mikeyc6

I promised to report back when we returned from our Buck Baker 1/2 day racing school at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte. I just returned home and thought I'd share. First the C6 part. The road trip was great. The trip was 470 miles one way for us and we travelled mostly I81 and I77 (starting in Maryland). Man that's a beautiful drive and we had hardly any traffic. I set the cruise on 79 MPH in 65 zones and 84 MPH in 70 zones and we cruised the whole way. We averaged 32 MPG on the trip at those speeds. The DIC actually displayed 34 to 34.5 but we confirmed 32 MPG with two different fillups using the old fashioned calculator method. I knew we'd get good gas mileage but holy green car Batman!

OK. On to the school. We went down Thursday and had the day Friday to just check out Charlotte and the surrounding areas. Very nice area and lots to do. I'd definitely go back in a heartbeat just to visit the area! We stayed at the University place Hilton which is about 5 miles from Lowe's (even though they advertise 3 miles). Nice hotel and a lot of restaurants and stores within walking distance. Our favorite place to eat was Smokey Bones. Fantastic barbecue!

Our racing pass told us to be at Lowe's by 5:30pm and we got there about 5:00pm and had time to go check out the cars in the garage. Nice garage. Nice cars. What can I say. I was a little dissapointed when looking under the hood because they are obviously not "real" NASCAR engines in there, but I didn't let that taint my expectations. Never having inspected one of these things up close, I was surprised at how rigid and "thick" the body panels are. I don't know if the real cars are built to the same standards, but I expected more of the flimsy-skin type outer shell like what we have on our C6's.

At about 5:15pm they started the check-in process and seated us in a room. By 5:30pm they started the intro and quick notes on the rules, etc.. That took probably 30-40 minutes and then we headed out to the track. You basically wait until your name is written on the board and then you suit up and drive with 7 other people at the same time. You just don a suit and helmet over your clothed (we wore shorts as recommended in the acceptance letter). Our names came up quickly (second bunch) and we went out.

They normally do a few laps with the instructor driving, a few with you driving and the instructor in the passenger seat, and a then 10 or so laps with just you. This time, for reasons they never gave, they decided to forgo the instructor driving and just give us the laps he would have used. Passing is allowed, but only on the straightaways and only on the outside. I definitely have a new found respect for NASCAR drivers because there is a LOT to do in that car! Visibility is horrible too, and it's hard to tell if the slower person ahead of you is waving you by or not. At ~7:15pm or so, they were just at the transition where they turn on the track lighting and the flag-person is difficult to see as well, so I think it was probably the worst time of day for visibility.

The first thing I'd like to note is that since they didn't spend any time with the instructor driving you, they gave us the laps that he would have used which means we had 5 extra "driving laps". That's a double edged sword. I actually think we got screwed on that because I would have liked him to drive me around for a few laps so I could learn the line from him and also get a better idea of speeds in corners and the limits of the car.

They basically ran 7 cars and it ended up staggered so whenever the person before you was done (and people bought different numbers of laps and went different speeds), you got in. The instructor recommends running it at 3,000 RPM for a lap or two and then ramping up to your comfort zone. This means that at the beginning, you're going slower and everyone is up your ****. After a few laps, the opposite is true. This mis-matched traffic made it very difficult to drive the car at my personal comfort zone. Just as I was really starting to clock around the track, I got the checkered flag and my time was up.

Again, the staggering is a double edged sword. It gives you a taste of both worlds but it also hampers your ability to go really fast with people doing 70 MPH on their first runs and weaving all over the track. I'm actually quite surprised that they put people in these cars with such little training! I didn't get anywhere near the upper limit of what those cars can do on that track and they only have half the horsepower of the actual NASCAR cars (or so our instructor claimed). The things have no speedo so I'd estimate I didn't get over 110 to 120 but who knows: I could be surprised one way or the other as I've never driven on an oval track. They give you a little USB flash drive that plugs into the car and mail you your data in two weeks showing max G's, max speed, etc.. I also bought the in-car video ($95) and I'll share chunks of that when I get it.

Overall, it was a great experience, but it seemed really rushed to me. Maybe "rushed" isn't the word, but it just felt "abbreviated"; maybe that's the better word. This "1/2 day" class turned out to be 5:30pm to 7:30pm for us and you could stay longer than that only if you wanted to watch other people run. Once you got out of the car, they simply tell you, "thanks for coming; you can pick up your graduation certificate at the sign-in desk.". For some reason, neither of us had a grad certificate sitting with the other drivers but they assured us we didn't fail. They claimed some paperwork/computer mixup but I don't know why they would have missed us because we registered back in April and signed in with/like every one else. Oh well, they said they'd mail them.

I guess overall, I'm thrilled to have done it, but expected a bit more for a $475 1/2 day class. Other than the intro/poster-notes lecture at the beginning and the instructor riding with you for about 3 laps and reaching over and grabbing the steering wheel once in a while to show you a good line, I really kinda felt just "pushed through the system". I'd do it again for the thrill but I might pay a little more for the full day class. If this is what they do in the half day class, do yourself a favor and upgrade it to a full day!

I wish I had photos too, but true to my soon-to-be-senior brain, I left the camera in the hotel room. I guess I don't feel bad because my buddy who went with me on this trip is 31 and he didn't remember it either. I guess part of the problem is that neither of us were thinking about cameras at the time.

Mike

mikeyc6

Update: It has now been three weeks+ since we went to the Buck Baker racing school and we've still received no correspondence from them whatsoever. They claimed they'd have our in-car video and track stats mailed to us in 7-10 days and that they'd mail us our graduation certificates in the same package (since they somehow "lost" them and they weren't available on track day). Needless to say I am a bit dissapointed in this whole experience now. The way we were quickly "herded" through there (under 2 hours for a "half day" experience) with almost no prep and the lack of follow-up are a real turn off! I'm going to contact them on Monday to see what happened to the $90 videos we ordered and our certs, so hopefully they'll come through in the end. I'll hold off on final judgement until I talk to them but as of this point, I'm rather dissapointed in the whole experience.

P.S. Also dissapointed in the fact that no one responded to my 32.2 MPG @ 80-85 MPG. I thought I (or the car) deserved some kind of medal for that.

Mike

johnodrake

OK Mike - Kudos for the milage But that is expected! I used to get that on my LPE C5