chasboy

Hi, a friend of mine has tried a couple of autoX and has not had a great experience. (Both seem to be very questionable and poorly run with hardly any instruction) He is now gun shy of even going on a road course. I'm trying to get him to try with a proper HPDE, but it's going to take some time. He also has a very mint late C4 that he treats with kid gloves and does not want to 'throw it around'. However, he would like to take it on an oval to try a high/top speed run. Does that exist for the average person?
I know Hooked on Driving has one HPDE at Pocono where the course involves over half the 'oval', but the rest is the road course on the infield.
Thanks!

BEZ06

The "HPDE at Pocono where the course involves over half the 'oval'" is pretty typical for the NASCAR tracks.

The exception is Daytona. You still don't get to run the entire tri-oval unrestricted, but you do get about 99% of it, including all the high-banked areas. Here's a video of the Rolex 24 roadcourse run at Daytona for HPDE type events:



You can see there is a chicane on the back straight to slow down the sports cars before rocketing into NASCAR T3 too fast.

It's not a "top speed" type of event - it's still a roadcourse HPDE, but has the fastest "straights" that I know of!

If you want "top speed", there are a number of "mile" type events around the country each year, and a couple open-road high-speed events such as the Silver State Classic Challenge in Nevada.

Bob

godzilladude

Chasing top end in the US is a problem. The biggest problem, unless you have insane HP, you'll need maybe 3 miles of straight road to do it. NOBODY in the US allows access to a paved road for stock cars for that kind of run.

He COULD go to Bonneville, or one of the dozen or so big playas out in Nevada. Those are owned by BLM, public land, any one can go drive on them however they please. Little challenges, the surfaces only have about half the traction of asphalt, and they are MESSY on a car. Ask me how I know . Also, if you are out there by yourself, and something goes bad, its bad.

Note also, C4 will flip at big speeds, up over 200. Big nose lift, yuck.

If your friend just wants to go fast (how fast does a stock C4 go, anyway?), then yeah, one of the mile events would be fun. He won't get anywhere close to top end, but he may still end up going faster than he ever has before, and legally.

The Open Road Races require all kinds of safety upgrades to the car if you really want to go fast. In stock form, I dunno, maybe 140 max allowed, maybe less. He can always take the longest straight on the course, and just floor it out, go waaaay over his group speed limit, and get thrown out, but he WOULD get to see how fast it will go. Certainly not my suggestion though. The problem with open road races, every year folks hit vultures, at big speed, do impressive damage. Also a lot of time and money to do one. One of the things that makes Bonneville look much better, nothing to hit but the ground, no admission fees.

If anyone wants to drop a couple million, I know where an old test track is in Texas, needs some touching up, but includes a circle eight miles around, three lanes wide, banked. Supposedly very stable at 200.

Me, I'm thinking about shipping the baby to Germany this summer or next, do the Nurburgring and the Autobahn, maybe drive back through Scandinavia and the UK. Wouldn't cost much more than a trip to Bonneville, amazingly enough.

Stay safe!

chasboy

Zilla, that seems like a dream trip! I've driven the Autobahn (not sure where it starts/stops) from Copehagen to Amsterdam in a rental car. I would LOVE to drive again in my Z.

chasboy

Thanks Bob, great video. I know this guy won't take his car to Fl. Or any other distant place. I'm going to talk to him. Maybe he will happy with HPDE road course "fast".

63Corvette

The Texas Mile (and others) has classes for "street" cars, race cars, and Unlimited. The regs are quite severe for unlimited, but for street cars (up to 190mph) you only have to have long sleeves and stock seat belts, helmet, etc. My stock C5 Z06 ran 9 runs over two days within 1mph of it's fastest speed there (163.0mph). Stock C6 Z06 were less than 10mph faster (172), and ZR1s were about 178 to 182mph.
Take lotsa sun screen and you'll have a ball

BEZ06

Pocono is a great roadcourse - it's a very nice track. As you said before though, you don't do the entire oval, so don't get to build up massive speed.

New Jersey Motorsports Park is also a great track.

Hopefully if he does an HPDE he'll see that braking, turning, and shifting up and down are more fun than just pointing the car down a mile long runway and seeing how high you can get the speedometer to. Well...drag racing is fun to, and has its own challenges as far as launching, shifting, etc.

Bob

Bill Dearborn

He didn't do the the first thing every first timer should do, which is to say to the person running the event that he has never done it before and wants to have somebody ride with him or let him ride with them. NCCC events do not let experienced participants ride with novices to coach them but they can ride with novices in an SCCA event.

As for selecting an HPDE he needs to go to one that provides an in car instructor. BMW CCA events are very good since they train their instructors and usually run a tight ship from an organizational standpoint. I am pretty sure a local BMW Chapter has events at Pocono and several have events at the Glen. If he has a tuned port C4 he can pretty much hit top speed with the car at either the Glen or Pocono. Most of them are low HP cars and have equivalent performance to current model grocery getters. My 86 had 230 HP and would top out at the end of the Glen's back straight at 124 mph.

If he has been babying this car for a long time and it has 30 or 40 thousand miles it may not be a good idea to take the car to a high speed track. Some friends purchased a babied 87 and made a track car out of it. Their first outing they pushed the engine to higher rpm levels than it had seen in a long time. They made a couple of laps and then the engine went boom. Best guess as to the cause of the failure was the rings hit the wear edge at the upper end of the cylinder and some things broke.

Bill

froggy47

If I understand the facts correctly, your friend, with little experience, has a stock c4 and wants to try and reach it's terminal velocity.

I don't know any track/sanctioned event where they will allow you to do this, if you say what you want to do.

Having said that, if you are going to do it anyway I would find a 4-5 mile stretch of freeway and have him make a couple of passes at break of dawn Sunday when there is zero traffic.

If you ride with him, you will probably die or be severely crippled.

You follow in another car so if/when he loses it you can call 911 and attend to him.

One of my cop friends (retired cop) got a Cayenne S and wanted to "see what she'll do" so that was his plan. It was NEW btw. And he had cop driver training.

I never said any of this, this is pure fiction.

Good Luck.

chasboy

Seems like he was a babe in the woods in his first experience. I believe his car is very low mileage, perhaps a '93.
I'm doing the HPDE May 3/4 with CVCC, which uses the Pocono north course. From what I saw online it seems that when the longer, south course is used, they add a chicane between the 2 long straights?

chasboy

Froggy, I don't think it will get that far, especially here in NJ. I dont think he will push his car because of his concern for its condition.
Btw you are not here, neither am I.

db2xpert

The Autobahn is the road system in Germany, like our Interstate system. You are on it no matter where you are going. Much of it has speed limits now.
The "no limit" portions are great --- with quite a few Porsche, Bimmers, Benz running 150+ people really do stay out of the left lane except when passing.

chasboy

yup, they do on the Autostrada too. Too bad Americans take it as a personal insult when someone is going faster than them.

waddisme

Short ride to VIR - almost a 4000 ft back stretch. 160+ is not unusual there. I think once he does a proper HPDE, he will find that nailing the uphill esses at 120+ is way more thrilling that 165 on the backstretch. Top speed is just for people asking "How fast you had it up to?" That is what Daytona is good for. Wish I had rolled my windows up so I could say 190 instead of 180.

chasboy

As a "Mr. Newman" once said, VIR is Heaven on earth. Did it last June with NCM. Uphill esses and roller coaster were my favs. Oak tree turn my nemesis. Less so with turn 4, but still tough. My exit from Oaktree left me too slow to get beyond 125. I was later told that potential top end is greater on the front straight. Either way, it's a fun place. Doing Summit after Carlisle. I'd also like to do NJMSP, Lime Rock and the Glen.

VGLNTE1

I just prefer the highway

Racingswh

We typically use the full tri oval for one session at our HPDE event at Pocono in September. Riesentoter PCA Motorsportreg.com. It's fun for one session. It's usually at the end of a day.

RDnomorecobra

go to motorsportsreg.com and look at the calendar of events in the NE. Several are being held at Pocono this season. I should be there with PCA June 27th or thereabouts.

chasboy

And I assume it's not just open to Porsches?

RDnomorecobra

Correct, I emailed and asked that.