We arrived on Friday at about 3 pm at the Mt. Ascutney State park. The evening was busy with tire changes, brake pad changes, tech inspection, registration, and general setup of the car for the next day. There was also rookie orientation, in which one of the more experienced drivers took us up the hill and explained some of the trickier aspects of the course. Since the hill is around 3.6 miles, it took us almost 2 hours to go from bottom to top and back again by the time everyone's questions were answered. Many thanks to Sherman Baumann for the great information.
Tech inspection
As you would probably expect neither I nor my wife slept much Friday night. Even though the workers and drivers meetings weren't until 7:15-7:30 we were up and around by probably about 5:30 am. I should have been tired but the excitement of the day outweighed my lack of sleep for most of the day. The drivers meeting was at 7:30 sharp, in which they covered all the usual safety topics and regulations. After that it was a mad dash to the cars for the first Fam (familiarization) run. I ended up about 8th in line out of about 45-50 cars. The Fam run was fairly uneventful. The only problem I had was being stuck behind a slow car and not being able to go fast enough to keep the engine from loading up.
A few drivers ended up stopping at different points on the way down the hill which put me 4th in line for the first run of the weekend. Before I knew it, it was my turn. I lined up at start, they chocked my tire and I was ready to go. One green light and a little big of tire spinning later I was off. I took it easy for the first run of the day. The last thing I wanted was to stuff it on cold tires on a cold road on the first run of the weekend. Four minutes and Fourteen seconds later I had covered the 3.6 miles and was at the top, for and average speed of 51 mph. Not bad considering the posted limit on the road is 15 mph. Two more runs that day resulted in a best time of 4:02. My third run was spoiled by the fact that I didn't shift straight and got the transmission stuck in 2nd gear for the fastest section of the course.
I couldn't have been happier with the results of day 1 and day 2 (Sunday) got even better. After some initial frustration with missing the Fam run, God was good and actually provided me with an extra run for the day. Timing missed my first time of the day which bought me a re-run. So instead of following a slow car up the hill on a fam run. I got a "Fam" run by myself at speed. I couldn't have been happier. The first official timed run of the day was a 3:51 which shattered my goal of breaking the 4 minute barrier. At the beginning of run 2 I noticed that in hard right corners I was getting an oil pressure drop. Not left hand corners only right. Despite monitoring this all the way up the hill and taking it a little slower in some of the tight right handers we still managed to drop off another 3 seconds for a 3:48. Run 2 ended up being the best time of the day. After lunch, and being delayed by a couple incidents on the hill the weather started to turn. Rain was gently sprinkling down for my last run of the day. Run three resulted in a time of 3:59 due to taking it easy to keep from putting it in the bushes on the last run of the weekend.
Overall I was very happy with the event, the car, and myself over the weekend. It was an amazing expirience for all who attended. I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in racing in the New England area attend one of these events. Its a great group of people, and a good time is had by all.
Here are a short video my wife took of me driving by while working a checkpoint on the hill. You can really hear the car in full song. Enjoy.
