fred_S

Last weekend I had the pleasure of driving the whole weekend on the Zolder track in Belgium, it's a former F1 track. Before going I replaced the brakefluid with ATE Superblue Racing and the pads with Hawk HP+ and installed new Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 without runflat tires. On track there were a whole lot of other cars ranging from Lotus Elise / Exige / Evora to a Lola T70 replica with LS7 engine. Off course loads of Porsches, Super Seven's and many more. I managed to drive 230 rounds that weekend, and used up 5 tanks of gas. I was surprised to see how good my C6 with only a Callaway Honker and HTM exhaust did on the track. There were only a few cars out of the 170 present that were faster, one of them was a 911 GT3 on semi-slicks, even the Exige wasn't faster through the turns. I managed to stay ahead of the Exige for about 5 laps then the tires got so hot they started to slide so I had to take it slower. The standard brakes with Hawk HP+ pads did a great job without fading for the entire weekend. My German mate has a Movit ceramic brake installation on his car, one word, AWESOME. His brakes were beyond believe, unfortunately the rubber boots behind the wheel started to melt from the heat of the brake discs. Luckily I had wrapped mine in thermal insulation, I read that trick on this forum, thanks guys, so mine are alright.
One of the Porsche 911 GT2, the mat black one, ended up in the gravel, he had just told in the pits that his car had 500+HP, well it didn't help him get out of the gravel.


All in all I had a great weekend and I now have a better understanding of what the C6 is capable of

Fred

Timz06

That's cool. I worked on a project in Genk and lived in Hasselt for 7 months back in the 90's. I saw cars driving that track quite often, and I always wondered how you could drive you car there. That was before I started driving on track.

What was the cost per day?

Tim

fred_S

That's the beauty of it all, the Belgian VAB organizes this weekend so people can ride along with drivers that have track experience or a license.

VAB is an organization that provides roadside assistance when your car breaks down, they organize this weekend to promote their organization.

The only thing you need to do is take along a passenger every now and then and enjoy the track. Gasoline is free and there are no costs involved, the only cost you will have is the cost of new tires and brake pads (and discs). As you can imagine we all had a great day. If you do a search in Google for "VAB Autohappening" you will find more details.
They expect you to take along a minimum of 6 passenger every hour for a ride, it takes about 2 minutes to do the track so you can figure that when you do the minimum amount of passengers you have ample time to enjoy yourself. I managed to cart around about 50 people the first day. They start at 10:00 to 12:00, then there's a lunch break, and go on from 13:00 till 17:30. Some of the passengers are so enthusiastic that I took them round loads of times. One passenger inspired me to take here round six rounds

Turns out she was an account manager for a Swedish firm and they had a stand in the paddock.

I wonder why I took her around six times




It's not really a race, but the speeds were high enough. On the straight before the first chicane I managed to touch 215 Kmh, not bad and certainly as fast or faster than many of the Porsche's.
There were 3 of us with a regular C6, from the Porsche camp we got a lot of praise, saying that they never imagined the Corvette being that fast. If one of us had semi-slicks or even a Z06 we would have blown them away. And although it wasn't a race, of course we tried to go round as fast as we could, we had a blast

Fred

redvetracr

same place maybe? my vintage racer in a previous life.

fred_S

Yes, I believe it is the same track.

BEZ06

Hey Fred

I got your email, but thanks for posting up this great report and pictures!!!

Sounds like it was an excellent event, and the price sure was good!!!!

Best, Bob

Falcon

Sweet pictures, thanks for posting!

XavZ06

Looks good

I went racing there quite a number of times when i still lived in Belgium .. and even wrecked a car on the track.

Bink

Is there any type of memorial to Villeneuve at Zolder...statue, marker??