A Tale of Two Track Days (Long)

[Jack Olsen]

Okay, the first part of it is a sound. It's an electronic tone. Hyphenated and tense. By the time I've figured out what it is, my arm has already reached over and switched the thing off. Automatic. Muscles knew what to do before the brain could start to figure it out.

Now, I'm lying there, and the silence is absolute. Nothing to see; it's black as pitch with the curtains closed. They mute the light, the sound, everything -- even my wife's slow breathing.

Nothing in the world is moving. And from that nothingness, my brain slowly fits the pieces together. This is my house -- my bed. It's dark because it's 5:30 in the morning. I'm awake because today is...

...a track day. I'm going to Willow Springs.

It's cold at night in Los Angeles. The house stays warm, but you can feel it in the tiles of the bathroom floor, trying to get in. The lights are blinding, at first. My eyes adjust while I wait for the water in the shower to get hot. But now things are speeding up. It's already 5:45. I don't leave much time to spare on these mornings. The minutes of sleep before the sun comes up seem more valuable when I'm setting the alarm. I'm thrifty with it.


Packed up and ready to go.

The 911 was packed up the night before. Big wing on the back, helmet, tools, everything I need tucked into the different crannies of what suddenly feels, on the inside, like a very tiny car.

The door closes loudly and I'm suddenly aware of the neighbors' bedroom, not ten feet away. Everything seems louder when it's this quiet outside. The car turns over and starts like it's been waiting all night for me. Gotta love the DME. Even with one exhaust outlet capped, though, the motor is loud. I hesitate just a second for the idle to stabilize and put the car in reverse. I hope the neighbors are sleeping deeply enough not to hear me. It's still dark out. I can see the vapor from the tailpipe in the rear-view as I carefully back out through the gate.

Loaded with probably 200 pounds of extra stuff, the car drives more smoothly over the bumps on my street. I make it to the end of the block where (this being America, and all) there's a Starbucks. I turn the motor off in the parking space -- only one other car in the lot -- and there's the sound of my breathing. I remember again how quiet the world is at six in the morning.

Minutes later, I've got a big cup of coffee in the cup-holder and I'm on my way toward the freeway. I'm making sure the volume is turned all the way up on the Valentine 1 and I'm fishing out the noise-canceling headphones from the equipment bag on the passenger seat. The headphones have the added benefit of keeping me warmer.

Second gear. It gets down to about 40 degrees overnight in January, and I can feel it in the steering wheel and the fiberglass under the cushions of the seat. I've got about four layers on, shirts and a light jacket, since the day will get both colder and warmer before it's finished. I can feel the cold in the tires, too. They sound crisper on the concrete. Third gear. I check the gauges out of habit. Still no movement in the oil temps, yet.

By the time I get to the freeway, though, the oil needle has started creeping up. This is good, since keeping the revs low at freeway speeds isn't easy with my gearing. The cabin's warming up, now. The coffee still lets loose an occasional lazy wisp of vapor. I lift it out of the cup holder for some of the lurch-inducing transitions where the aging 405 freeway bridges over surface streets.

The darkness is fading into early-morning light, now. Not much traffic at all. The red "L" of the V1 remote display is constant. Even the CHP's asleep.

It's always interesting to see what tone the music sets as the iPod makes its random selections. It seems to favor U2 and Bruce Springsteen on these drives. If Racing In The Streets or Open All Night comes on, I might reach down to the repeat button a couple of times. And the little machine has the uncanny ability to save the up-tempo tracks -- Runnin' With the Devil, Life in the Fast Lane, Back in Black -- for that last stretch of highway right before Rosamond.

Click here for a 1.8-meg Quicktime clip of the car on the freeway.

I'm always surprised at how few track cars I see on the streets, and the morning drives to Willow Springs are no exception. I think I get up earlier than most guys, and maybe drive a little faster. I don't know. Occasionally, I'll see a truck pulling a car on a trailer, and they'll see my car's tail and give a thumbs up or flash their lights. They can only go 55 on the freeway. I go a little bit faster.

It's a 70-minute drive from my door to the track, and the sun rises up slowly as I drive. The highway takes me north, east, and then north again. As you come down from the mountains into the high desert, you can feel the temperature dropping around you. It might have already warmed up to 50 degrees in Los Angeles, but it's 15 colder than that in Palmdale and Lancaster.


The paddock, from above (thanks, Scott!).

You forget it, though, when you see the track -- America's oldest. I drift right for the exit to Rosamond. I can feel my heartbeat speed up, a little, and a tingling sensation in my hands. The visual of the track itself gets the whole body focused on what's coming up. I've been visualizing laps as I've driven in, but the whole thing hasn't seemed 100% real until now.

By the time I'm rolling down the window to get my wristband and sign the waiver, I'm wide awake, focused, and eager to get the car unloaded and out on the track.


The front straight and the horseshoe at Willow Springs.

This January, I did two Willow Springs events. One was with Open Track Racing, and the other was co-sponsored by Tracquest and Speed Gallery. I do the classroom instruction for Open Track Racing, which means I've got to get my car ready to go before the driver's meeting starts. I usually just run street tires with OTR, but I still have to empty everything out and bolt on my front splitter and the side skirts I've been experimenting with. On top of that, I've got to set up my Ultralap transmitter and click the receiver and display into where my ashtray usually goes. Carpets, seat cushions and sound deadening pieces all have to some out, and I usually only remember the cap on the rear exhaust at the last minute. I keep a mental inventory in my head, since I know guys will be stopping by to say hello while I go through the start-up routine.

Teaching the class is slowly becoming more straightforward for me. I'm not really comfortable talking in front of large groups, but these are just car guys, right? I remind myself that they're definitely more nervous than me. The beginners I lecture to are new to driving on a track, and a day like this at Willow is going to introduce more adrenaline into their systems than they've probably seen in the past ten years. I try to get through to them with a few basic points about seating position, safety and smoothness. I know they've got at least one ear pointed at the track. The red group is out there now and the sound of open exhausts is probably waking up a thousand families of rattlesnakes, jackrabbits and lizards.

I have to miss the first red group because of the class, but it gives me time to put some 100-octane in the tank and flip the switch on the No Bad Days DME chip. 17 hp, just like that. I never get tired of it.


Ready to go out and play.

Open Track Racing is a pretty laid-back group. Most of them have been driving together for years, so there isn't a whole lot of competitiveness. They're fast, but most of them aren't club racers. The atmosphere is more like a Saturday afternoon barbecue -- only with more tires cooking than steaks. One of the things I like about OTR is that we're usually able to get a good-sized group of Porsche drivers from Pelican, and the guys who run the event let us self-teach and self-police our own group. What's even cooler is that the Pelican drivers -- some new to track driving and some more experienced -- are slowly changing the face of OTR. It used to be almost all Vipers and Corvettes. Everybody was focused on horsepower. Now the guy who founded the group has bought himself a series of 911's. He has a 993 and a 1970T currently. He recently ran a 964 and a flared '74 as well. His Viper has spent a lot of time in the garage, since then.

Because nothing drives like a 911.


'Ten pounds of 911 in a 5-pound bag.'

[Jack Olsen]

And my 911, in particular, is kind of on the 'overbuilt' side for track days. Tyson and Dave at TRE made me a car that lets Viper and Corvette owners think I'm some kind of Michael freakin' Schumacher. The big-car guys keep adding horsepower, and somehow never manage to catch my little 964-motored widebody coupe. A typical day there will see me passing just about everyone in the red group, often with a passenger riding along and only street tires underneath.


Thank you, TRE Motorsports.

There are exceptions, of course. Drivers like John Dearing or Vipers like the Competition Coupe are usually quicker than I am. But for the drive-it-to-the-track class, my little 911 is pretty hard to improve on.

And even if you forget about the other drivers on the track, there's something about my car that just feels right when it's at Willow Springs. Its gearing seems perfectly matched to the track. I just approach redline in turn 8 and at the end of the front straight. It's light enough to dance through turns 3, 4 and 5. I can reel in most of the heavier, high-horsepower cars on any section of the track other than the front straight. Sometimes I even manage it there.


Through turn 4 at Willow.

Driving on a track is just an entirely different experience than driving on public roads. Not only is the sense of acceleration and braking more dramatic, but on the track your wheels and tires spend a lot of their day sliding. In fact, I think maybe the central experience of driving on a track is getting in touch with a feeling that would induce panic if it happened on a public road. Your car is breaking away from you, constantly, maybe as often and as regularly as your heart is beating in your chest. You're making constant corrections, dancing along the ragged edge of adhesion.

And as much as you are aware of every instant of it, another part of your brain, maybe something down in the brain stem, is playing a much larger role than your conscious self is. A lot of it is automatic: it's muscle memory and sense-driven decisions -- how much to brake, how much to accelerate, just how you turn -- that you implant in your brain with repetition, and only partially understand and control in the conventional sense of thinking and doing. It feels instinctive -- more immediate than anything you can consciously think about or control.

At the same time, the whole event is a shared experience. All of us are going through the same thing out there on the track, and we can use our conscious thinking to reflect on it, talk about it, and help each other out. It ends up being an intensely solitary experience and a group experience all wrapped into the same day. I can't think of anything else that I do that's like it.

And having a crowd of other 911's there also puts me in touch with a bigger sense of what this particular car design is capable of. It's fun helping out novices with pretty-much-stock 911's, watching them learn how to hunt and overtake cars with twice their horsepower. It's also fun to see the full race cars that show up. They leave me in the dust, usually, but it's nice to see what a more-developed car and a skilled driver can do in a 911.

The Tracquest/Speed Gallery day is a little different than Open Track Racing, in that a very high percentage of the cars are 911's, but almost none of them were made before 1994. And these cars aren't often stock. In the red group, I got to drive with multiple street GT3's, a GT2, a 997 Carrera S, and about a half dozen extensively modified twin turbos. It's pretty amazing to see what these cars are capable of. And if you want to see high-end Porsche capability combined with professional driving, there was a team practicing for next months race at Daytona with an both an '01 and an '04 GT3 Cup Cars. They said the '01 was running 1:25's and the '04 was running 1:23's. Most of the other cars in attendance were running in the 1:35 to 1:45 range, to put that in perspective.

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Tracquest/Speed Gallery at Willow.

The two different track-day groups bring in two different crowds, but one thing stays the same. For whatever reason, 911 owners who track their cars have the opposite personality traits of the old-fashioned public perception of 911 owners (you know, the porcupine joke, etc.). Great guys. In my opinion, they make better students, too -- maybe because the cars require more focus and skill to drive.


Pelicanites at OTR, lined up for the photo shoot.

But the group with Open Track Racing is mostly from Pelican, and we know each other better. At the end of the day we get some pictures of the 911 pack all lined up and maybe go get a meal at the Outback Steakhouse in Palmdale.

During these winter months, it's dark again when I finally pull the car back into the driveway and through the gate, turning it off and listening to the last gurgles of the oil in the cooling lines and the muted clicks from the engine compartment as the exhaust begins to shed its heat.

Most normal days, I work until about 2 am. But on track days, this just isn't an option. I don't know what it is about driving that takes so much energy, but by the time I've gotten back home my mind might still be racing -- maybe looking to get the details of the day posted on Pelican -- but the muscles once again dictate what's really going to happen. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm out. I'll need eight or ten hours of sleep to recover from another day at Willow Springs.

Next up, a day with All-Import Racing at Willow on February 9th. Click here to sign up. I'll be teaching my class and wearing out some tire rubber.



Back on the road, with the ducktail.

And if you've got lots of time and a fast connection, right-click on this link to see a whole bunch of passes from the Tracquest/Speed Gallery day. My video camera's power supply was on the fritz, though, so the footage is grainy. 58 megs, super self-indulgent, and Quicktime.

[Jack Olsen]

More pictures, from Open Track Racing:


The license plate is "560+ HP"


Three flavors of track car.


Porsche math: When one plus one equals GT3.


Suddenly, everyone wants to play.


Great color.


Lots of color.


Another new one.


And some older ones.


Dan keeps the old ones going.

[RarlyL8]

That about sums it up Jack ('sept my alarm goes off at 3:30am).

Nicely done story, you should think about a career in writing.

[Beethoven]

Well, Jack, I do envy you your ca and your driving skills, but what I'm really amazed by is how well you write--and how willingly you share.
Just made my Sunday.

[MotoSook]

Nice Jack! Good read...and a compliment from Beethoven...that's good!

Looks like Dan had some ignition problems. Hope he was able to enjoy the day as much as you did.

[Jack Olsen]

Thanks. Actually, the other early car had a bad coil, and Dan elped them figure it out by swapping in his good one.

[mjshira]

great post Jack, I hope I'll get another ride when I am out there next. Any pics of Scrappy?

[cvfncrew]

Jack -I want to be like you when I grow up (Good read).

Christian

[88'3xBlk911Cab]

Fantastic write up Jack

[klaucke]

Thanks Jack.

[austin552]

Jack, You are a P GOD.

[bob tilton]

always a great pleasure to read your "newsletters" and view your footage jack! thanks for sharing and please continue to do so.

[Rufblackbird]

I agree! These "newsletters" are the best!

Just wondering, how does a lap timer work?

[bigrubberjeep]

Jack, gear read!

It was due to your "average guy" persona and your great storys that convinced me to go out to willow my first time (almost a year ago) unfortunetly I have not been able to be there with you guys for every OTR event.

Never the less, it has been one of the best experiences of my adult life, and thanks to your write-up I can relive it even while my motor is being rebuilt.

[450knotOffice]

Jack, I enjoyed that so much that I sat there with a glass of wine and read the whole thing like a chapter in a good book! Very well done.

I have GOT to get a roll bar for my Cab so I can get out there with you guys and have some fun being a moving pylon for guys like you

-Scott

[Fishcop]

Thankyou Jack... always a pleasure

[dickster]

i enjoyed your write up.

[CBRacerX]

Thanks! Maybe we need an "East Coast" version to balance out the board Guess I better attend an event this spring!

Very enjoyable,

Chris

[Chilling in VT]

Great write up! It's nice to read and think about driving our cars and not about the snow and ice those of us in the northeast will endure for the next 2 months. By the way, what did you think of the Elephant Racing control arm mounts?
Joe