Originally Posted by Dave Pierson

This is from Skip Wolfe, our local PCA president, after his first experience at Daytona.... 170 mph. That is officially the speed that scares me when driving a car on a track. Until last month, the fastest I have ever been on the track about 150-160 mph, and that never bothered me. However, this past month I got a chance to drive a GT3 on Daytona International Speedway and exceeded 170 mph almost every lap and it scared me every time. Dave Pierson started the Audi Club Drivers Ed event at Daytona about 8 years ago, and has a big contingent of Northern Ohio track junkies who have religiously gone down every year. While he has been trying to convince me to come down since its inception, I have never been able to swing it. However, this year, I didn’t have any scheduling conflicts and when Kent Winter invited me to drive his GT3 down there, I couldn’t resist. I know now that Daytona is not just another track and this is not just another event. I flew down the Thursday before the event started and Dave came and picked me up from the airport which is right next to the track. To get into Dayton, you have to drive through a tunnel which goes under NASCAR Turn 1, and as soon as you exit the tunnel you see Turn 1 looming over you. At 31 degrees, the high banked turn looks like a wall and holy s*@# was the only thing I could think of to say. It looked like there was no was a car could hold onto such steep banking. The rest of Thursday was spent checking out the facility which was just spectacular. Everything is first class and larger than life. I got my first ride Friday morning with Patrick Hawkins in his 996 TT, and was blown away. We were running the Rolex 24 configuration with the infield road course and all three banked turns of the tri oval. The infield course is a straight forward road course that is fairly easy to learn. So when we came out of the pit into the road course it was no big deal. But then we exited T6 of the infield course and went up onto the high banked T1 and holy s*@# was once again the only thing I could say while Patrick laughed at me. It is a very surreal feeling to be going around a corner and feel yourself forced down into the seat as the car accelerates. The curvature and steepness of the banking makes it so that you only see asphalt out of the front and rear windows – no horizon. Look out the right window and you see the wall flying by you at 150+ mph and out the left window you see the ground. I spent the next three days in sensory overload as I continued to learn the track and get used to the speeds. I would routinely get to about 175 mph on the front straight which is actually an 18 degree turn. It scared me every single time and I would always lift a ways before the braking zone where I would be braking from the fastest point on the track to the slowest corner. Chip Herr, a pro driver who was instructing fellow NORPCA member Joe Lombardo, took Kent’s GT3 out and kept his foot in it until the last minute and was able to hit 186 mph at which point he would stand on the brakes, make the 6-5-4-3 downshift, and dance the car into Turn 1 of the road course. What an unbelievable experience, and I highly recommend giving it a try.

Originally Posted by sailacat34

Certainly not one to be missed!

Dave and Craig run a great event!

See you guys in December!