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Races. These are on Sundays from 1:30-5:30pm (1 session). There are 12 teams, 90 drivers max. Recommended team is 5 drivers, 1 team manager and 1 pit crew member. Session is practice and qualifying followed by a 2 ½ hour race. Cost is $450 per team.
Also you can go to Heats Competition Races. These are on Sunday's 7:00-11:00pm (1 session). There are up to 60 individual drivers. Each driver gets practice, then 4 qualifying heats. Top 40 drivers to onto the semifinals, of which the top 12 drivers continue on to the finals. Cost is $90 per driver.
Finally, there's Red Eye Special Super Prix. These are held Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00-11:00pm (1 session). Each session has a 10 minute practice and qualifying, followed by a 35 minute individual endurance race. There is a maximum of 12 drivers. Cost is $900 per full session ($75/driver).
So…. What about it??? Is the club interested in having a private session? We'd need 24 drivers at $75 each and we'd get the place for about 2 hours. Or… We could all sign up for an open Sprint session!!! Let me know what you think!
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sweeper) and onto the start/finish straight. The lap record is a 27.81.
We had 14 drivers at our company session. We were paired into 7 teams. The plan was to give each driver a half dozen laps or so of practice followed by a 1 hour enduro. The plan was for each driver to get to stints of 15 minutes. I was paired with our Sales Engineer, Mark. As karts go it was plenty quick for the tight circuit. It understeered with the power on and would oversteer if you tried braking and turning at the same time. Getting sideways meant scrubbing off lots of speed and lap times would suffer.
With only 7 karts on the track everyone was able to spread out and get some nice wide open laps. But, as so typical, you end up getting bunched up and dicing with each other, but that's what's so FUN!
My co-driver started on the pole and took the lead followed by Team 1. The two then had a heated battle for the lead for the next 5-6 laps until the driver of Team 1 punted my teammate into the wall on the entry of Turn 6 and dropped him to 6th. On the next lap the Team 1 driver was shown the black flag and shown to the pit lane for a stop and go penalty!
We were now 24 seconds behind the new leaders, Team 6. Mark then started picking off karts, pulling back up to 3rd and 19 seconds back on lap 26 when he came in for a driver change.
We were able to hold onto 3rd with the driver change but I found myself now 41 seconds back. By lap 35 I had made up 12 seconds, but still in 3rd. I picked up 2nd on lap 39 and on lap 43 passed for the lead!
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On lap 56 I passed the kart back to Mark, still in 1st and with a 27 second lead. I had picked up about 68 seconds in 30 laps. My best time during that stint was 32.23. I had one nice stretch of open track and got in 6 laps all within 0.3 seconds.
Mark did a great job of holding our lead against now 2nd place Team 1 who at the driver change were only 19 seconds in the rears. It was great to see his times steadily improve.
He passed the kart back to me on lap 77 and after the driver exchange we were only 3 seconds ahead. I worked the lead up to 15 seconds by lap 93, getting through traffic was challenging and fun! And putting together some open laps I was able to work on lines and picking up a tenth here and there.
Finally the checkered flew on lap 102. Mark and I were victorious with a 37 second lead over 2nd place (I lapped them on the final lap!).
FUN? Absolutely!!! But, was I sore a couple days later!
So, what do you do to get to drive at Speed Ring? They have open sprint sessions on weekdays 7:30-9:00pm (3 sessions), then on Saturdays from 1:30-5:30 pm (8 sessions). Each session is practice and qualifying, followed by a 20 minute race. Cost is $50/driver.
Then there's Team Endurance
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