ML///

was the car okay at the 5:15 mark - they spun in front of you

Rob in VA

He luckily missed the wall.

GiuseppeM

Any news on the track?

Jabs1542

It's up and running. If you are local to the area and want to get on it send me a pm.

Gator_86_951

Now that this track has been running for some time, what is the consensus? It seems OK for a DE to me, which is what I would do there. Not sure I would ever really want to wheel to wheel race there. It is super close to me.

Manifold

Maybe somebody can put up a recent video and we can see if the runoff and safety have gotten any closer to meeting minimum tolerable standards.

Jabs1542

Runoff and walls are all the same, the only change in the last few months has been curbing.

The best way to get a feel for the track is to drive it. I'm a member there, let me know if you are interested in trying out the track. The fee is $200 and while most dates are weekdays we do get a weekend day or two each month.

Manifold

I've studied the track in some depth, including inspecting it a while back. The fundamental problem is that the people who designed it clearly had no clue regarding track safety, so now some of the issues are difficult and expensive to fix.

For example, it was a big mistake to put a large stormwater management pond at the one end of the track, resulting in tall embankments with steep slopes and barrier right at the edge of the pavement, leaving no runoff. Another big mistake was building a bridge with an opening much too narrow to provide sufficient runoff and with wingwalls susceptible to head-on impact, and then at the exit of the turn past the bridge you have a tall embankment with another stormwater management pond and trees behind it. I could go on and on.

To someone who knows what to look for, these problems are very evident from videos, photos, and other publicly available info. This track is going to have serious incidents which wouldn't have happened if the track was properly designed. The problems can be fixed, but I doubt the owners will spend the money to do that, as long as people continue to use the track without complaining too much. Everybody wants a new playground to play in (me included), but playgrounds shouldn't have avoidable land mines.

Jabs1542

While I agree with your comments I find it interesting that there has been quite a bit of racing with no more incidents than I see anywhere else. A little history:

The walls around the retention pond were due to the environmentalists, it has to do with the track drainage into the Po river. That being said, it's clear they could construct strong side walls along the pond itself thus allowing the track side walls to be pulled back. BTW - this looks like an expensive fix.

The overpass is narrow and I have no idea what they were thinking. We did have one pretty bad incident there when someone lost control on the previous turn, tried to fight it, shot across the track, and struck the overpass concrete on the left nearly head on. However, we all know to plan our bail outs and if he had let it ride off on the outside he would have harmlessly stopped in the gravel run off (as I have done once).

What you didn't mention or notice were the esses coming up the back straight. Much like the esses at VIR you have to set these up correctly prior to entry. Smart drivers know to set up the esses, have a 'go - no go' point, and either dig hard and go or just push positive throttle through. The problem are those that hit it too fast, find themselves deep in the second ess and then discover they need to slow down - bad things happen here. My g-meter goes +1g full right on entry, quickly to -1g full left in the right hand second ess, to +1g full right on the left hander out. The meter literally bounces hard back and forth like a ping pong ball.

Overall it's a challenging track and I don't find it any scarier than WGI.

Manifold

The perception that the track is risky due to the walls, etc. will naturally cause drivers to adjust their driving to mitigate some of the risk. Nevertheless, the deficiencies of this track are such that I anticipate that there may be some especially nasty crashes over time.

The need for the pond wasn't driven by any special demand from environmentalists, there are standard stormwater management regulations which apply to every project. There were many possible options to satisfy those regulations other than putting a pond in that location and having those barriers along the track. The designers simply didn't know the safety implications of what they were doing because they designed the track and site like a low-speed local road rather than a race track (I do this stuff for a living, and it's very clear to me what the designers were thinking). The owners are now putting some band-aids on that fundamentally flawed design, rather than spending the money needed to properly fix it.

WGI has the blue bushes, etc., but as a pro racing track, the safety design is vastly better than Dominion. I go to WGI without hesitation. I won't go to Dominion, even though it's less than 2.5 hours away for me. A friend of mine was a member of the Dominion driver's club. I advised that he get out of the contract and get his money back, which he was able to do.

JarheadGT3

Still just as "sporty" as it was last year...

Jabs1542

Wow - way to go Rob. I liked that your outlap was a 1:29 (my PB), says a lot about you and your car. Give me a shout if you would like to come out on a member day, I would really like it if you could do a ride along and give me some insight - we carry very similar lines.

This is from a few weeks ago, only difference with Rob's video is that the curbs have now been painted.

JarheadGT3

Thanks Jay! Good looking lap, very smooth! I've made some setup adjustments since then that I hope will help with how bumpy that track is - I've always had ABS issues there, which has really been my only complaint about the track (e.g., quality of the surface).