March 6-7 IRDC Race School

Wow, what an amazing weekend! The ground school on Friday evening covered the basics and we reviewed the safety information as well as the flags. Then I drove back up to Seattle only to get 6 hours of sleep before heading right back to Pacific Raceways early next morning.

It was overcast so I wasn't sure how adventurous we would be getting but putting that aside, we headed out for a track walk led by the Hill brothers. Lot of useful dos and donts but the one thing that stuck in my mind was how steep it was from T2 to T3a and T3b. The videos online don't reveal the real horror awaiting you when you see it in person.  But don't worry, when you are in your car it goes by so fast, your fear of heights is replaced by fear of fading brakes.

With street tires and stock Mintex brake pads, it wasn't long before I was pushing the car beyond its limits. Though glad that these were the only problems that surfaced as this was the first time ever the Red Beast made an appearance at a track.  Luckily, there were several items on the agenda that I could practice at slower speeds as coincidentally this was also my first time on track with a manual car. I was put in Group 2 and we ran about 4 sessions of which the first one was in rain, second one in light snow, and sessions 3 and 4 under a beautiful sunny sky. The changes in weather along with a great instructor, taught me a lot of valuable lessons and I used every opportunity I got to improve myself.  Result: my speed steadily increased approaching T2 from session to session and being lapped by fewer and fewer cars and starting to lap others.