Watkins Glen, HPDE

As a beginner track guy in a daily driver, I've got to say that getting to spend the weekend at the Glen with an instructor in my car was just about the coolest thing I've ever done! As far as I could tell, very smooth asphalt all the way around, big elevation changes compared to the few other tracks I've been on, and of course the historic F1, NASCAR, etc pedigree of the place made it a great weekend!

This was with the NASA Northeast folks, and despite just a few rain drops and the first cold weather of the year, well, if you've never driven on a track, what in the world are you waiting for? There were two Ferraris I spotted at the track, plus plenty of other high powered Corvettes, muscle cars, a few spec racers, Miatas, BMWs, the usual gang of suspects.

I was mostly working on just improving my line, and ended up focusing on brake release and smoother transition to corner entry, and learned that I need to improve my driving in traffic skills a lot. Turns out I was focusing maybe too much on the approaching car behind, instead of focusing on the track ahead a bit more than giving the point by (mandatory for HPDE 1) .

On a serious note, there was a car that went into the wall at turn 7, unfortunately this was on the out lap for our afternoon session on Sunday, and it looked like that Mini won't be driving again. We came up on a yellow at 6, then waving yellow, and then red flag at 7, and then they had to black flag our entire session. Hope the driver and instructor are OK. Plenty of learning points on that incident alone.

As much fun as it was, it was even better with my son and 3 of his driving friends came up from SC, so I hope your weekend was fun too.

 

Update, instructor passenger was released from hospital next morning.

 

Here's some photos, few short videos, what a great track!
https://www.facebook.com/robert.nixon.1466/media_set?set=a.10218493589282293&type=3