ntmatter
Enthusiast
For those who have never been to a Viper Days event, I thought I'd post a write-up and some pics of my excursion to the recent event in California. Apologies in advance for the length of the post. I'll post the pictures with captions first, and an account of the trip for those interested below:
The first turn of Sunday's Michelin Challenge race. All of the cars are about to dive into turn 1, 3 abreast. This picture shows where 2 cars got munched on Saturday - #1 is one wreck doing about $15K in damage, and #2 is where a $150K car got totaled.
Some of the starting line for Sunday's Race.
Pushing one of the McCann Vipers back to their tent after the race - notice the dramatic impending rain which cut my last day short.
I was aiming for the car in the center of my viewfinder, but they were going so fast that the car was almost off-screen before I got the camera button pushed. This happened alot.
Case in point. I had about 20 pictures with blank track because I was too slow, or the race cars were too fast.
Driving back, there was snow from Sacramento to past Redding - about 200 miles. However, 4 white-knuckled hours later I was pretty much through it - despite rear pilots worn pretty thin during 2 hard days of driving. Notice the pile of ice that fell off of the front of the fascia
To get to Willow Springs from Seattle, I had to drive about 1100 miles down the coast. By taking the scenic route through Lake Tahoe, I was also able to break my formerly "unbreakable" rule and drive my Viper while getting snowed on, for about 70 miles. It was either this or camp in the Sierra Nevada, so I sucked it up and drove cautiously in a large convoy of cars. Continuing south through Mojave, I encountered a dust storm and managed to embed a tumbleweed fairly firmly in my radiator.
Since I had a day to kill, I went down to LA (actually, for me, anything south of San Francisco is "LA") and cruised around Beverly Hills drawing stares. Went to the Ferrari showroom (too expensive), spanked a Diablo (driver was a wuss), and eventually ended up 90 miles north at Willow Springs, right next to Edwards Air Force Base. After checking in at the hotel in Lancaster, I got an early night's sleep to prepare for an early morning.
On Saturday morning, the track opened at 6:00, and at 6:00 AM in the desert it's cold enough to freeze your (lug)nuts off. After getting in and finding a place to park, I lined up to get my car Tech inspected. Everything was fine, except for some marginal clutch fluid which was quickly changed by the Archer tent's excellent techs, and so I was ready for class.
The event format is a 2 day instructional school alternating between instructor led classes and track time. Run-groups of about 15 cars are based on skill level - Since this was my first Viper Days event I was in the green (rookie) group. Although at first I was a bit leery of re-taking rookie classes, I found that I was not the fastest driver and that none of my class time was wasted. Skip was an excellent teacher in the class room, and my in-car instructors were great on the track. After 2 days of instruction I shaved 12 seconds off of my lap time - from 1:57 to 1:45.
Each of the 4 run groups got four 30-minute run sessions per day. Although this didn't seem like much on Saturday morning, by Saturday evening's forth session I'd pretty much had enough for the day. Sunday took up where Saturday left off, with more class and track time. The lapping sessions were generally excellent, since drivers were staged according to their previous lap times. This means that we didn't waste 10 minutes of each session trying to get enough space between cars to run a clean lap. The rookies had a few off-track excursions during the weekend (called Woodchucks, named - according to Skip - for Bob Woodhouse who went so far off the track one time that nobody could see him), and no green-group cars were damaged.
All in all it was an excellent experience, and I can't wait to head down to Button Willow for the next event in February. Between now and then, I have to look at a few mechanical items and get new tires, and swap out all my fluids, and give my engine one heck of a scrubbing, and...well, you get the picture.
A
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The first turn of Sunday's Michelin Challenge race. All of the cars are about to dive into turn 1, 3 abreast. This picture shows where 2 cars got munched on Saturday - #1 is one wreck doing about $15K in damage, and #2 is where a $150K car got totaled.
You must be registered for see images
Some of the starting line for Sunday's Race.
You must be registered for see images
Pushing one of the McCann Vipers back to their tent after the race - notice the dramatic impending rain which cut my last day short.
You must be registered for see images
I was aiming for the car in the center of my viewfinder, but they were going so fast that the car was almost off-screen before I got the camera button pushed. This happened alot.
You must be registered for see images
Case in point. I had about 20 pictures with blank track because I was too slow, or the race cars were too fast.
You must be registered for see images
Driving back, there was snow from Sacramento to past Redding - about 200 miles. However, 4 white-knuckled hours later I was pretty much through it - despite rear pilots worn pretty thin during 2 hard days of driving. Notice the pile of ice that fell off of the front of the fascia
To get to Willow Springs from Seattle, I had to drive about 1100 miles down the coast. By taking the scenic route through Lake Tahoe, I was also able to break my formerly "unbreakable" rule and drive my Viper while getting snowed on, for about 70 miles. It was either this or camp in the Sierra Nevada, so I sucked it up and drove cautiously in a large convoy of cars. Continuing south through Mojave, I encountered a dust storm and managed to embed a tumbleweed fairly firmly in my radiator.
Since I had a day to kill, I went down to LA (actually, for me, anything south of San Francisco is "LA") and cruised around Beverly Hills drawing stares. Went to the Ferrari showroom (too expensive), spanked a Diablo (driver was a wuss), and eventually ended up 90 miles north at Willow Springs, right next to Edwards Air Force Base. After checking in at the hotel in Lancaster, I got an early night's sleep to prepare for an early morning.
On Saturday morning, the track opened at 6:00, and at 6:00 AM in the desert it's cold enough to freeze your (lug)nuts off. After getting in and finding a place to park, I lined up to get my car Tech inspected. Everything was fine, except for some marginal clutch fluid which was quickly changed by the Archer tent's excellent techs, and so I was ready for class.
The event format is a 2 day instructional school alternating between instructor led classes and track time. Run-groups of about 15 cars are based on skill level - Since this was my first Viper Days event I was in the green (rookie) group. Although at first I was a bit leery of re-taking rookie classes, I found that I was not the fastest driver and that none of my class time was wasted. Skip was an excellent teacher in the class room, and my in-car instructors were great on the track. After 2 days of instruction I shaved 12 seconds off of my lap time - from 1:57 to 1:45.
Each of the 4 run groups got four 30-minute run sessions per day. Although this didn't seem like much on Saturday morning, by Saturday evening's forth session I'd pretty much had enough for the day. Sunday took up where Saturday left off, with more class and track time. The lapping sessions were generally excellent, since drivers were staged according to their previous lap times. This means that we didn't waste 10 minutes of each session trying to get enough space between cars to run a clean lap. The rookies had a few off-track excursions during the weekend (called Woodchucks, named - according to Skip - for Bob Woodhouse who went so far off the track one time that nobody could see him), and no green-group cars were damaged.
All in all it was an excellent experience, and I can't wait to head down to Button Willow for the next event in February. Between now and then, I have to look at a few mechanical items and get new tires, and swap out all my fluids, and give my engine one heck of a scrubbing, and...well, you get the picture.
A
