I have seen the light. I have driven, and fast. I have cornered like a motherfucker. And it is good.
Today was racing lessons/competition at a shindig put on by Mazda, up at Texas Motor Speedway. I dragged my ass out of bed at 7:30 and arrived on time at Alex's house at the extremely early 8:00. Here's the short-hand account of what happened, since my A.D.D. is kicking in and I don't want to write seriously:
-Raced all the way to Texas Motor Speedway in two cars. Call it warmup. Driving with a set of two-way radios is fun as hell - and you've never experienced teamwork in driving (whoda thunk it) until you've driven in two cars with a set of those.
-Arrive. Check-in. Olivia manages to switch which hand her bracelet goes on (which suddenly enables her to drive the many cars around the place), and we take off test driving. First came a Mazda6i (four-cyl). It wasn't far off from what I expected, only that the steering and braking were both a lot stiffer and tighter than what I had expected.
-Racing lesson lectures. Surprisingly, all the things they "taught" to the drivers were things I already did intuitively.
-Slalom training. This is where I learned both the power of the 6s (V6) and the true turning ability of the thing. Sadly, the 6s is a lot slower in first gear than I had expected. For someone who does a lot of launches, getting the 6-cyl over the 4 doesn't help at all. It's still a very fun car - while its exterior style is *very* close to a smaller version of a current Camry, the interior is apples and oranges.
-Full course training. Did a 34-second lap on a 30-second course. But at least I started to get a feel for what the car could handle.
-Races begin. The three guys (myself, Aroon, Alex) each had two turns on the track and our times were staggered so there was always one guy ready to drive, one guy in the back of the line, and one guy in the stands with the girls (Nathalie and Olivia) cheering on whoever was driving. Aroon went first with a time of 37 seconds. Then I went: 38. Alex trash talked and said he could beat Aroon by one second and me by two. When the time came in, he proved himself right: just over 35 seconds. In the second round, Aroon killed a whole set of cones which jacked his time up into the 40s by penalties, since he turned too hard into the final hairpin and spun into a set of cones. I went again, this time deciding to experiment with the manual mode on the manumatic transmission, and the simpler use of gear switching (read: sticking in second gear) brought my time down to low 36s. As I climbed out, Alex congratulated me for surprisingly beating Aroon. Alex, meanwhile, brought his time down to a ridiculous 34 seconds, netting him a 'gold medal' (read: cute little pin about the size of a pinky nail), while Aroon and I both claimed Bronze.
-Checking out other cars. A foursome of us (one of the guys was off doing something) sat inside the new RX-8, which is an oddity of a car. I was in the backseat, which was obviously cramped, but so swankily designed that it distracted me from the cramp-ness. Naturally, they didn't let anyone drive one of those.
-Final test drives. My most fun drive of the day was my sampling of the new Miata on the test course. That car can handle curves unlike any other machine I've ever seen, much less driven. And I didn't even feel squished inside. After that, I hopped straight into a Protoge5, which was miserable in comparison. I felt confident enough to take it into manual mode, and on the 'sudden lane change' square curve I forgot to downshift and took out five cones. Whoops. Needless to say, the Miata was the better ride on that run out. So what happened today? I learned a lot more about car handling and what a machine's limits are, I learned that 6s are as cool as I thought, and Miatas are surprisingly awesome. I've been forever turned on to great driving.
-Arrive. Check-in. Olivia manages to switch which hand her bracelet goes on (which suddenly enables her to drive the many cars around the place), and we take off test driving. First came a Mazda6i (four-cyl). It wasn't far off from what I expected, only that the steering and braking were both a lot stiffer and tighter than what I had expected.
-Racing lesson lectures. Surprisingly, all the things they "taught" to the drivers were things I already did intuitively.
-Slalom training. This is where I learned both the power of the 6s (V6) and the true turning ability of the thing. Sadly, the 6s is a lot slower in first gear than I had expected. For someone who does a lot of launches, getting the 6-cyl over the 4 doesn't help at all. It's still a very fun car - while its exterior style is *very* close to a smaller version of a current Camry, the interior is apples and oranges.
-Full course training. Did a 34-second lap on a 30-second course. But at least I started to get a feel for what the car could handle.
-Races begin. The three guys (myself, Aroon, Alex) each had two turns on the track and our times were staggered so there was always one guy ready to drive, one guy in the back of the line, and one guy in the stands with the girls (Nathalie and Olivia) cheering on whoever was driving. Aroon went first with a time of 37 seconds. Then I went: 38. Alex trash talked and said he could beat Aroon by one second and me by two. When the time came in, he proved himself right: just over 35 seconds. In the second round, Aroon killed a whole set of cones which jacked his time up into the 40s by penalties, since he turned too hard into the final hairpin and spun into a set of cones. I went again, this time deciding to experiment with the manual mode on the manumatic transmission, and the simpler use of gear switching (read: sticking in second gear) brought my time down to low 36s. As I climbed out, Alex congratulated me for surprisingly beating Aroon. Alex, meanwhile, brought his time down to a ridiculous 34 seconds, netting him a 'gold medal' (read: cute little pin about the size of a pinky nail), while Aroon and I both claimed Bronze.
-Checking out other cars. A foursome of us (one of the guys was off doing something) sat inside the new RX-8, which is an oddity of a car. I was in the backseat, which was obviously cramped, but so swankily designed that it distracted me from the cramp-ness. Naturally, they didn't let anyone drive one of those.
-Final test drives. My most fun drive of the day was my sampling of the new Miata on the test course. That car can handle curves unlike any other machine I've ever seen, much less driven. And I didn't even feel squished inside. After that, I hopped straight into a Protoge5, which was miserable in comparison. I felt confident enough to take it into manual mode, and on the 'sudden lane change' square curve I forgot to downshift and took out five cones. Whoops. Needless to say, the Miata was the better ride on that run out. So what happened today? I learned a lot more about car handling and what a machine's limits are, I learned that 6s are as cool as I thought, and Miatas are surprisingly awesome. I've been forever turned on to great driving.