Long tows and elevation changes

Road Atlanta is one of the most famous race tracks in North America. Its fast turns, crazy elevation changes, and unforgiving walls are well known throughout the racing world. For many reasons, the biggest being my hometown's proximity to Virginia International Raceway, I have never been to Road Atlanta. Not even to watch a race. I've driven many laps there on various video games and watched hours of race coverage at the place, but none of that even remotely prepared me for what awaited me in Braselton, GA last weekend.

The race weekend began with a towing convoy. 5 tow vehicles with 5 trailers carrying 5 race cars. We somehow managed to all get together as planned and headed off on our 6 hour journey to the track. Tows that long can be pretty stressful, especially when done in the midst of Friday afternoon traffic. Having radios to talk to each other and others to follow/draft made things bearable and we made our way to northwest Georgia without much trouble. The others had informed me that parking at RA can be hard to come by when the crowds are big; a fact that was reinforced when we found out that all of the parking in and around our "designated" parking areas was already gone by 3:00 Friday afternoon. We decided we would find a chunk of parking lot that could fit all of us and park there, regardless of where it was in the paddock. We got to the track around 7:00. At that moment I was introduced to a startling reflection of the track's elevation change; the paddock road leading from the main gate to the top of the hill. A full throttle blast away from the main gate got us up to the top of hill. From here I got a shadowy view of the famous turn 12 and knew I had quite a challenge in front of me. We all got unloaded and headed out for some required track weekend Mexican food. Road Atlanta is much closer to civilization than all other tracks we go to. The short drive to dinner and the hotel was very welcomed after the long road trip we'd already had.

My nerves finally started getting to me when we got to the track on Saturday morning. Our morning practice session was only going to be 20 minutes long. With the out lap under double yellow and the fact that they have to throw the checkered flag with about 4 minutes left in order to get us all in, I knew I'd be lucky to get 5 or 6 laps under my belt. My Spec E30 buddy agreed to lead me out so I could at least figure out where the track went. That plan worked fine until the green flag dropped. Not surprisingly, not many of the 40+ other drivers on track cared that I was trying to learn a track I had never seen. About 8 cars got by me by turn 6. Several more flew by over the next couple of laps. About the time I got my heart down out of my throat the checkered flag came out. I pulled back into the pits fully confident that I was going to crash in qualifying later that morning.

My plan for qualifying was to use the full 15 minutes to continue to learn the track. I lined up by myself in the middle of the grid and let the field fill in around me. Fortunately, two of my in-class competitors lined up with me...one in front and one behind. My plan was now to follow the two of them around in order to judge my performance against them while learning their lines. We knocked out about 4 laps before they both drove off and left me behind. My data system flashed that I had managed to run a 1:46.6. I wasn't sure where that would put me, but I felt good about going faster without doing anything stupid. As it turned out, that time put me in 5th place (last) in class. To make things worse, it put several cars between me and the others in my class.

I remained strangely calm when race time arrived. I knew I was several cars behind my closest in-class competitors, all of whom were quite a bit faster than me. This meant I didn't really have any pressure on me to stay around any of them at the start of the race. I was ready to take it easy when the green flag dropped and let the race come to me as I learned the track some more. As we moved from turn 12 onto the front straight during the formation lap I realized I didn't know where the guy throwing the green flag was going to be standing. They had told us he would be on the pit wall alongside the track, but I didn't know which side of the track he would be on or how close to turn 1 he would be positioned. Since I didn't know where he was going to be my only choice was to wait for those in front of my to hit the gas and I would follow suit. That method did not work well. Several cars behind me got a run on me heading down to turn one. I stayed out way too wide and several of those cars got by me between turns 1 and 2. I was a little disappointed to drop so many spots right at the beginning of the race, but since none of them were in my class I knew I could use it as a learning experience and try to learn the track without much pressure. Here's the race video:

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

We had only one full-course caution period in this race; a stark contrast to what I had experienced at CMP. As a result, I had the opportunity to race hard for a much longer period of time than I had before. When the yellows came out, I discovered I had worked my way up to 3 or 4 cars behind another in-class car. On the restart, he got a great jump and took off, picking up a couple more spots. I never got any closer and finished 5th out of 5 in class. Not exactly the result I was hoping for, but I had kept my nose clean during a race on a track I had never seen. I could not complain about that.

After the race all of the GTS-2 class were sent to the scales to weigh-in to check our compliance with our class horsepower to weight ratio. Also in line were the winners from the SpecE30 and Spec Miata classes. This meant the guys working the scales were constantly having to move the scales around to make sure the cars fit on them properly. Once it was my turn they eye balled my wheelbase and told me to pull onto the scales. I had to move back and forth a couple times while they positioned me. They got me weighed and I began to pull off. As I drove away I heard the scale operator yell out "2,875 pounds". I couldn't believe what I heard. That was about 200 pounds less than I should have been with that amount of fuel and meant I w0uld be disqualified from the race. Losing a 5th place finish wasn't going to destroy my season, but I had worked hard to make sure my car was right were it had to be. The car was starting to overheat while waiting in line, so I'd have to wait until Sunday to find out what the problem was.