Guys,
I'm really glad to hear that. I called Panoz and spoke to a guy named "Ness" or something like that. He was a bit arrogant. I told him that I was attending the Viper event and that's when he gave me the pitch about an SCCA ir IMSA license. I mentioned that I had a VRL license and he said that he didn't know what that was. Just tell me who to sign up with and I'm there with some buddies.
Oh man, I have to tell Ness that... he was my old racing partner
In his absence on the board, I'll try to clear this up:
Saturday is for Touring group (very slow, lots of lead/follow, no passing from what I remember), Intermediate B (passing in straights, people fresh from Touring), as well as Intermediate A (people graduating from Intermediate B. Usually faster drivers and cars. If you are too slow, they will demote you to B for safety reasons... coming down the hill towards turn 12, you don't want to run into a guy hitting the brakes or something stupid). On Sunday is TECHNICALLY the advanced group. This is where a lot of testing and tuning is done by SCCA drivers. You can drive on Sunday if they (ie Ness and a few select others... insructors, etc.) decide you have enough experience. They aren't trying to be mean... they are just trying to keep people off the walls. The incidence rate of accidents started increasing, so they had to become more selective.
I'd say that unless you are pretty comfortable on a track with others around you going 140+ mph, DON'T come on Sunday. I thought I was comfortable on the track until people like David Farmer were breathing down my neck
I hope Ness didn't offend you too much. He can be like that sometimes, but he honestly is just trying to keep everyone safe! Countless times he's been told that a driver is "experienced," only to find that they make rookie mistakes that run others off the road. So, I can see why he is hesitant at times.
