Is this the Golden Age of Automobiles

     Saturday we went to Arizona Motorsports Park for a track day with ProAutoSports.  What a truly great day on many levels.  The racing community is truly a family oriented group.  Tight knit, fun, personable, all encompassing and very welcoming to those who are just getting involved.  The weather was a little colder than I like, but it was sunny and warmed up nicely as the day went on.  I finally went out to take photos of on track action.  I remembered how much I missed taking great track shots.  So much more fun that taking a still photo of a car at a car show.  Sports cars on track doing what they were designed to do.

      Personally there were many things for me to enjoy.  Friends at the track, watching Brian drive the R8 on track for the first time.  Not as an employee of Audi with an Audi instructor riding along and babysitting, but driving his own R8 supercar on track.  Doing the things all race nuts live for.  Getting his confidence back after wrecking the Vette.  Exploring both the limits of the car and his own.  Going for a ride with an accomplished racer further learning the limits of the car, then driving with instruction, and finally going out on his own to find the limits by himself.  Anyone who enjoys teaching, be it in a classroom, in a car, or giving horseback riding lessons truly enjoys watching the progression of someone who goes from apprehension to joy as they struggle to learn skills that take decades to perfect.  That was the best part of the weekend for me, watching Brian progress from nervous anticipation to that happy ecstatic exuberance that we all go through when we get a chance to live some of our dreams and goals.

      This was a really good weekend to go to the track if you love cars.  From front wheel drive supercharged Volkswagen GTI's a amateur group of both Miata and Honda S2000 drivers.  The local club racing BMW guys, a new Acura NSX,  Two Audi R8's, and numerous Porsche's Corvette's Mustang's and such.  Enjoying a track day is not just a one emotion adventure.  Every one of the senses can be used to enjoy the day.  Listening to the low growl of the big V8's,  the tighter higher revving over head cam engines, hearing the C7 Stingray, Porshe 911, and Audi R8 V10 plus snap off paddle shifts with their automatic transmissions.  Where else can you watch those three supercars snake around a track with unbelievable balance, braking, accelerating, shifting and launching full throttle out of the turns down the straights.

     I turned some laps in Brian's R8 at the end of the day.  He let me go out by myself to get a track fix while we are working on getting the Vette back together.  I've had some R8 laps before, but considerably more controlled and with the automatic, not the 6 speed gated manual.  Track enthusiasts have said since the inception of the R8 program that the V8 with the 6 speed is the preferred track animal.  Not that I am in the same league as the professionals, but I can say after a session it is definitely a brilliant beast on the track.  The balance is incredible, it goes where you point it, when you point it and has brakes that will stop it from the limit lap after lap all day long.  AMP has a set of left and right sweepers at the end of a straight and that is my favorite part of the track.  As I learned the limits toward the end of my session I sailed into that complex flat in 4th.  Without any aero the R8 was unbelievably civil and stable with only a hint of lack of stability.  Just a slight body lean as it struggles for grip while being overdriven into a fast corner. Stab the brakes blip the throttle and downshift to third while exploring the upper end of the 8200 redline while turning back right and launching through the short chute to the hard braking downshift to 2nd for the sharp right hander then heading south back down the track toward the pits.  Truly a brilliant car, what the V8 lacks in brute low end torque it makes up with horsepower at the upper end and balance through the corners.  Lap after lap bigger motored cars could catch me on the straights only to fall back as I slipped perfectly through and out of a corner.  I had to quit early while I still had control of myself before the cars ability led me to believe that I had enough ability to keep up with it.  I'll have to wait patiently until the Vette is done before driving on the ragged edge again.  The only change I would make to the R8 is a splitter for the front to add some crispness to the turn in on high speed corners.  Speeds that the average track driver probably wont get to anyway and not on the street for sure if you've got any sense.

     This last weekend was a perfect example of why we should feel fortunate to have the lives we have here in the U.S.  In this country you are either part of the problem or part of the solution.  If you can't find a way to live and enjoy your life and everything this country has to offer then its your fault.  Its all out there if you just go out and get it.  Get out of your own box.  Boxes are for storing things and I for one don't intend to go into storage.