CCC Newsletter for this month.

The Carters at the European Rally School

About 300 miles southeast of Enterprise is the town of Starke FL. About 15 miles south of there is the European Rally School and Motorsport Park. This is a facility with a dirt rally course as well as a 2 mile paved road course. They do instruction on European style Rally driving, military defensive driving, and high performance road course driving. Monthly, they have an ‘open track day’ where the general public, with or without track experience can utilize the road course. Those with little or no track experience are put into the ‘beginner’ section and get the benefit of some classroom instruction, followed by in-car training. Experienced drivers that have been on this track previously can jump right into the ‘intermediate’ group or the ‘pro’ group. Jean and I made the trip there for the June track day.

We left Enterprise about noon in our ’02 Z06 (previously Stan Kennedy’s car) and checked into the motel around 5. In the morning, I was lucky enough to find a Sonoco station that had 100 octane race gas so I put on a few gallons to give the engine more protection against detonation (spark knock) with the higher engine temps I expected to see on the track.

Arriving at the facility we were surprised to find a 1 mile long dirt road to get to the track. It was smooth but hey, who likes to drive their Vette on a dirt road.

The track owners and staff are mostly British and were very pleasant to work with. As I was in the beginner section, we started with a class on vehicle handling, track flags, and procedures. This was fairly brief, and in about 30 minutes we were strapping on our helmets. There were only 4 cars in the beginner section, so the instructor would ride with one participant, and the others would follow to learn the ‘race line’. After 8-10 laps, he would move to another car until all had some in-car instruction.

The course is a very technical one with turns of various radius, and one very tough decreasing radius monster that even the instructor has a tough time with. A short straight follows this where I usually got up to about 95 prior to very hard braking for a 180 degree left hander.

On my second stint on the track I had Brent (the instructor) with me. He gave me some good instruction and pointed out that I was usually braking too late which delayed power application at turn exit. Ok, so its brake, then turn, then power, ok got it. Braking during the turn is called ‘trail braking’ and this can be used in some situations, but not on every turn like I was doing. After Brent got out we still had about 15 minutes in our session, and I pulled out about a ½ mile behind two other cars, so hey,

Race On!! I did catch them after about 3 laps but in doing so rain the engine oil temp up to 262 degrees!! I was keeping an eye on this as the car doesn’t have an oil cooler so I knew this could be a problem. So, after catching up, I left it in 3rd gear and cruised a couple of laps to let it cool. So, next mod is definitely an oil cooler!! Additionally, the car will get treated to a set of EBC brake pads and a short throw shifter, then I’ll be ready for the next event. But we will definitely wait until the weather cools off as the heat was intense while on the track as they required long sleeve shirts and pants and hey it was 95 degrees outside. So, maybe in September!!

Bruce