Track day with Miata club - Laguna Seca Raceway

No way was I going to pass up the chance to drive at the historic Laguna Seca Raceway. The post-Thanksgiving-holiday made for a little bit of scheduling drama, but it worked out. After ingesting some L-Triptophan foodstuffs I drove the 1.5 hours to Monterey for the late night checkin at the Miata club's group-rate Quality Inn. It was foggy, dark and quiet. I set several alarms for 5:00 to 5:30 AM (wakeup call requests could only be made during office hours) and prepared for my second night in a row of 4 hours of sleep.

I slept right through the 5:00 AM clock radio but my 5:30 AM alarm worked. I got packed up and headed out to find some food before the long day on the track. Down the street there was a Denny's, so I parked, and as I walked towards the door I saw a silver Boxster creeping past the driveway as if it was looking at me. I peered but couldn't see in, so I started to go in to the restaurant, but then the Boxster pulled in and parked, and out hopped The Resurrected Phil Saunders! Phil said that Gary Barnhill was already there, so we went in and found Gary and scarfed down a little breakfast.

The track is only five minutes east of downtown Monterey on Highway 168. We got there just after 7 AM, and it was light but the fog was incredibly dense. I couldn't imagine driving on the track with such poor visibility, but by the time I had changed tires the fog was getting burned off, and there was going to be plenty of blue sky and visibility.

We spent an awfully long time in the drivers' meeting, and found out that because of overbooking the class, combined with track restrictions, we would have three run groups instead of two, meaning that each group would get six 20-minute sessions rather than nine. This was somewhat disappointing. They really need to set a hard limit on the number of cars, and stick to it; otherwise you can't help but feel like you're not getting your money's worth.

I hopped into Michael Saal's silver Boxster to ride passenger while Michael narrated the way around the course behind the wheel in run group C. The first round of sessions were "follow the leader", where a group of four or so cars follows an instructor car, so that (if the cars in front of you pay attention, which they don't) you can see the proper line. But we hung way back since Michael had plenty of experience on Laguna Seca already, so as not to be distracted by people driving all sorts of incorrect lines in front of us. At the end of group C's intro session, we pitted and got in my car for my run group B. This time I drove while Michael instructed me. The combination of earlier track map study plus these two sessions, one riding and one driving, was enough to have the line down in my head. Now all I needed to do was get a good feel for it.

For session two I again rode with Michael in group C, and had him ride with me in group B. The second session started with follow the leader, and after each lap or so the instructor in the lead car would wave another car by to be turned loose. So it was only a half of a session of real driving, but I was ready to start increasing my speed bit by bit.

Finally, for the third session, we were truly free to just drive. There really was no problem with the fact that Laguna Seca has a lot less run-off room than Thunderhill. Most of the potential problem areas have good run-off, and I simply exercised caution in the others, mainly exiting Turn 2 and entering the corkscrew Turn 8. I turned on the camcorder. A few days later I've used a stopwatch the check the lap times according to the videotape. The results are in the table below.

The students were almost all very courteous about waving by the faster cars. At one point Phil was behind me and basically stayed right there even on his street tires. Through certain turns on the first section of the course I seemed to keep a distance or gain slightly, but coming down through Turns 8 and 9 he zoomed right back. He was executing those turns much better than me. The problem I had was gaining enough confidence to go fast into Turn 9. I seemed to be leaving too much unused track on the run-out. Going down the main straight I decided to take it easy in Turns 2 and 3 and wave Phil by after Turn 4, but we got the checkered flag. So I never got the chance to follow Phil. At some point, as I approached Turn 2, a beautiful blue Ferrari, one of the instructor cars, appeared out of thin air in my mirrors. I don't know whether he came out of the pits directly onto the straight, or whether he simply flew down from Turn 11; either way it was incredibly fast. As soon as I got the chance, exiting Turn 4, I waved him by.

We broke for lunch and zipped down the road to the nearest gas station. I still had a bit more than half a tank left, but I didn't want to worry about running too low at the end of the day.

The first afternoon session was strange: instead of our 20 minutes, the checkered flag appeared after just 4 laps. After pitting I hopped into Michael's car to ride passenger, and it seemed like we were out there for at least half an hour. Why were the run groups getting such different session lengths?!

Our next session was also shortened when a Miata spun coming out of Turn 2. I'd seen a couple of spins in Turn 11 from my vantage point standing along the pit wall earlier, but 11 is really slow and even though a spin there seemed to always leave the car sitting in the middle of the track, unless a following car is driving dangerously close it can easily go around the spun car. And if a car goes straight off in 11, there's a lot of run-off area. The unfortunate Miata, however, lost it coming out of Turn 2, and went wide into the dirt backwards, albeit at a slow speed. The problem is that there's a wall there, pretty close to the track. He touched the wall, scraped the driver's side of the car, and smacked the left front wheel hard enough to break a tie rod. Tow truck time. Our session was only 3 laps.

While Phil and I were standing around in the pits something caught our eye in Turn 3. A very loud white early 70's Mustang slant-back (which was also driven in our group B, rather slowly and poorly) was in group C, rounding Turn 3, trailing a pretty good plume of smoke. It looked to me like oil smoke. At the same moment, Phil and I both said something like "I sure hope it's not dropping oil on the track...." Fifteen seconds later we heard screeching tires and looked over to Turn 3 to see someone spinning into the dirt. The car got back on course. After just fifteen more seconds it happened again, another set of screeching tires and an off-track excursion. This time it was Gary Barnhill in the S2000 with Michael Saal riding shotgun! Obviously the Mustang had dropped oil in the Turn 3 entrance. They put out the debris flag in Turn 3, and then black flagged the course. Michael later remarked to me that they should have a tech inspection rule of: no old piece of crap broken-down oil-spilling cars allowed on course.

We had the afternoon drivers' meeting and the requisite extra cautions after the excitement.

Time was running out so they decided that the last three run groups (the final session for each) would only be 10 minutes each. Sure enough, our last session was a pathetic two laps (plus pit exit/warmup, and cooldown/pit entry, each a partial lap).

It was great fun to drive on this track, although looking back at the useful track time I was pretty disappointed compared to the prior outing with the Miata club. I mean, the number of sessions was cut down, the morning was half in follow mode, and the afternoon was a pathetically small number of laps. Ultimately, we only got half the expected track time. In terms of track time, this was the worst track day I've done so far.

Michael and I did our wheel changing routines as the light faded, and were just about the last ones out of the paddock. As we drove out of the park area, Michael slowed and pulled to the side of the road. He had heard some weird noise coming from his wheels, and started to wonder whether he'd actually torqued the lug bolts. He checked. Nope. They were loose. Good thing he found out right away! He and Elicia headed back to Monterey and I headed back home northward.