mid-morning Genae texted me, asking if it was windy yet. It wasn’t, but the calm didn’t last long. The wind came by late morning, with strong and prolonged gusts. On several passes down the highway straight the headwind was quite noticeable – no acceleration on the second cam in fifth gear. Between afternoon sessions, Scott and I found refuge in the wind shadow of a trailer, and tumbleweeds were a regular hazard both in the paddock and on-track. I never tried too hard to miss them and managed only to hit one or two. A Subaru came back from a session with a few big ones still stuck in the grill. They were stuck all over the chain link fence along the pit out.

As I said, the morning sessions were pretty crowded. With more cars, there were more incidents. Yellow flags were out a few laps in a row in the first two. But I did manage to get at least one clean lap each time,

I really had a blast in the car. My rear tires are completely shot, I should have bought new ones months ago, this was definitely their last hurrah. They’re done after thirteen thousand miles, but that includes nine track days.

2015-04-12 14.55.32sI had the car sideways several times in each session. Only one or two were big wobbles, all the rest were well under control. I laughed out loud with joy more than once. I am strongly under the illusion that I have good control of the car.

That said, I didn’t feel like I was as consistent as usual; as consistent as I want to be. I outbraked myself a few times and just plain missed apexes at others. But when I looked at the lap times after each session, my fastest laps each session were not more than two seconds between best and worst. My best lap was 2:16.14 and I had a theoretical best of 2:15.99.

I ran seven sessions for a total of 56 laps. I emptied my gas can into the car after the fourth and cut the seventh session short at 3 laps due to low fuel. I probably shouldn’t have done that last short session. At the end of the day, I asked Scott to follow me to the gas station in Byers in case I ran out. There, I pumped 10.1 gallons into my 10 gallon tank.

There were only a few familiar cars there. All the usual marques were represented, perhaps a more Corvettes and Camaros than usual, fewer Porsches. There was only one other Lotus, a 2005 Elise I hadn’t seen before. Supercharged, but with aged out tires. He was fast in the straights (he said he hit an indicated 135) but not much better than me in the turns. The oddballs of the day were two Vegas, one of which was a station wagon.

I have a busy week ahead and won’t have time to go through the video for a couple of weeks.