This Weekend In Aggressive Driving

I have to say that Saturday's race at the newly-constructed, five-mile "Thunderschliefe" was alternately thrilling, terrifying, and frustrating in equal measure. Rarely have I been so certain that I'd be visiting the hospital before the end of my stint, and rarely have I enjoyed myself so much behind the wheel.

Thunderhill has always been an okay track, you know? It's really kind of a hipster racetrack, if there can be such a thing. Built with Silicon Valley money twenty years ago in conscious imitation of the vintage, narrow European road courses, it's not exactly an FIA course with regards to safety and runoff. It's one of the few tracks to have a recent HPDE death on record, and corner station coverage is not what I'd like.

Adding the new Thunderhill West circuit to the old one and running the outside ring creates a thrilling, challenging circuit, and one that is very hard to learn over the course of a few laps. There's a lot of blind hills and corners. I witnessed more than twenty off-track incidents ahead of me in just two hours, including a kid in a Miata who went off so fast and hard he nearly hit the flag station down on the West side.

Against a field of Mustangs, E36 BMWs, and Taurus-SHO-powered FB RX-7s, our Neon didn't appear to stand much chance. When the transmission and clutch started displaying a reluctance to shift during Greg Smith's opening stint, we didn't exactly start making room in our trophy cases as a result. When I got out of the car after my stint, however, we were second overall (of 46 cars) and first in class.

Erich Heuschele (yes, Mr. Hellcat himself, the man who developed everything from the SRT-4 to the Viper TA) was next. He was blindingly quick --- three seconds faster than me in a four-minute lap --- but the transmission got noticeably worse during his stint and the right front tire wasn't great when Greg got back in to finish up. Hampered by poor shifts and power transfer, he was never able to get within eight seconds of my lap time and as a result we dropped down to fourth overall and first in class.

Sunday morning Dave, our reserve driver, took the opening stint. He came in early because the car wouldn't shift. Greg hopped in, took twenty laps, then came back on the wrecker. GAME OVER, MAN!

I want to extend special thanks to the RX-7/SHO team. After the aforementioned Miata driver endangered my life about six times over the course of half an hour, I decided that the conversation needed to continue in the pitlane. Luckily for my ChumpCar license the guys from the RX-7 team came down and dragged me off. They were pretty tough guys so I didn't have much choice. And as it turns out I might be filling in and driving with them in the future despite my Tony Stewart-esque antics.

All in all it was a solid start to my race season and I continue to feel good about my return to form from last year's crash. I think I'm at about 95% of where I was before as a driver. Just need that last five percent --- and maybe twenty percent above it, to be honest!