[flash]

"You spend all morning waiting for what is effectively 8 minutes of driving."



sounds a lot like dating



lol - sorry - only on my third cup of coffee

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[craigawoodman]

Flash,



There are lots of comments I could make, but on reflection, it's a bit like dating. When you are not on the dance floor, you and your "mates" hang over the fence, watching others have a go, passing comment on how effective their technique is, somewhat hoping they stuff up, and begrudgingly applauding their prowess if they succeed. And at the end, despite all your efforts, you still leave and go home alone.



The other way it is not like dating, is that the 8 minutes is actually four two minute drives inter-dispersed with the previously mentioned waiting around. So getting to have four rides in the one date would be a bit unusual. Sometimes they even change the course after the first two drives.



Not sure what everyone's youth was like, but that was the stuff of fantasy when I was young. Even to get a drive when going dating the odds were pretty low that the car ever got out of first gear. My car at the time must have been Italian, more reverse gears than forward.



I haven't had a coffee yet, late night and my daughter has to go to swimming training, got to love early mornings.

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[Rap]

Boy I found a car to be useful in rounding the bases. Lol

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[craigawoodman]

I agree that a car was very useful in going around the bases and scoring runs (probably never would have even got onto the field without one), but motorkhanas, hill climbs, etc are more like the pub/night club, etc where you are trying to pick up than a true track day, where it is more like a rainy Sunday when you first move in with your girlfriend, where you spend more time actually having a go, than simply waiting in the stands, barely get warmed up and then it is back to the stands again.



Motorkhanas are like trying to do skiing at a resort without a lift ticket. Lots of effort for a very short quick result. A true track day is more like riding the ski lift, lots more productive time (even with the waiting in the lift queue to get onto the piste) and somehow seems like a much better use of time (when taking self indulgent time out from the family).



Another example would be to play four holes of putt putt golf in four hours, whilst watching 30 other people play the same hole as you before you get a go. Hardly a great utilisation of our scarcest resource - time.



(I thought I should try to get away from the sexual innuendo for our female members, or to be politically correct, should that be female forum participants, wait forum is used in a magazine. For another topic - oh, I give up, there is innuendo in everything, brig politically correct is just too difficult)!

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[Rap]

Tama doesn't mind!!! Lol

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[MC968CS]

Craig, we really need to get you out (on track!) more often. And yes, of the 100 mins we have been allowed on track at Porsche at Bathurst, that last lap is an absolute flyer.

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[craigawoodman]

MC,



I agree whole heartedly. I have actually not been using the car that much over here - the events just do not interest me that much. The move back to QLD will be good to actually get some track time, rather than fence time. In the interim, I have gone through two Harley Davidson motorbikes, as that was more fun than motorsport. Only having one real track which the organising group treats as their own empire does not help. Everything else is just makeshift. For a state with reportedly so much wealth, their infrastructure sucks.



So from Perth with one track to Brisbane with 3 to 4 plus a hill climb circuit, etc. Hopefully the passion has not withered and died on the vine. Hopefully Bathurst will rekindle some of it, I was even having second thoughts about doing Bathurst.



Craig

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[Rap]

I have a hill climb right outside my business office window called Giants Despair in Laurel Run, Pa. It has always been more of a nuisance because they close the road and limit access into our facility and incoming patients but. Has anyone done these as I have been thinking about entering it recently. I drive the road up and down several times a day and actually practice my line much to the consternation at times of oncoming traffic! Setup different in car?

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[tamathumper]

Had to look up motorkhana - sounds *boring*! Actually, sounds like the Mazda / VW fests the kids around here go to, with stereos a-thumpin' and all standing around talking. They set up cones in the big mall parking lots or at abandoned restaurants or auto dealerships. Could be a *lot* of motorkhana events in Detroit these days with all the abandoned business complexes, and even full street courses with all the abandoned subdivisions and neighborhoods. I'm assuming tires don't get very hot during these events, as they're short, tight (even have some backing up!), and they are over in a minute or two?

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[flash]

yup - that's how i feel about autocross. once i got out on a track, i never went back to autocross. i guess it's better than nothing, and it certainly teaches balance, but i look at it as little more than kindergarten, whereas a full track DE is grade school, a club race (pca, poc, scca, nasa, whatever) is high school, a regional club race is college, and the real deal is.........well, the real deal

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[craigawoodman]

If the course is set up well, it can be fun, but when you have 30 competitors and each run is around a minute and a half plus staging time, then it equates to one run per hour, or 1.5 minutes of fun and 58.5 minutes of standing around waiting.



One of the best days I have had, is when six of us hired a skid pan. Almost non stop driving and learning car control.



I love Motorsport, I hate standing around wasting time.



The other problem with events like these is that you cannot "try" different things to see what works and what doesn't. Every run is competitive and timed. Sometimes it is better to simply practice. I frequently do better times in untamed practice (timed off a Performance Box) than the official timed runs. Over driving the car, or trying too hard loses time.

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[Cloud9...68]

What Flash said...



I did a few autocrosses years ago, and found it very frustrating. No comparison to being on an actual track.

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