stownsen914

I'd say it depends a lot on how supportive or involved your spouse is in the hobby. My spouse was neither involved nor supportive, so I didn't do many track days for a bunch of years. The personal cost of going away for a weekend was too high for me, so the events just didn't happen. What worked for me during those years was going to "local" single day events. It wasn't much more time away from the family than if I'd gone to work those days.

PGas32

RossP

The only way I have seen this "work" for some people is to bring their families to the track with them. But this usually involves a motorhome/camper arrangement. Otherwise taking off for an entire day/weekend is normally out of the question with young kids around. I sold my truck, trailer, and race car last year because of this very issue. Hoping to arrive and drive the GT3 a few times next year but we will see!

mark kibort

I take them to the track. 6 and 4 was tougher, but i had friends that had kids that brought them along too. we camped at the track and had a blast. now, i take them to a few events as they are older. they hang out in the paddock. hey help change tires, take video, ride bikes around and we all go to dinner and stay in a hotel afterwards. fun father son weekend.

Sven76

Scott.

I have a 20 month old son and only made it to one track day in that time. Can't imagine doing it with two toddlers and dumping it on my wife while I jump in the car. We just went to Rennsport for vacation and he loved it but the first year was tough. It's a good time to stock up on parts and send the car off for upgrades though.

If you do overnight, get the best RV/Trailer as possible or you'll have angry wife and kid

johnny2five

First of all, I'm in the same boat as you and have struggled to find a good solution. But I found the above interesting. My wife has said I'm being selfish when choosing to go to the track. Can't say she's wrong. But I'm learning to give up other "selfish" things in order to go to the track occassionaly. Still not as much as I like but I'm learning how to balance I vs us/we/them/family.

gbuff

I live 2-4 hrs. from WGI, Mosport and Mid-O and all three do have one-day events. If you choose the right ones you'll have from 2.5 to 7 hrs of track time available to you in the one day. Some are two-day events but offer you the choice of either day, or both. I'm up at Mosport right now for an open lapping day tomorrow--track is open from 9 to 5 with an hour off for lunch; drive as much or as little as you want.

Gary

fatbillybob

My wife does not like the track. She is happy to have one less person in house to dirty it. Next week buy her shoes!

basil2000

ace37

I have an almost three year old and another on the way. We're planning to stop at three kids so more to come.

This is the core of it for me as well. I told my spouse I really want to do this one thing, so it's the only hobby I have that we make a family priority to facilitate. I told her I'd like to get out at least six Saturdays a year and I'd prefer eight when it works. I do local events and rarely more than one a month to keep the time away manageable. At the beginning of the year I get the PCA, NASA, and other schedules and put everything on an excel spreadsheet. We can then easily have the track event schedule in mind when planning low priority activities.

I don't find nearly as much time to work on the car as I had hoped so I am ending up having the shop do work I would rather do myself. We also use a yard care service to buy more weekend time together for bike rides and family activities. We may get a maid service too. We can do it all just fine but we'd prefer to have the extra time to spend as a family.

While time at the track could be called selfish, I am of the opinion that it's healthy and worthwhile for everyone to have a little bit of time to themselves for a hobby type pursuit. The real issue is it needs to be done in a balanced way that allows us to meet all of the needs of our families, and those needs vary dramatically.

A lot of my neighbors pursue hobbies like cycling or running, so several times a week they need an hour or two alone plus they go to periodic races. That takes comparable support from a spouse. Any hobby will take a decent amount of time.

My wife has two "hobbies." One is regular Disneyland trips (four day weekends as a family ~6 times a year) and another is doing little craft type decorating things (several hours here and there as she gets a new project). They aren't solo like track days but the overall sacrifices in temporal and financial terms are reasonably comparable so there is some balance. We don't monitor the costs closely either, we just try to be supportive.

I think there also needs to be a certain level of stability at home. I'm an engineer so my job is pretty amenable to a hobby like this (though the paycheck is a bit light for it!). My wife is a physician, and her previous job had her paid very well but she had to take call, evening, and weekend shifts, and at times she would be at the hospital many hours after her scheduled shift ended. She was overworked and unhappy. On this topic I got out to the track a lot less, and at times I would find I needed to skip an event just hours before it would start. I stopped working Fridays, and she took a significant pay cut to get a normal M-F work week with generous time off and benefits. That cut our income and we had to reduce discretionary spending quite a bit, but we had more than we needed anyway and we're much happier with this new arrangement. As a fringe benefit, getting to the track is much easier. Kind of made me think of the modified adage I heard recently, "I'd rather drive a slow car fast than a fast car once a year."

pu911rsr

I did a few track events when my kids were younger - decided to hang up the gloves for a few years, now they are old enough to drive and having more fun than ever.

wanna911

My wife is super supportive. Before kids, she never let me go to the track without her unless it was Road Atlanta 15 minutes away and even then she'd stop by at some point. We had our first child last October, I was at a NASA event in December. Unfortunately I was hit from behind at that event and then decided to take my time putting the car back together to spend more time with the baby. It's literally just getting finished this week. She like concerts with her friends, I like the track. I spend lots of time with my little girl, notify the wife of track days in advance, no problems. Probably won't travel much now though as I it's already enough work to get the car there.

I should add, my mother in law is local (1 hr) and relishes any chance to be with the baby. That helps too.

Get your days in. Take a full weekend with the kid(s), wife on date, earn yourself some free time, go to the track. But communicate well in advance. Hard to object when you have covered all your bases.


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Sweeper

When I was racing, Pam and Sam (12) would be my crew. Involving them was easier to manage. In fact they grew to love it, the friends and excitement made it for them.

UFGator911

I am working through the same issue! Four boys - 7, 4, 2, 2, (twins), so we are busy before factoring in the extras like little league (fall and spring in our area), scouts, etc. Throw in the fact that I am on the road at least a couple days almost every week and me taking off for a weekend is not easy (I missed the last two hunting seasons too).

I just got my 911 and am looking into track events. I am skipping the upcoming DE event outside Savannah as it would eat up the whole weekend. Keeping an eye our for any that are local enough I can do it in a day. PCA and non-PCA auto-x seem to have a pretty good number of events in the region, so I am looking for any that are on Sundays. The family may come to one here and there, I sneak out for one or two, and I figure that will let me get out every few weeks or so.

Summary - find something local, on a day without family stuff (sports, etc), and just get it on the calendar.