Hey guys, surfing the web when I saw this. I don't know if it's a good deal or not but I thought I'd share

http://www.groupon.com/deals/team-stradale?c=all&p=1

 

great find

 

I don't get it. $150 and you get to ride with an instructor then drive their car? All for an hour? And the North Track?

For $150 you can do a full track day in your own car, with an instructor all day, around 2 hours of driving, classroom instruction, and free pizza and drinks. So unless the "snack" is a 7 course meal from Alinea...

 

Pat, who offers a full day at Autobahn for $150?

As for this offer, it certainly doesn't seem to be the screaming deal many groupon's are, but as something of a lazy man racer, I wouldn't mind just showing up and beating on someone else's BMW at Autobahn. But even better if it was full course (or just south).

 

You're right. I guess it's good for for the lazy man racer...especially if they don't have a rewarding car like the S2000. I just see more value in taking out your own car. Looking around, I guess that's a decent deal for Autobahn. NASA is usually $200 for 1 day and ~$300 for 2 days. The upcoming SCCA PDX is $110 for 3 hours (not sure how much track time that is though). But you can do a 3 balls racing event for $150 at the other local tracks. I guess this is a good option if you're hesitant to dive into the sport...I just see more value in the alternatives.

 

You're right. I guess it's good for for the lazy man racer...especially if they don't have a rewarding car like the S2000. I just see more value in taking out your own car. Looking around, I guess that's a decent deal for Autobahn. NASA is usually $200 for 1 day and ~$300 for 2 days. The upcoming SCCA PDX is $110 for 3 hours (not sure how much track time that is though). But you can do a 3 balls racing event for $150 at the other local tracks. I guess this is a good option if you're hesitant to dive into the sport...I just see more value in the alternatives.
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I did the PDX events on the south course in 08 and 09 (my only track events so far actually) and really enjoyed the format. They were Friday afternoon, each driver got 3 sessions of about 15min each. It may have only been $100 at that time. So compared with autocross, especially CR-SCCA, it seemed like a great price to seat time to overall time commitment trade off for me. Plus the instructors were mostly SCCA club or pro racers. The second year I had a Formula Atlantic driver as my instructor.

I think the real appeal to this kind of program, and the extra premium they charge, is for people who don't want to put their own car "at risk." But you'd really want to read the contract/waiver to see what liability you might assume if the provided track car is damaged.