Day six: NOLA Motorsports Park, Annandale, LA
On Thursday, we drove an outstandingly fun track at NOLA Motorsports Park: the north course (long).
Neither Doug nor I have been here before. It's a flat but very fast and open track layout, 2.75 miles long, with some challenging higher-speed "S" bends in the back section. The layout is fairly simple and easy to remember. This is a fairly new track facility, built in 2011. Oddly, it is closer to residential neighborhoods than any other racetracks that I have been to—I'd estimate less than a third of a mile (there is an intervening thick forest of trees and undergrowth as a noise absorber of sorts). It's also the first track I've been to with palm trees on the property. Unwritten bucket list item, checked off!
We drove well enough to hold on to our 7th place overall position. It will be impossible for Team Panda Express/Caution Asian Driver to move up in the rankings without a team above us not finishing one of the four final events (2 track sessions + an autocross at NCM, Bowling Green, KY; then the final skidpad challenge back at Tire Rack in South Bend, IN).
Several teams toward the top of the field had some very close finishing times at NOLA. Keep in mind the times shown are a total of three laps, so if there's about a one-second gap between two team's times, that's only roughly 0.33 seconds difference per lap (on average).
For example, when I drove in the afternoon session at NOLA, I was only about 0.35 second (across three laps) behind the Gas Monkey Garage Nissan GTR driven by "Big" Chris Smith (a friend of Richard Rawlins, owner of Gas Monkey Garage and star of the TV show. Fast N' Loud... Richard was at Motorsport Ranch Cresson on Wednesday). If I'd managed to go faster than Big Chris—it would have only taken me going a little over a tenth of a second quicker per lap, on average—it wouldn't have changed our overall standings, but it would have made me feel better about my driving today.
Besides Travis Pastrana, who is competing in the event with a stock (unmodified) 2018 Subaru WRX STI, today we also had celebrity pro driver Tanner Foust on site... he was there on behalf of Odyssey Batteries.
Tomorrow we will be competing at National Corvette Museum (NCM), a complex track with MANY turns, a few blind rises and departures, and what I'm assuming will be a fairly terrifying high-speed section of gentle curves that are difficult to navigate efficiently because of how fast you need to go through this section.
Neither Doug nor I have any experience at NCM, so this track will be intimidating to us, but we'll walk it in the morning to get a better sense of how we need to drive it, and we'll just do the best we can.
Neither Doug nor I have been here before. It's a flat but very fast and open track layout, 2.75 miles long, with some challenging higher-speed "S" bends in the back section. The layout is fairly simple and easy to remember. This is a fairly new track facility, built in 2011. Oddly, it is closer to residential neighborhoods than any other racetracks that I have been to—I'd estimate less than a third of a mile (there is an intervening thick forest of trees and undergrowth as a noise absorber of sorts). It's also the first track I've been to with palm trees on the property. Unwritten bucket list item, checked off!
We drove well enough to hold on to our 7th place overall position. It will be impossible for Team Panda Express/Caution Asian Driver to move up in the rankings without a team above us not finishing one of the four final events (2 track sessions + an autocross at NCM, Bowling Green, KY; then the final skidpad challenge back at Tire Rack in South Bend, IN).
Several teams toward the top of the field had some very close finishing times at NOLA. Keep in mind the times shown are a total of three laps, so if there's about a one-second gap between two team's times, that's only roughly 0.33 seconds difference per lap (on average).
For example, when I drove in the afternoon session at NOLA, I was only about 0.35 second (across three laps) behind the Gas Monkey Garage Nissan GTR driven by "Big" Chris Smith (a friend of Richard Rawlins, owner of Gas Monkey Garage and star of the TV show. Fast N' Loud... Richard was at Motorsport Ranch Cresson on Wednesday). If I'd managed to go faster than Big Chris—it would have only taken me going a little over a tenth of a second quicker per lap, on average—it wouldn't have changed our overall standings, but it would have made me feel better about my driving today.
Besides Travis Pastrana, who is competing in the event with a stock (unmodified) 2018 Subaru WRX STI, today we also had celebrity pro driver Tanner Foust on site... he was there on behalf of Odyssey Batteries.
Tomorrow we will be competing at National Corvette Museum (NCM), a complex track with MANY turns, a few blind rises and departures, and what I'm assuming will be a fairly terrifying high-speed section of gentle curves that are difficult to navigate efficiently because of how fast you need to go through this section.
Neither Doug nor I have any experience at NCM, so this track will be intimidating to us, but we'll walk it in the morning to get a better sense of how we need to drive it, and we'll just do the best we can.
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