My helmet was so new that the chemical smell was starting to make me nauseous. I had been messing with the seat controls and the steering wheel adjustment for at least ten minutes trying to find the ideal situation. I had dumped more than a couple hundred dollars’ worth of work into the brakes on my ’06 Monte Carlo SS, had bought a new set of Pirelli P-Zero Neros, and thought that as long as I grasped how to drive a front-wheel-drive car at high speeds, I would do just fine at a legitimate autocross event. I had the power, I had better handling than I had been used to up to that point…it was in the bag. And I thought that right up until I got my first wave onto the course…at which point my dumb ass, with traction control off, rolled deep into the LS4 and with an all-American roar, boiled the tires all the way to the first corner.
Apparently, at Bremerton, that’s a big no-no. And I’d like to say that over the few times I went with the Subaru group to Bremerton that I managed to get better and better, but…well…
Maybe I just needed a better car. Maybe I needed to calm down and focus. Maybe a knowledgeable driver riding along could’ve been a help…it certainly was the one time Angry Grandpa went onto an autocross track. In any regard, my first experience with high-performance driving was a startlingly nervous affair.
Now I want to clarify: doing 120 MPH down some backroad because you’re certain that cops are nowhere nearby isn’t performance driving in the proper sense…that’s hooning. Same with my canyon-carving exploits in Arizona, same with my fun in the farm roads of Kentucky. Autocrossing at Bremerton…the gymkhana-meets-autocross setup at Local Motors in Chandler, Arizona…my track work at NCM Motorsports Park. That’s performance driving, where you focus on every last input of the car. You measure out steering input delicately. You modulate the throttle carefully, and you cautiously approach the brakes because one screwup will make a noise that sounds a lot like sheetmetal against a stack of tires corded together.
So what was your first time like?
I drove a Ferrari F430 Scuderia in Vegas on track. Thrilling!
As a young solider in the late 70’s at Ft Ord, California, I spent a lot of time at Laguna Seca. Got to make 5 laps in a 240Z . What a learning curve! The most fun I have had in a car, ever