{"id":1593,"date":"2015-03-23T13:40:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T19:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.grunschev.com\/wordpress\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2018-02-24T15:28:58","modified_gmt":"2018-02-24T22:28:58","slug":"altezza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/2015\/03\/altezza\/","title":{"rendered":"altezza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday night Michael and I went to the premiere for the altezza Drive Resort<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the last couple years I’ve been hearing that somebody was threatening to build a new racetrack somewhere in the area. I’d never heard anything definite and I didn’t give it much thought as I’m perfectly happy going to HPR a few times a year. Then, a few days ago I got an email from Auto-Archives<\/a> about the premiere of altezza (I’m told it’s always lower case). I was intrigued. From their video I figured becoming a member would be beyond my means but the premiere is a free meal and a presentation by Al Unser, Jr. And I might run into some LoCo people.<\/p>\n

It was held at Exdo Event Center, an exhibit place downtown, north of Coors Field. From the map, there didn’t look to be much parking so I thought it best to arrive a bit on the early side. Michael and I left the house at 6:00 and got there just before the doors opened. Their little parking lot was full. Rule #1 of driving an Elise is “Never parallel park” but I found a spot between two driveways where nobody could park near me.<\/p>\n

We got raffle tickets when we walked in. In addition, Auto-Archives was raffling off a big prize – a Base membership to altezza. The Base membership goes for a cool $10,000. Tickets were ten bucks for one, twenty bucks for three. There weren’t that many people there, certainly not more than a couple hundred. How many would buy tickets? Pondering it a little bit I figured it was much better to buy three than one. I never carry any cash, so I was thinking I didn’t have the $20. I asked Michael if he had ten bucks. He doesn’t have any cash at all. Turns out I had twenty so I bought my three tickets. I never win anything, but what the heck.<\/p>\n

After a while, they open up the curtains and let us in the main area of the room. They have a stage at one end and a bunch of round tables with chairs. A buffet is set up in the back, and a cash bar is on the side. They show us the video that’s on their website, then do a little introduction: altezza is Italian for “altitude”; they own the land, they have a Hermann Tilke design, they would have broken ground on Thursday if it hadn’t rained. “Grab some food and then we’ll show you another video.”<\/p>\n

After we ate they showed a video of the track generated by software by Hermann Tilke Engineering. A bit like a video game, they showed us various views of the track with a few cars running on it. Looks like a pretty cool track. In the video they talk about elements from European tracks. This one will have a carousel much like the old Nurburgring. They’ll be able to run both directions and by using various cutoffs they can run something like 15 different configurations. I smiled when they said the track was designed to “provoke driver error”.<\/p>\n

Two representatives of Hermann Tilke went into more details of the facility – garages, clubhouse, kart track, paddocks, RV parking. The track itself is a grade 2 FIA track. They said the only difference between a grade 1 and grade 2 track are infrastructure – having a media center capable of handling 500 people, a 5,000 capacity VIP area, more garages, and so on. But from the perspective of the track itself, it’s F1 ready. It will handle the speed of those cars and the safety features are up to the same level. Pretty cool.<\/p>\n

They wrapped up with a brief Q&A session and then had Al pull the raffle tickets from a bucket. First up were the prizes from Wine Country Motorsports. They gave away four or five items including a pair of driving shoes and a jacket. Surprisingly, Al called out several numbers that nobody claimed. I was hoping to win the shoes. I need a pair for my Road America race next month, and these were red to match my suit. Al called out 3365. I had 3364. Missed it by one! For the jacket, it was one off Michael’s ticket.<\/p>\n

The last prize was the Base membership. Al had been calling out the last four digits of the number on the coupon. He pulls a ticket out of the bucket and calls off the numbers. But this time he decides to read five digits. It takes me a second to realize I had the winning ticket. I had to read it twice. I yell out “Bingo!”<\/p>\n

\"DSC_9262sm-\"<\/a>

Al Unser, Jr., Jo Taylor of Auto-Archives, and me. Photo courtesy of William Taylor.<\/p><\/div>\n

I can’t believe it. I never win anything. I pass William on my way to the stage and shake his hand with a big grin. Up on the stage I shake hands with everybody, get my picture taken. Afterward I got Al to autograph the certificate and exchanged a few words with him. I told him I was a big Champcar fan but haven’t followed IRL. Naturally, he pitched the IRL.<\/p>\n

Anywho, the track is currently scheduled to open first quarter of next year. By which I assume April 1. I’ll be excited if they get it done by June 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday night Michael and I went to the premiere for the altezza Drive Resort. For the last couple years I’ve been hearing that somebody was threatening to build a new racetrack somewhere in the area. I’d never heard anything definite … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,277],"tags":[151],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cars","category-meet-the-pros","tag-altezza"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Dave","author_link":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/author\/dhill\/"},"yoast_head":"\naltezza - Nobody is Listening<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/2015\/03\/altezza\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"altezza - Nobody is Listening\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Saturday night Michael and I went to the premiere for the altezza Drive Resort. 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