halfway there
The end of a grueling day of Race Clinic. I am not long for the concious world, but here goes. The first run session was pods of four cars, two abreast running nose to tail. The idea was to get used to being in close proximity to other cars at speed (well, not really at speed yet). It was a bit of an eyeopener, espcially going through turns with a car right on your door. The next session was three cars abreast...all the way through the course. Scary. Really hard. I ended up in the middle most the time...car to my left, car to my right...no place to go if they drifted into me. But luckily they didn't. Two others weren't so lucky thought...there was minor contact in turn 6. Ooops. Our instructors were not happy (Joe Kunz and Gary Becker - Aasco pro racers who started in POC). So third session we tried it again, but it didn't go well either. After lunch and a serious dressing down from the instructors, we went out and practiced starts.
The way you start a race with POC is you grid according to your qualifying time, then go out for the recon lap. About turn 7 the pole car checks up and lets everybody catch him...they you have a rollling grid of cars paired up through turn 8 and 9. The pack continues at a slow speed (30-60mph) and if the grid is tight and the starter likes it, the green flag drops. And you're off. So we did those and raced full on until turn 5, then got a yellow flag, and started. The idea being to practice the start process as it is tough and also turn 1 gets *very* interesting.
Another session of that and the day was done. I just kept muttering, "this is bad...really bad." Why? Because it is absolutely enthralling. Time trialing was fun, but this is RACING. Totally different things. I get it now...