How many ways can I describe what took place when the gates were opened at Summit Point Raceway to go in? Flash flood? Monsoon? Torrential down pour? I think I will go with monsoon. Though it did not last all that long, it flooded half the paddock and actual rapids it looked like formed in the middle of the paddock. When the rain stopped, we had a beautiful light brown lake that was lightly stocked with a few vehicles and lots of wet people. Hey….flash flood, errr flashback to Hyperfest and the end of the Daisy Duke contest. I think that’s enough creative writing for now to get the picture. The picture below is from Sunday. I never did get any pictures of the monsoon.
Friday night turned out nice once all of our paddock was set up. Good friends, burgers and dogs on the grill, coolers stocked with cold adult soda’s and lots of cutting up and laughter. Saturday started out unlike any event for me yet. Fog delay. This was a first for me. It was so thick you could not see the start tower from the false grid. After about 30 minutes it broke up enough to turn us loose on the track. Cold tires, damp track, damp and cool air…yep you guessed it, lots of slipping and sliding Instructors and Time Trial drivers. The day improved weather wise for the first half of the day, but then at noon started to rain again. I went out and made some wet laps to get the experience and see the condition of the track to make sure I was prepared to keep my student on the track and having fun. Thankfully it was just an ordinary light rain that finally stopped at 6 pm in time for all the paddock festivities and games. Home made pulled pork BBQ and all kinds of fixins hit the spot after a long day at the track thanks to Bev and mom. Such fine food for the gang could not have been possible without them. After dinner Jake and I ventured over to the Over The Hill Gangs paddock and had a rematch game of Cornhole from VIR. This time it when a lot better for us young guys. A victory of 25-8 I believe set the stage for a face off at VIR in October since each of us has won one game. This is a picture of my Student Todd's car. I would have to say this was one nice looking Mazda.
Sunday turned out to be a nice sunny and warm day. The track was green, but dry and made for some real fun driving. One of the things I learned was that I am going to have to get used to this new engine. It has a little bit more power then the old engine. With that and working on some of my problem turns, I am now having problems with the next turn as I get better with the ones I am working on. I guess you can say that’s a good thing. All in all the weekend was a great success. I was able to drop times in testing and see areas for improvement. Be sure to check out the video in the video section. It is a fun run to watch.
Summit Point August 2009 from Ronald Roderick on Vimeo.
This is an awesome picture of the rainbow after the monsoon with Jeff's car at the end of the rainbow thanks to Jon at Get Fast Photography.
