Monday, September 28

Sitting in the hotel lobby, munching on my plain Starbucks bagel with plain cream cheese, I reminisced about the LOG in Austin, where an Einstein Bagel was a block away . Ah, how I’d love to have an Asiago cheese bagel with onion and chive schmear. I was brought out of my reverie when, through the atrium roof, I saw what looked suspiciously like a flash of lightning. My suspicions were confirmed a few moments later by another flash. It looks like we’re in for a wet morning.

Chad and I headed off to the track. I don’t know how many names this place has had. It used to be Miller Motorsports Park. When we were here in 2021, it was the Utah Motorsports Campus. Today it’s West Desert. The current name is apt, as the place is in the desert west of SLC.

Not long after getting onto I-80W, we drove through a pretty good shower. It let up, then reintensified, then let up again. By the time we got to the track, we’d passed under a few cells. Things didn’t look good to the west at all.

We got there a few minutes after 8, thinking we were only a few minutes late, but the schedule had changed, and the drivers’ meeting was at 7:30. They were surprisingly casual about us missing it. In lieu of the twenty-minute-plus meeting, we were simply told where to line up to enter the track. We got signed in, had our helmets inspected, put group stickers on our cars, and were good to go.

Usually, I put all my stuff on a tarp wherever I’m parked in the paddock. With it raining, I wanted my stuff inside. I looked around and didn’t see that anybody else had brought anything in. I was told to just put it out of the way in the garage where we’d have lunch. Once I brought my things in, lots of other folks did, too.

We were both in group C, the advanced group. They told us the car count for intermediate, B, and advanced. There were only about 2/3 as many cars in intermediate, and I said I’d like to switch. He kinda brushed me off, said I should stick with C, and I didn’t push too hard. So, C it was.

This is a Hooked On Driving event. About a third of the cars here today are Lotus. I didn’t see any non-Lotus cars that were less than double the horsepower of my car. And, most likely, nobody is on worse tires than me. I have the street wheels, not the track wheels. The tires are hard, and I probably should have replaced the rears before this trip. They’d be okay if it was sunny and warm, but cold and rain will make them entertaining.

This is my first track day in the US where they wanted us to have our windows up and to use turn signals for point-bys. In Europe, it’s windows up and signal the direction you are going; in the US, it has always been windows down, point-by with arm signals. Today, it’s windows up and use the turn signal to indicate where you want the passing car to go. I’m not a fan.

I drove this track five years ago, but back then we did the outer loop. This time, we’re doing the full course. The outer course is three miles long and has fourteen turns. The full course is four-and-a-half miles and twenty-three turns. So, although I’ve been here, I basically need to remember the bits I’ve driven before and learn the equivalent of a whole new track.

For the first session, I left the soft top on and didn’t mount any cameras. All day, we’ll be running twenty-minute sessions. I prefer half-hour ones, but only HPR seems to do them. It’s a long lap, particularly when you’re going slow. I was going slow because if I tried to push, the car would go sideways. I spent a lot of time looking out the side windows of the car. I managed to keep it on the track and never spun it, but I was sideways a lot. In the first session, I got two timed laps, plus an out lap and an in lap. The two timed laps were pretty close to five minutes each. I’m not going to get many laps.

We had a quick meeting after that first session. They said a dark green Lotus’ left turn signal wasn’t working. That’d be me. I had no idea. Everybody passed me every time I signaled, except the guy behind me on the checkered flag lap. I’ll do the rest of the day with windows down and arm signals.

The left turn signal situation is annoying. It worked for a couple of years after I bought the car, then failed. We tried everything. Then, magically, a couple of years later, it started working again. That’s how it’s been – work for a while, then fail for a while. I was pleasantly surprised that when we did the engine swap, it magically started working again. Failing again so quickly is disappointing, but not unexpected.

The rain let up a bit for the second session. I ran without the top and had the cameras going. The slightly drier conditions didn’t help me. I wasn’t any faster, and I was still sideways way too often. Again, just two timed laps. I was getting lost, confusing turns 6 and 9. The place is not quite billiard-table flat, and there are no landmarks. There wasn’t any water running across the track, but there were a few puddles on my line. I’m enjoying the challenge, in a way, but I’d feel more comfortable if there was less traffic.

After the second session, I switched to group B, using my hard, worn tires as the excuse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, “cold tires” is the excuse of the neophyte, and it’s a poor carpenter who blames his tools. It was a good decision, though.

At lunch, somebody asked me if I’d checked out the cars in one of the garages. I hadn’t, but now I was curious. I was not disappointed. The first one I came to was a Lamborghini Huracan STO. They made just under 30,000 Huracans, with in the neighborhood of 10,000 of these selling in the USA. It’s the most popular Lamborghini, and they’ve made more than a dozen variants. The STO (Super Trofeo Omologato) is a track-focused version. I don’t know how many of this version were produced, but you can pick one up for $400,000 or so.

Next was the Aston Martin Valhalla. This is as close as you can get to a Red Bull F1 car for the road. It’s a mid-engine plug-in hybrid that pumps out more than a thousand horsepower. They made 999 of these, and if you look around, you can probably find one for about a million dollars. This one looked to be brand new, still sporting protective wrappings in the interior.

Finally, I came to the McLaren. It’s the sixth edition of the McLaren Ultimate Series, which started with the McLaren F1. This baby is a track-only mid-engine beast with a V-10 based on a Judd engine. It’s not as powerful as the Valhalla, but it’s quite a bit lighter. It’ll make your bank account considerably lighter, as they only produced 25 of these babies, and they’re going for in excess of $3 million.

I don’t know why these cars are here today, but it was pretty cool to see them. I suppose it’s possible I’ll see another Huracan in the wild, but not likely it’ll be this STO version. The other two, though, are unicorns. About the only cars I’ve ever seen that were produced in smaller numbers were concept cars, which are unique.

I went back to the garage where we tended to hang out between sessions and grabbed a sandwich. Chad and I sat next to a guy named John. John served in Germany and often took his car to Spa and the Nürburgring. He’s run over a hundred laps on the Nordschleife and has lapped the Grand Prix course. I told him I had an American coach when I lapped the Nordschleife, a guy born in Missouri. John said, “Was it Nashe? We served together.” He showed me a photo. Small world, eh?

It rained on and off in the afternoon. One session, the track had developed a mostly dry line. In between sessions, I draped the soft top over the cabin and covered the camera with a towel. The rain was never heavy, and if you go fast enough, not much rain comes in the cabin. When I was getting out of the car after a session, a gal walking by told me, “You’re crazy out there!” I immediately wondered what I’d done, but she was still talking: “Driving without a top!”

I ran into a guy I met at the LOG in Austin. I’m so bad with names, I’ve forgotten it. He drives a turquoise Evora, a pretty car. We share some geography. We’ve both lived in Toledo and Ft. Myers. He’s got the track bug at least as bad as I do. He’s been to 34 or 35 tracks and wants to ship his car to Europe to bag a bunch over there. I empathize, brother; I feel your pain. My name is Dave, and I’m an addict.

I cut 36 seconds off my time in the third session, and 18 more in the fourth. I didn’t run Happy Hour because it rained again. I managed to run five laps in each session in the afternoon, for a total of 14 for the day. There are tracks where I get 14 laps in a single session.

It’s the first time I’ve driven on a wet track in the Lotus. I lost traction dozens of times but never put a tire off the track and never spun. I improved every session. I saw some incredible cars and talked to a bunch of people who share one of my passions.

Chad and I finished the day with dinner at Rabbit’s Foot Brewery.

It was a fun day.