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MEMBERS AT PANOZ RACING - TRACK DAYS (NON-CTV SPONSORED EVENT)

There we four CTV couples of our members that enjoyed a day at the Panoz Racing School's Track Days at Texas Motor Speedway, on Friday, December 12, 2003

Click HERE for the Panoz Track Days Website Click HERE for Texas Motor Speedway Website

Even with the rain throughout half of the day, this was a great experience, which gave us skills not only to help in Auto Crossing but also in day-to-day driving on the streets.  We would highly recommend this to all our club members, racers or not!  They have three classifications for Track Days: "Novice" "Intermediate" and "Advanced" - you could tell some of these folks had been here before - the Panoz folks knew them by name.

Today started out a cold 37 degrees when we left the house, with a high forecasted at 44 degrees with rain starting in the afternoon.  Sure enough, they were correct, a few drops of mist were falling before we ever started and by the end of the second session, it was drizzling.  It was raining throughout the third and fourth sessions.

There were three other Vettes out there, one blue metallic C5 Convertible and a pair of Silver Z06s plus a wide variety of other cars - only one of which was trailered.

The Course was a combination of the Big Oval and the Infield Track that we use for our Autocross event - according to Bob's trip odometer, we raced 128 miles or a little over 53 laps on the full 2.4 mile course!

Our speeds coming out of the infield up into NASCAR 3 and around NASCAR 4 into the home stretch reached 120-130+ consistently in sessions one & two - in sessions three and four after the rain started our top speeds were just shy of 110 in this same stretch.

Bob & CindyViola & Paul
    
Barb & RedDoug & Glenda
    
As you can see from these photos, there was a variety of Sports cars participating
    
    

They "Tech" your cars as you arrive, once you have passed, you go in to register.  After everyone is registered, there is a "Drivers Meeting" to go over the days schedule and the rules, also to take your lunch order (included in fee)

    
They staged us on the hot-side of Pit Row in two lines, "Novice" (17 of us) and "Intermediate" which included 9 racers
    
    

We found out one thing the hard way... if you run the "Kleen Wheels" dust shields, REMOVE THEM before you start this event!!!!  Our TMS event wasn't an issue at all running them but we totally lost our brakes coming out of the chicane about half-way thru the first session. 

With help from our CTV participants and Panoz crew, we removed them between the first and second sessions - no further brake issues were experienced. 

Lesson learned: REMOVE THEM BEFORE RACING - if the dust can't get out, the heat can't either!!!!

 

 

 

 


CLICK HERE FOR PAGE TWO of PHOTOS



Last Updated: 12-16-03