Run at Watkins Glen

[brett@kodak.com (Brett VanSprewenburg)]

Whooo hooo!

The local VW club (Finger Lakes VW Club) that I belong to went out to
Watkins Glen race track today and during the Porche Club lunch break,
we got in some track time.  Now, we didn't have free reign, we had a
pace car out front.  However, that doesn't mean some of us didn't get
to have an _awesome_ time in some of the turns!!  If I let the people
in front of me run away from me a bit by slowing down, I could get in
some really quick bursts, especially in a couple of the turns.  I
was the fifth car from the front, so I didn't have that many air
cooled cars in front of me (2 air suckers, a new beetle, and a VR6
passat wagon).

Anyway, I was able to floor it in 3rd gear through the chicane
a bunch of times, it was FRIGGIN GREAT!!!  Did I mention that I had
an ABSOLUTE BLAST!!  I was also able to nail it really hard into
the deep right hander immediately after the main stands/pit area.

The bug in front of me let people run away from him, and I let him
go away from me a bunch of times, then he'd run as hard as he could
through a corner, I'd nail it, and beat huge ASS through the corner
as end up inside his line by a big margin and I'd be running up
his bumper really hard on the other side of the corner.  Did I mention
that it was FRIGGIN' AWESOME being out on a track?!

We got to stop half way through in the pit area and the guy behind me
in the A1 GTI said that my car sounded just great everytime I got on
it hard into a corner.  Man, I had a good time.  This is it, I'm in.

Someday I'm building a dedicated race car, ITB or ITC class from what
I understand of how things work.  I can't tell you people how much
fun I had, even if the speeds were pretty low most of the time.

I took a bunch of pictures from inside the car, while I was in the
pits, and my wife did her best and tried to take some video.  (I'll
submit that to the Scirocco mailing list video as soon as I get
a bit more footage).  I'll post them sometime...

Anyway, I can see why racing like that would make people calm down
on the streets, it can get it out of your system.  It also shows you
just exactly how hard you can push your car.  I had a few scary
moments coming up on a slower car and having to unsettle the car
by getting off the gas in a corner exit...everything held quite
well though. :-)

Enough for now....  Anyone want to get together and rent a track?! :)

==Brett
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