Benton

Any pictures? Reports? I'm not finished with the track car yet so I decided to save my pennies.

Honkity Hank

No pictures but I can give a short report. Driving up on Saturday I figured I would be lucky to have any runs in the dry but as it turned out we did not get one drop of rain. Group 3 drivers got the shaft as incidents ended up black flagging two of thier sessions. By some reports they only got 5 laps under green the whole day. Groups 4 and 5 were well behaved though and we had good day of it..

Sunday was a weather disaster. Heavy rains closed the track until late morning, most runs were in the wet either with it raining or a wet track. Little full course dry conditions. Gave most plenty of wet track experience though which was fun for me anyway. Those concrete patches at 6, and 10a are rediculously non-grippy when wet! as is the grease strip at T5 apex. The little river at the bottom of the esses will get your attention if you aren't straight there too (you only need to discover that one time!)

A local(?) 904 made a showing as did a Lola although I don't know if the Lola ever took the track? The club did their usual excellent job of running the show and except for the track workers wanting to quit early on SUnday (cancelling our last group 4/5 run) the weekend went fine. Although there were a few spins on Sunday no serious carnage. Saturday's victims were at Turn 2/3 with a Corvette doing some heavy front end damage a nice E30 M3 getting flat bedded home. No injuries to the drivers so we were all relieved at that.

My car (not that anyone cares but me) ran great dispitte having power issues last outing in march with BMWCCA. Could never find any mechanical problems so maybe it fixed itself?

Tim Pruitt cooked up some good Brats on Saturday and Fried Turkey on SUnday, that alone is worth the price of admission. Oh and my cute 18 yr old's car broke down on Saturday so I did not have the pleasure of instructing her on Sunday.

Forms for August are on-line now.

Benton

Nice report! I was a bit worried about the rain on Sunday, sounds like it wasn't much fun for group 3. I saw the 904 last time I was there, seems like it was a replica? I can imagine that new strip at 10a can get pretty fishy when wet! Question: I've only done two DE's with PCA, but I will PCA let me be solo in August if I have done those two, a 3 day racing school (Bertil Roos, similar to Skip Barber but better) that allows me to get a racing license, and two solo DE's with Panoz?

RXDOC

Mark:
I am afraid you cannot do the August DE, without having a check-ride with the chief instructor, after being signed off by your DE instructor. Peachstate PCA is very strict with their solo sign-offs. I know because I was ready to be signed off last weekend. From 4-5 group 2 drivers that requested check-rides, 3 (I think) were approved to go SOLO. You will have to wait untill the October DE, sign up for group 2 and do the check-ride.

Honkity Hank

Red, You might give it a shot anyway, give Tom D. a call or shoot him an email to find out.

Alan C.

Peachstate is a bit uptight. They asked me to take a club racer out for a session to show him the track, I also had a student. Later they asked why I was still in the car with the club racer and I told them the guy had no clue as to how to drive on a track. Bottom line I couldn't get my student signed off who was a heck of a lot better than the club racer. However, they did let racer go out alone.

That was my last trip to Atlanta. Nice track but odd rules

Honkity Hank

Alan, if that was your first PCA event then please give it another try. That weekend was atypical due to the black flag incidents on Saturday and poor weather on Sunday. But I have to commiserate on the rules somewhat, seems that most clubs have their indiosycrancies.

Jeff
944 turbo
PCA Instructor

Alan C.

Jeff, No that was several years ago when they didn't have the kink at the bottom of the hill on the back straight. What fun!!!!

Honkity Hank

I wish I would of driven Road Atlanta without the kink, 12 can have a little pucker factor now but then I imagine it was another order of magnitude higher. Especially if someone was having an issue in front of you.

I almost ran up TT rear end on SUnday as I was expecting him to take 12 a bit faster, getting sideways at the bottom of the hill was not in my play book, without the kink it would of been uglier.

Jeff
944 turbo
PCA Instructor