First time to Watkins Glen

ChrisSlicks

I have to say this is quite an intimidating track with many scary guard rails but you can also feel lots of history in this place. Day 1 didn't start off so good in terms of track time, first session was short, 2nd was black flagged, 4th was held up due to a red flag incident. They also lumped me in run group 1 which has all the fastest cars which made learning a little more difficult but at least gave me something to aim for.

Day 2 was a lot better. Two good practice sessions, took an instructor along to observe and see where I could pick up time. He made a few good comments at the end and the next session I was down to 2:13.1 on a fairly clean lap in a little traffic.

I was staged fairly late in the time trial so I had a bit of sitting around to do which can break your concentration. They call our group to stage and again we are waiting quite a while as we have to wait for 2 groups to complete before we go on track. I'm staged behind my racing buddies new Boss 302 Laguna Seca with an American Iron car behind and an AC Cobra up front. Finally we make it to pit lane for the launch and you start to get a little amped up. We only get about 1/4 of a lap as the warm up as they are running timing just before the bus stop in order to save time on out laps and in laps. But once driving it all starts to come together, 2:14, 2:12 and final lap was 2:11.919 with a pretty big error near the end. From pit wall the time was 2:11.7, and as a first timer there I was pretty pleased with that. Beat my friend in his C6 by 0.1 seconds and placed in the top 10 overall, less than 1 second slower than the GT-R.

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