Spring mountain- experienced racers?

[Neveready]

I can understand if you think it’s not worth your time but I think it’s a great opportunity regardless of your experience level. Why beat on your own car when you can beat on someone else’s. It’s less than a hour from Vegas so you can make a trip down there too if that interests you. Personally I had a great time and I’m going back in August. Why don’t you see if they have a level 2 course that you could take instead. The challenge for you would be to see how fast you are given a few laps on a track you’ve never been on. The instructors know the track better than you and they’ll let you go flat out a few laps but it’s a mixed bag depending on the rest of the students experience level.

 

[quikag]

Cold and hot tire air pressure?

I'd start at 28ish cold and try to stay around 36 or so hot as they get pretty greasy upper 30's to low 40's. Adjust accordingly.

 

[mfbmike]

Just got back from the Jan 24/25th dates. Can't say enough good things about the whole experience - it was PHENOMENAL. Had an absolute blast. The fact the whole thing was free, minus my expenses to get there, was icing on the cake.

Spent an additional 2 days in vegas for some friends of mine 40th bday and turned into a week vacay. Was freakin awesome.

 

[thefleshrocket]

I'm an experienced hpde driver, instructor, and solo 1 racer. The flights, rental car, etc. are all more expensive than I had planned, plus I hate to fly these days, and I'm wondering if it's worth it.

If you're an experienced track driver, you probably aren't going to learn anything substantial from the Spring Mountain school. I did it in December, and while I enjoyed the experience and improved my lines somewhat, it definitely wasn't a revelation, and I'm not as experienced as you are.

If my wife wasn't several months pregnant at the time, I would have had her do the course instead--she could have definitely benefitted from it.

 

[aa6]

while you may not learn anything... it's also fun just going out and pushing a car that isn't yours. Like someone else said, the instructors would love to have someone who is a little faster let them drive faster in the lead follow (they 'tailor' it to the follow car's pace).

I probably don't have as much experience (I'm probably at something like 125-ish track days over the last 8-10 years or so), but if you're anything like me, it's just great being out there (especially when you don't have to do any of the wrenching yourself!)

 

[aa6]

At the end of my class the guy who was running it (forgot his name) told us to reach out/ petition to GM about setting up an advanced class for the Cadillacs.

I guess the interest from Spring Mountain is there, but GM has to approve or something?

I was told that there's interest from both sides (SMMR & GM), however, they need more cars to do it...

 

[pkincy]

I think you definitely should go. I have been to one Corvette School, and two V Academies. One with the ATS-V and one with the CT4-V BW. At the ATS-V event, I was accompanied by a colleague and close friend that had bought one of my track cars and is a natural hot shoe. He regularly instructs in both his local Audi Club and Porsche Club. I campaigned a Camaro for 5 years in Camaro Mustang Challenge with NASA. Malone remembered me from the Corvette school and we ate breakfast the first day with him and after hearing my buddies background he set us up as a 2 car follow in each of the track events. Then he had different instructors lead us. His idea was he wanted to reward the instructors by having a session or two where they could stretch their legs as well. At the end of the second day he thanked us for giving the instructors a fun 2 days. And each of these instructors would stay ahead of us with a passenger while doing their normal great job of watching us in their mirrors and talking with us on the radio. They run this track for a living and can run those demo lap times day in and day out without a problem. Much of the time however they are running a pace of Demo Lap plus 10-15 seconds because some students are that inexperienced. So get out there and let them have some fun keeping ahead of you. BTW, the demo laps are fast laps excepting no really hard braking as they don't want to show a bunch of students the potential late braking points to avoid any offs during the regular events. So the instructors can generally do a demo lap time less 2 seconds if they want. We were running consistent demo lap times both days in all events.