In addition to preparing for the 2009 SCCA season, I also plan to take part in a couple of events put on by World Class Driving. It is all part of maintaining that “work / race” balance I referred to earlier.
The event that first caught my eye was through and ad in United Airline’s Hemispheres magazine. The title of the ad was, “Break the 200MPH Barrier!”. Their web site calls it, “World Class Driving XTREME“. It is held in Miami this year in April and December. I am registered for the April session.
Most people in their lives would never even want to do such a crazy thing as break the 200MPH barrier. For the remaining few that actually do think it sounds exhilarating, the possibility of a) owning a car that can do it, b) finding a place where you will not kill yourself, and c) remaining within the laws – is pretty small (if not zero).
The fastest car that I own is a 2006 Corvette Z06 which is “only” rated at 190+ MPH top speed. So that eliminates me pretty quickly from this club. Furthermore only a few highly skilled race drivers have the talent to take a capable car over 200MPH on a banked oval (go try it sometime if you think you are Mario Andretti). So, this relegates the average (or slightly above average) schmoe like me to trying this in a straight line. Even really fast production cars barely get above 130 MPH in a 1/4 mile dragstrip. So where can us “weekend warriors” have a chance of hitting 200MPH even if we could rent the proper beast?
Voila! Abandoned airstrips across the US should work nicely if you can get access. The one World Class Driving uses down in Miami is 11,000 feet (over 2 miles) long – plenty of room to make it to 200MPH and back down safely. Let all of the legal issues be part of World Class Driving’s responsibilities. That is a much better idea than sneaking a Lamborghini from a dealer “test drive” onto some abandoned airstrip! Although I must say I was very pleased that Lamborghini of Washington let me test drive one of their Gallardos – but that is a story for a different time.
According to their web site, for the XTREME program, we will be testing some of the following cars:
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It will be the first time for me in any of these cars – although the Super Leggera is just an improved model of the Gallardo that I mentioned above.
The other event I will be joining World Class Driving for will be their “normal” track event. These are held in several states around the country all year long. I plan on being over in Richmond, VA for the morning session in late May 2009. That series of events uses normal race tracks and features the following cars:
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The training specifies that you will get to try five of these cars throughout the day. Many of these cars are nice additions to the autos I will get to test in April down in Miami.
If anyone gets inspired to register for one of their events, please use my Ambassador Reference code: fa63280f. I think I get some bonus points or something if you do.
Here is a video of some of the cars making their 200MPH runs.
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