The LazyAssGeek’s

Day 2 dawned dark & early, though we more or less were keeping ourselves on Eastern time. It made that 5:30 alarm a heck of a lot easier to deal with when your body thinks it’s 8:30. THIS time I remembered my camera, and even the extra batteries. Aren’t you proud? Gee, thanks. So back to Highway 160 we went and off into the mountains for the run down to Pahrump. Here are a couple of shots to try to give you an idea of how it looks, brings to mind a description our Dad relayed to us a long while back about parts of the West of Ireland – “terrible beauty.”

Heading West on Highway 160 on the Vegas side

How's that for a desert road, Biggi?

We got settled into the common area with cups of coffee, chatting with Renee and her husband Bill as well as our instructor Jordan.  We were supposed to have a 4th student and were waiting, and waiting, and then a radio call came in to Jordan that he would not be joining us. He had been struggling to get the car going with the clutch on Monday as it had been a long time since he’d driven a manual and I guess he decided it was just too frustrating. It was really a shame he gave up, because that is the perfect environment to practice.  The C6 is tough to get moving SMOOTHLY because of the torque so it can easily frustrate you, but the torque is actually your friend in getting the car moving.  On the first day the instructors demonstrated this by having us get the cars moving on a level surface by simply letting out the clutch without touching the gas. If you go nice & easy at the grab-point the car will just glide forward. But apparently the frustration factor was too high for this gentleman to deal with and enjoy himself, so we moved on without him.

That left Jordan, and Tuesday’s instructor du jour Barry(that’s a joke you guys, having a different second instructor each day was actually pretty cool as it gave you additional perspectives, even if Barry is a Tony hater) to deal with just Renee, Joe and me.  It was practically private instruction and made for a relaxed environment to learn in. You’ll be relieved to learn, dear reader, that the postings for the next two days aren’t likely to be as long as the post from Day 1, but that’s not because we did any less, it’s just because we would be learning fewer new skills and therefore fewer exercises to describe.  Instead we would be mostly applying those previous lessons and trying to improve on those skills by doing laps, mostly in Lead/Follow sessions on this day.

Before we get to the day’s events, here are a few pics of the stable we had the pleasure of choosing from.

The Stable

The Morning's Lineup

We got in the cars and headed out to the backstretch to start the day with more heel-toe practice.  There’s no such thing as too much practice with this, the more you do it the more natural it becomes and therefore the less you have to think about it. Brake-Clutch-Neutral-Blip-Select-Release.  The Brake/Clutch/Neutral begins to happen as a single action the more you do it, but the blip, select and release are individual steps.  We got ride-alongs from the instructors who helped us with technique and tips and who approved each of us to move along.

The next step was a pair of Lead/Follow sessions, this time working in 4-3 shifts.  The 2 points along the track where we were to work on shift were the entrances to turns 3 and 7. At turn 3 you’re coming up the hill and need to get the shift finished before you turn in where you REALLY go uphill. This is a turn where if you mess up the shift you can really get yourself into trouble because it is a tight turn and uphill and if you get engine braking going up that hill because you didn’t get your shift done in time, you’re going to loop it and wind up in the gravel.  That is, assuming you’ve slowed down enough to even get that far!  But it’s actually a fun turn because if you hit the apex and exit it will lead you perfectly into the chicane so you can setup for the tight turn 4. The shift heading into 7 I found to be much easier because to me it seems like you have more time.  You come through the kink and keep it wide right to enter turn 6, which you make into one big sweep heading down into 7.  It’s a long run down to that entry, so that’s when you get your shift done.  Turn 7 is the most important turn on the track because it leads into the fast section.  The more speed you can carry through turn 7 lets you go down that 1850′ straight with more speed.

2.2 Mile Track Map

We did our first Lead/Follow session and then headed back to take a break and review things.  Barry presented a lesson in cornering technique and we had a good discussion afterwards.  We also found out that Kyle Busch sent Barry off on his biggest shunt by diving under two cars up onto curbing, which didn’t end well, pushing the 2 cars out, clipping Barry as he came into the corner and sending him off and tumbling end over end.  Yet Barry still seemed to like Kyle, while not liking Tony because he’s a bully and “is good enough that he doesn’t need to be.”  Race drivers, go figure!

We headed out for our second Lead/Follow session and what I have avoided mentioning until now started to become a problem, well at least it became one in my mind and we know I’m an impatient bitch. Renee was not running as fast as Joe & I were, and should you manage to come across my post here Renee, please don’t take what I’m saying as criticism or mean-spirited because that is not my feeling or intent.  Everybody has to go at their own pace and be comfortable in order to learn, I understand that and had absolutely no problem with Renee running a pace she was comfortable running.  When it became a problem, and my limited patience was tested,  was during that second Lead/Follow.  Any time Renee was ahead of us but not directly behind the instructor the pace was much slower than I would have preferred and I began to feel like it was keeping me from progressing. Jordan & Barry recognized it as well and for the afternoon sessions had Barry ride with Renee in the afternoon sessions while Joe & I did the sessions following Jordan. So a tip of the hat and thanks to them both for keeping my frustration from getting the better of what little common sense I possess!

After the second Lead/Follow it was the instructors turn to throw the cars around. We each got a ride-along with either Jordan or Barry. My ride was with Barry, Joe with Jordan just ahead of us. They said they were going about 80% and it was a fun ride.  Barry was giving a running commentary and it again was very instructive for learning the line and braking zones. It also was instructive about how much more work I needed on heel-toe as other than hearing the STRONG blip you would never know he’d done something.  Barry did miss the apex through 4 one time while concentrating a bit too much on showing me something rather than the turn he was making.  That of course didn’t mean that I cut the Tony-hater any slack, so therefore I outed him to Jordan later in the debrief! After the demo rides it was time for lunch break.  Day 2′s lunch was burgers and dogs, good stuff again.

After lunch we headed over to the skid pad again, this time for a rather interesting exercise.  I had heard about it on Corvette Forum but it was still cool to experience.  They had cones laid out around which we had to run a serpentine pattern. OK, sounds easy enough, right?  Well this was another exercise in keeping your eyes up and what they wanted us to do was to look at a pair of white temporary shelters that was at the far end of the layout at all times.  So you had to turn based on when you spotted the cones in your peripheral vision. After a couple of runs at it to get the hang of it, they added an extra twist – the put sunshields in to cover the windshield so you HAD to use the side windows for your vision, no choice but to turn your head and look around. That sounds difficult, but actually after having run the serpentine a few times before they did that, it wasn’t really any different to run it with the windshield blocked and turned out to be pretty easy.  After that they wanted to prove a point about going fast.  They told us to go as FAST as we could around the cones, and they reached in and turned off traction control and active handling.  I was first and I got the car a little sideways, but obviously not hard enough for Jordan because the taunting over the radio began – “I said go FAST!  Do I have to send your brother out after you??”  Boy did he know the button to push!!  Next time through the rotation he had Barry give a demo with Renee riding shotgun. Barry just about did a constant drift back & forth around the cones, he said later it had been a long time since he’d done the demo so he didn’t get the car as sideways as he would have liked.  OK, so my turn again and Jordan comes on the radio and says “OK guys, we don’t pay for tires.  Get it?”  Got it. I did manage to get a good slide or two, but there’s an art to getting the back end to come around the way you want it to, and I apparently was putting in too much steering before I got into the throttle and that induces understeer.  Regardless it was fun to spin the wheels, throw the car around and make a little smoke.  It did also prove the point that you ain’t gonna go fast just by mashing the go pedal.

The day ended with two more Lead/Follow sessions, continuing to work on all the skills we’d been taught – visual scanning (eyes up, eyes up!!!!), heel-toe, hitting the apexes, learning the braking zones, etc. By the end of the day I was feeling pretty good about getting the car around the track, but still was feeling uncertain about heel-toe, still having to think about it too much. Joe was pretty comfortable with it and was trying to work in some of the optional shifts as well.  When the sessions were over and the day ended we headed over to the clubhouse and took a bunch of pictures, including head up to the top of the member observation tower and getting some pics from up top. Great view up there and you can see all of the pics in the photo gallery.

We headed back into Vegas and decided we would finish off the day with a good steak dinner. We took the shuttle down to New York New York and walked over to Luxor. Amazingly we weren’t presented with a single card for a strip joint! We had a very good dinner at the Tender Steak & Seafood in the Luxor.  Our waiter heard us talking about the racing school and was clearly amazed and interested because he was a pretty big guy himself and figured if WE could fit in those cars then he could too! Thanks for the great service Dewayne, though we do wish you had warned us how many tomatoes came with that salad plate!  Hope maybe some day you decide to go to Spring Mountain and have as much fun as we did.

After dinner we walked back to NYNY and fed the $100 bills our dad had given to each of us into dollar slot machines and made the money disappear.  Joe was up $58 at one point, but our dad would have been disappointed if he didn’t keep going, so he did, and lost all of it! Mine was far less dramatic and disappeared in short order.  We grabbed the shuttle bus back to Tahiti to get some sleep and be ready for open lapping on Day 3!

And I guess my promise to keep this one shorter than Day 1 was broken, oh well!