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Been back for an hour now and am recovered enough that I'm not too dead to type.

Patriot course is busy, not my favorite place, but it's still worth the money. Everyone improved a bunch over the weekend!

Aside from one loose plug wire the old celica performed pretty well, I actually finished n event without blowing the engine The race tires were grippy enough and the car made good power, so it was decent all the way around.

Saturday I did have a pretty big off that resulted in a 1 mph colision with the green armco, the result is some green paint on my car and a teeny dent in the front bumper.

My unofficial best time was a 56.1 (thanks Christine), not sure how that stacks up to the time trial folks (Patrice was running 53's).

Other thanks:

Mark V and the entire crew!
Mike W for taking my father-in-law for a fun run.
Patrice B. for making me sick when I rode with him.

And everyone else.

Scott

Indeed a fine weekend.

Thanks to Mark Vitacco and Stacy King for great (as usual) organization.

Thanks too to Chuck Hawks for the fine class room instruction.

Matt Nicholson deserves some thanks for going out of his way on the way home to tow a slightly bruised BMW back home to Raleigh.

Some times I recall.

FTD both days: Matt Graham. Sat: 50.something. Sunday 48. something

Also fast: Patrice: 53 .low
Bill Gratton: 54.0 in a fairly new to him M3
Charlie Guthrie too 1st in DSP Sat with a mid 55
Mark V. As I recall mid to low 56.
Bill Huchins (hope I remember the name correctly) In a light weight M3...52.2!! Damned well driven and FAST!!

Anyway, as you can see for real cars (sorry Matt G) times were from 52 and up. Lots in the 56/ 58 range.

I can sum up Patriot course this way. It was the CORRECT decision to make it a non novice course. Way too busy and offers little to no time to rest between turns. 12 turns in less than a minute. Thats work.

The course, is, did I mention, busy??!! I have NEVER, EVER thrown the car into so many turns (and lived to tell about it) at any other track. To turn a fast time you had to throw it down the hill into 1 and skip over the gators (I used dirt) all the way throught what I will call the uphill esses. Pretty much the same thing up cork screw backwards. All over the gators/ grass.

Then at the top of the hill (where south cuts over to north) 3 very, very, did I say very tight turns leading out to the front "straight". Again, throw the car in, jump the curbs/ grass/ whatever and manage to somehow find the track again!

Repeat every 5X seconds!! At the end of 15 minutes I was roasted! I guess I need to work on the house some more to get back in shape!!

Would I go back? You bet!! The uphill esses (from turn 1 through I think 4) are a BLAST! Slide, catch, slide, catch all the way down and back up the hill.

Its by far the most technically challenging course I've driven. Let me end by saying, if you hesitated because it looked "simple" on the map, you missed it.

Congrats to all the class winners in the Time Trial. Certainly Stacy will have results up soon.

Thanks again to all those that worked so hard to pull this event off!

Even though I didn't do a great deal of driving I still had a heck of a good time. My student in the RSX picked it up fast and drove well. I drove Travis' Miata a couple sessions and while the "tight esses" I never figured out (I basically mangled them worse and worse), the rest of the track was awesome. Fun to be at a track I've never been to before...first time in years for such an experience.

And, I got to drive Matt Graham's Radical. Let me tell you something, that will RUIN you on sedan based cars. Sequential shifter, racing slicks, "shift it at 10 thousand RPM" redline...the whole thing. Wow. I didn't even scratch the surface other than to know I must have one.

Yes, I did take it off, probably as a result of getting brakes and gas at the same time (note to self - if driving sports racer, wear something other than tennis shoes...that footwell is SMALL). I was petrified that I'd just written off X dollars in exotic sports racer parts. Luckily for me, no harm done, and vacuuming the thing clean and clearing the brake ducts of grass was the extent of my repair bill. Lesson learned...don't get cocky in someone else's Radical.



Oh yeah. Couldn't agree more. This track is very, VERY busy.

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Karl S.
2014 Baby, 2014 House, 2013 Ford Focus ST, 2013 BMW 328i, 1994 Mercedes E320
(Insert passive aggressive signature line here)

For future reference:

What speed range (min and max) in quick "regular" cars and in the Radical (assuming Matt knows the approximate max speeds in the various gears)?

How hard on brakes compared to South Course (assume Mustang . . . lots of acceleration . . . minimal handling ).

Thanks,

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Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

I used gears 2, 3 and 4 in the Celica, could have done it in 3 and 4 only if I had wanted.

Top speed was no where near the end of 4th (probably 90 mph?) Someone said that Patrice was a little over 100 mph. I think the fastest section is the uphill part (running south course backwards).

There are 3 legitimate braking zones, all of them are pretty heavy braking, so at best you have 15-18 seconds to cool the brakes in between, and you have to cool them at lower speeds. So, yes, it is hard on brakes. I thought it was a bit harder on the brakes than South course.

Scott

I'll throw in my 2 cents:

The Patriot course is busy, technical, and requires a great deal of car control to get it "right." Despite the quick times in the Radical, the car is really more at home in a wide open, high speed sweeper kind of course (like Roebling or VIR-Full). I found myself slowing more than I thought I should have to make all of the corners.

I have no idea what kind of speeds I was hitting, as I didn't retrieve any of the data from the data system, and I'm not too sure what kind of revs I was pulling going into the brake zones. I would guess I was JUST touching 100mph in the fast parts. That may be way off though.

All in all, I'm glad we ran the format we did (no novices, only 1 student for each instructor, 12 car run groups). 12 cars didn't seem to congested, and I didn't see too many long trains out there.

Please sound off in here if you think you would run Patriot again if we ran the same (or similar) format next year.

Thanks to all for organizing a great event.

-Matt

Scott and Matt,

Sounds like a great site for a high speed autocross. My Formula Ford would love it . . . maybe even with my current gearing (max speed just over 100 mph) but I've got lots more to chose from. Seriously, would it be any less safe than some of the fastest L'burg, etc. events? I realize that the cost for the track may be far too high for an autocross format/amount of track time.

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Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

Yeeeeeeeehaw!

Yeah, that was fun. You don't need lots of hp on this course (but another 50-100 hp in the RS would be nice), because there's no waiting around/ rowing gears on big, boring straights. A few places I never did get right, but even getting them wrong was fun. My lap time: 58.1 according to the wife.

I think my favorite part was... well, it's pretty much half the track but it goes from turning in at the "bitch" trackout curbing to jumping the curbing & entering the south course area. That was what I lived for every lap - I don't think I breathed a whole lot through all that. For me it was lift (at around 85?), turn in, start dragging the brakes a little, feel the back end get light, straighten out a little bit, brake HARD! & downshift to 2nd then pitch it into the first right, abuse the car with the curbing & lift-throttle-steering through the tight esses, run a tight exit (that was rarely the case, though ), shift to 3rd, short-shift to 4th, full throttle all the way over the curbing & even with the pit wall, dive on the brakes hard & downshift to 3rd, trail-brake into turn 1, the car rotates, full throttle again & it rockets down the hill, jump the curbing on the right, jab the brake, full throttle again after jumping the curb on the left, car goes airborne over the next curb on the right & slides over to jump the last curb on the left, immediately shift to 4th and let out a big Rebel yell. Then I just have to get through the "other" stuff so I can do it all again... (the "other" stuff didn't suck, it just wasn't as exciting as the rest of the track - and my car doesn't like accelerating uphill - this is where the extra 50 hp would be useful)

I put two tires off exiting the tight esses in session 2 of day one, because I got early on the left turn, then didn't correct & stayed early on the exit. Just drove it straight over the trackout curbing & all was fine. I pushed the car pretty hard at points during the weekend, but had to back off a lot sometimes & cruise for half a lap due to my poor brake pad & tire choices. (Bobcats & street tires) Next time, there will probably be R compounds & there will definitely be some "whatever Matt sells me" brake pads on the car. I got away with Axxis Ultimates on full course in February, but there's nowhere to cool the brakes down on Patriot - unless you back off. And the tires were Dan's stock tires from the STi - they're pretty good for street tires, but they don't match the Pirellis that I had at full course. And they scream like little bitches EVERYWHERE - Christine was watching over at the tight esses, and she could hear the tires screeeeaming!!! all the way from the entry there to the entry to the south course section. But it was a good indicator of when they were getting ready to say "screw you, I'm done."

The best part of the weekend was when Matt was in front of me and Scott was behind me in the last session. I pushed the car pretty hard at that point, and it was a blast! Eventually, Matt started his cool-down lap & waved us by & Scott reeled me in shortly afterward, but it was great while it lasted. I know Matt was slightly off his usual pace during that run, but it was fun trying to stay with him (while avoiding crashing ). After that, it got pretty boring, so I just cruised a little & tried to keep the brakes happy.

I'll have some photos up shortly...

Dick

In my weiner honda I was at the top of 3rd in two places. Think thats about 90 in my car.

It was harder on brakes than it should have been but its, as someone (Kevin) pointed out its because there is little time for them to cool off. It was not unusual for me to have NO brakes as I came into the pits. I'd say for a big car itwould b e a hard brake weekend. In the F Ford you would have loved it! It would have been great to see it just twitch through the tight esses and fly down the fast esses! I think 100mph gearing would be too low and you would run out of revs before whats turn 6 on the south course.

And Karl, it was VERY generous of you to come out and instruct without a car to drive.

Ron

Great weekend, thanks again to all of our organizers, everything seemed to move right along despite changes to our usual schedule and some Sunday fog, and to Carbotech for some tasty beer!

I wasn't sure how much I'd like the track after the first session on Saturday. It's a bit unnerving at first with all the elevation change and the hills you can't see over. A few hints from Karl and some of the classroom discussion about various lines helped alot. The second and third sessions were much better, and having to figure most of it out without anyone in the car to help ended up being alot more fun than I had anticipated. The Saturday Time Trial (if you're not doing these you really should) was a great way to be sure you had put it all together mostly right.

Sunday was even better. Matt hopped in the car to give me a few more pointers and it went from fun to scary fun Pretty sure the highest speeds I saw were somewhere in the 90-95 range, but that was coming to the autox section braking zone, so I wasn't really watching the speedometer at the end. I didn't really have any problem with the brakes going away (Carbotech rules), but some ducts would probably have been good. To me, it didn't seem quite as hard on the brakes as South course, but pretty close. I think I was trying a little too hard the 3rd session as the tires started to go away towards the end. Still, I managed to drop over a second off of my Saturday time on the Sunday TT, so I'm pretty happy about that. I'd definitely like to come back again and improve on that time.

No way, no how is that an appropriate place for an autocross. VIR approached us about it earlier this year when they wanted to do a Subaru event there. I could forward you the complete email I sent Jean about it.

- Do you want to be shagging cones on a blind corner?
- T&S would only be able to see 20% of the course and we have "inexperienced" corner workers.
- We don't have enough cones to slow it down enough IMO.
- We had AT LEAST 5 hard impacts this weekend with the armco/tires. Most of these started with car speed of 60-75 MPH. Even if the corners were "coned down", there is still too much risk.
- Did anyone notice that all of the runoff area is DOWNHILL? Like, everywhere that someone might go off runs through 20-50 feet of grass and ends in a metal armco barrier.

Laurinburg is a damn walk in the park by comparison. Patriot course would be a longer autocross than we have ever run at Lburg.

Also add in the fact that Patriot course costs about 20x what Laurinburg does, and that we would have to charge $75 per person for an autocross, and, well, it ain't gonna happen.

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

Yeah, I think it's pointless to think about autoxing that course. Novices would bust their cars, and you'd only get a few runs for the same amount you would pay for around an hour of seat time on the "real" track - which would suck a WHOLE lot less than the coned-up course would.

Kevin and Mike,

Thanks for the input. I was mostly curious if the high speeds were "slow enough" to do an autocross without use of cones (for all the reasons you mention). Obviously not! Even a "slow" race track is a whole different thing than a fast autox course.

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Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

Just looking online and I saw that the ARCA trucks were running 50.XXX lap times on Patriot course. They are supposed to be 2100 lbs and 370 hp or so. That's pretty quick!

The "main" event was supposed to be a 50 lap race. Probably pretty interesting/entertaining.



Scott

I watched that. They were punting each other off the course very frequently, but were still fairly impressive to watch on track. Considering this was their first event on a non-oval track, they did well.

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In need of car.