Anyone else going? I signed up last night through myautoevents.com.

-Mike

 

Online registration is closed as of last night.

I spoke to the guy running the event and he says walk-up registration will be open on Monday morning. I called up Pat and Sean and we are planning to attend. Probably head out Sunday night, and head back Monday after the event in what is sure to be horrific traffic.

 

Hey Pete.

I talked to 2 people coordinating this event and it sounded like you should have no problems walking in.

I am leaving Sunday morning, but I'll PM my number to you, give me a call when you guys get out there and we'll meet up

-Mike

 

Just got back from this event.

It was held by the Midwest Council of Sports Car Clubs
http://www.mcscc.org/

It was by far the most unprofessional, poorly run event I have been to. At one point I felt the need to pull off the track because of unsafe conditions.

They wanted people to point by on the left (normal) and then have the passing car move over and pass on the right (off the race line.) This is just dumb. Unless I am directly behind a car, or on his left side, I cannot see a point-by.

For those unfamiliar with Gingerman, this is hard to describe. The pit lane runs the length of the front straight. It's 3 lanes wide, with a "shoulder" on the left side. Typically I have seen pre-gridded cars line up on the far right side so it is a striaght shot onto the track entrance. People coming off the track would come up the left side and then pull off into the pits. This does require people to manage traffic as there is a crossing pattern where people pre-gridding are getting into pit lane, and people getting off the track must move from the natural right side, to the left. However, it makes for MUCH smoother launches for the track entrance. They had people pre-grid all the way to the left (on the shoulder.) Then once the track was completely cleared, the line would move up and over to align to the track entrance. It was pretty dumb the way it was setup.

There were people on the track that would NOT let anyone pass them. Unfortunatly these people were driving the slowest cars on the track. They were creating "parades" of cars going well below the pace. It was a dangerous situation.

Then they cut short one of our sessions and tried to tell us it was because the sessions were too long for people with street brakes. That was just stupid. The truth is they were running out of time in the morning and chose to sacrifice the Intermediate drivers time. It's one thing to cut our time, but to lie to us about it like we are THAT dumb is really insulting.

After lunch they combined the already large groups which made everything worse.

There were four scheduled sessions in the afternoon, but the third was our last. There was a BMW that went off at turn three. The guy got OUT of his car on the side of the track to see about fixing the car. (VERY unsafe condition) in addition to that, there was a Mustang that spun out in turn 1 and was almost completely blocking the track. We ran TWO LAPS with this guy on the track and safety people trying to fix the car or get it towed off. This was so unsafe for the workers, the driver AND the other cars on the track that I pulled off. They should have red flagged the session to clear the track.

I will NEVER run another event with these people.

 

well....you were warned about it!

sorry you didnt have a great day tho - that sucks

 

I was there with Pete yesterday as well. The coordination and leadership from this group was really just foolish. Everything was backwards and planned off the cuff that day.

There was a Saturn ION Red Line and a few Dodge Neons (standard, not SRT4's) running in the advanced group, which apparently has brakes more capable than either the Z06 or the S2000 by their logic.

Whatever, there is no such thing as a bad track day that ends with your car still shiny, but I will never go out of my way to run with these guys again. Poor showing on their part.

I got black flagged because I had my helmet visor up after it got fogged, but the person running a crapbox MR2 kept going after blowing Blue/Yellow flags at every station for 6 laps.

Everyone do yourself a favor and avoid these guys in the future.

-Mike

 

I was. However, Mike was already up there and Pat was really itching to go, so I relented. I thought to myself "how could you screw up an HPDE event?" Now I know exactly, step by step, how to screw up an HPDE event.