I'm still basking in the glow of a nice father and son weekend at VIR. Although I have been doing HPDEs for about 6 years now, I've never been able to get together with my son until now. Logistics were a challenge, as he used to live in Europe and now lives in Seattle. With his second child on the way, he decided it was now or never so we got lined up to attend the Tar Heel Sports Car Club DE at VIR last weekend. There is a single non-stop flight from Seattle to Raleigh on Alaska that he took last Friday. Interestingly, the flight took off and then after an hour returned to the Seattle airport due to a mechanical problem with the autopilot. When I heard this I got worried but they rounded up another plane and he got here, although 3 hours late. Then I got him up at 5 am (2 am his time) to head out for the track. This was his first DE ever and as you all who have been there know, the adrenalin kicks in and makes up for lack of sleep.

Another funny thing was on his very first laps he was squealing the tires threw turn 3. I didn't really expect that. It turned out that VIR had repaved the track recently and all the cars with street tires were squealing well below the tire limits. Some perfect storm of road surface conditions.

We shared the car and I was pretty much the bottle neck in the red group, as I was running very conservatively to make sure I didn't blow up the car, allowing my son maximum track time. My apologies to those that were running with me but I had plenty of fun point bys as we were allowed to point by anywhere on the track.

There were a goodly number of 944s in attendance and to me, the number of Caymans just keeps growing and growing. I see them dipping under $20K on Craigslist and start thinking "My next track car?".

We did not have any mechanicals but there was one near miss that I am happy I caught. My policy is to give the car a brief checkover at the end of the day Saturday, including a pretty detailed suspension check. I caught a potential accident waiting to happy in that the left rear wheel felt a little loose when I challenged it. It was not the lug nuts. The big central nut on the axle shaft was just starting to come loose. It hadn't even sheared off the cotter pin but I am sure that would have been next. Fortunately I caught it before the wheel fell off!

All in all a great weekend with my son at the track.

 

Sounds great. There will be a lot of 944s there this weekend for 944Fest, you should come out again!

 

I'll be in NYC with my granddaughter. Another of my favorite activities!

 

It was a great (albeit really hot) weekend there. I ran my white 951 in yellow group and also had same thoughts about Cayman (at some point). There were at least 3 GT4s there which looked pretty awesome.