The day started well enough, our group of nine all arrived first thing and we got stuck into various classroom briefings and exercises with various professional instructors at the one and only (in the world) official Ford Racing School. Most of the guys taking the course are also pro racing drivers, our primary classroom instructor being a young guy called Michael Self (www.michaelselfracing.com) who seemed to know his stuff. From there we moved into the cars, my companion and most of the others in Boss 302 Mustangs and myself and one other as invited guests in the slightly less powerful Mustang GT cars the Ford Racing School runs normally, all the cars track prepped with roll cages, brake packages, sticky tyres, etc.
We started off going out in pairs doing the usual following the instructor around the track to observe technique etc and quickly moved into solo runs in the cars, doing about twenty minutes on track and then about the same in classroom to talk about the track, cars, skills etc. We also did a skid pad session in a skid car, a short track course practising heel-and-toe, and a bunch of laps with an instructor in the car looking at our driving.... Meanwhile the sky turned a dirty brown grey, the wind got worse and worse, and times you couldn't even see from one side of the track to the other... One of the pro drivers compared it to racing in Bahrain... Cones flew away, oil barrel rubbish bins bounced through the pits, and sitting still in the car before going out on track you could feel it rocking back and forth in the wind. But we soldiered on and had a great time. And I think I did ok... If I may quote some of the instructors... *ahem* -
"That's textbook heel and toeing... You may as well just go play around the rest of this session huh?"
"Basically, you are a really good driver"
"Ok, you really dont want to be trying to brake any later than that at the end of the main straight... NOBODY wants to try braking any later than that at the end of the main straight..."
"You are the only person today to put a car that far in the gravel and keep your boot in it... That just shows you are using all of the track!"
"Sir, you are a driving god, can you teach us your ways?"
Ok I may have paraphrased a couple of those. Slightly. Basically I think I did ok because I was pulling 160kph on the home straight which was matching the more powerful cars... Plus in the last 20 minute free-for-all we got sent out one by one with plenty of space on the 2.2 mile track to do our own thing (the idea of the course being to hone driving skill not race each other) but we were allowed to pass if required... I got sent out behind an older guy who had been talking about his years of racing all kinds of cars and had complained earlier that everything was much too slow in the follow-the-leader and other exercises... So I saw him well up ahead and decided to try to gain some ground on him, and all the training and practise for the day seemed to come together and I started gaining, and after a few laps hunted him down and sat on his tail for a couple more before he had to let me through... And this despite me being in a lesser car with over 25% less power, smaller brakes etc... And then I left him behind and went out and hunted down the guy in front of him also.
We finished the day pretty happy, I would have preferred to spend the day in a Boss as my GT was a little down on grunt by comparison, but that's all good because tomorrow we move on to the actual full-spec Ford FR500 racecars, and stuff should get even more interesting. Meantime Salt Lake has continued to get savaged by winds (our hotel is a brand new five story building and you could feel it moving in the wind) and salt/sandstorms, to the point that when we drove further into the city to find BK for dinner tonight, we couldn't even see the city. Everything is just shrouded in what looks like a dirty brown haze... Trees are going down, trucks are getting blown off the interstates... I was going to take a cool photo of all the black cars in the parking lot literally coasted in this brown salt sludge, but before we got back it then dumped down with rain... And the forecast says possible snow... Should make the track fun tomorrow.... Wish me luck.
One final note which I know will excite some people no end... BK over here has these new Coke machines with a touch-screen front panel (calm down that's not the exciting bit) and they dispense about 20 different kinds of beverage (the entire Coke range including Powerade, root beer, Minute Maid juice, ginger beer, etc etc) BUT whenever you select a type of beverage it then comes up with about half a dozen options for what flavours to ADD... So to your normal Coke for instance you can then add raspberry, blueberry, cherry, etc etc... Apparently there are over 100 possible combinations the machine can do BEFORE you start self-mixing... I know right?? Almost as good as racecars.
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