Half the afternoon was consumed with some class time learning about the driving principles, driving the track in road cars and learning about the race car itself. We then ran 2, 20 minutes track sessions... no speed limiters, no pace car. The only requirement was that you passed in an approved passing zone with flagged acknowledgement. There was a group of 18 people there, so we ran in groups of 9.The cars are Formula 2000 chassis. Basically a small open wheel racer. The cars they use for the school are right from their spec series, with the addition of some additional crash safety equipment. Powered by a 4cyl and weighing about 1400 lbs, they are very quick compared to typical road car standards. Top speed due to gearing was about 110 mph flat out. Given the shorter South course we were running on, and some wet spots, I don't think I would have wanted to go much faster in the space we had.
Yes it did rain, but most of my track time ended up being pretty dry.
The first session out, I kindof felt like I was missing out a little because everyone was running so slow. I was also stuck behind a guy that kept ignoring the passing flag for half the session. They finally black flagged him off the course after 5 laps so I could get by. Even with that, it was still good to learn the car and the corners. In-between sessions they had their instructors giving us pointers on how we could improve to drive faster for the 2nd session.
The 2nd session was great because everyone paid attention to the flags and I didn't get stuck following slow folks. There were 2 or three people that quit after the first session because they couldn't get a handle on shifting. Upshifting was easy, but downshifting took some practice to manage without synchronizers.
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