Pocono Raceway at 155mph.... Shake and bake!!!!

[robertway]

Went out to Pocono Raceway this past Wednesday for some Stockcar Racing Experience programs (info available at http://www.877stockcar.com). Did the 20 Mile (8 lap) stockcar drive in the morning and then the Drive Your Own program (2x20 minute sessions with your own car) in the afternoon and had my helmet cam and camcorder along fore the ride. I know I'm not the first member to have done this as Jarvis59 did it last year, http://www.camaro5.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41365, and I hope I'm not the last as it was awesome.

The 20 Mile Stockcar Program is a pre-requisite to be able to drive your own car on the track. The program consists of some classroom formalities, a once over oin the stockcar and its controls, gauges, and safety and then finally 8 laps around the tri-oval with two students being led by an instructor in a paceline following a defined line around the track. The first lap is the slowest and if the instructor in his rearview mirror and the spotters around the track see the students are keeping up without issue the speed increases each subsequent lap with the last two laps being the fastest of the day. With no speedos in the car everything was calculated off the tach and on the last couple of laps we were running 1:16 laps averaging 121mph and about 7600rpms on the front straight which was good for about 155-160mph.

All I have to say is the stockcar felt like it was riding on rails and being this was basically the "intro" program, the cars are driven well below what thet are capable of. The instructor said afterward there is about another 40mph in the car on the straights and another 30 or so in the turns. These are not 900hp Sprint Cup cars or even 700hp Nationwide cars but they are 600hp engines running a safe setup to last a long time And the car is not exactly the "luxury" model. On the slower laps it is banging and clanging all over but as speeds increased it got smoother and smoother, the cars just want to go fast.

Here are the 8 laps from inside the car



In the afternoon it was time to get out there with my car. After some more classroom formalities and verification that a tech inspection sheet was filled out for every car we all jumped in a van and took a couple laps of the track to once again go over the driving line and the "gates" we had to stay in around the track. The driving line is pretty much the same as during the stockcar drive in that they want you to stay about one car width off the wall in the straights and drive through pairs of cones that are about three car widths apart. It is a very simple line around the track, bomb the straight aways, before the turns there are a pair of yellow cones that identify the braking zone before the turn, the first pair of red cones you start to turn into the corner and drive through the "gates" in the turn. The green cone on the inside of the turn is the apex where you can start to get back on the gas and run it out of the turn through the remaining "gates" taking the line to about a car width off the wall and then bomb the straightaway again. The preferred format by the instructors is to do whatever you want speed-wise on the straights but be back down to 100mph or less for the turns. Passing is only allowed on the front stretch and the Long Pond stretch and no passing on the short chute out of Turn 2 into Turn 3, faster car takes the inside line on the straights. So that is the format and the instructors tried to empasize over and over that "this was not a race" and that message rung pretty clear as my main goal was to get home in one piece along with the car, now for the driving.

There were seven of us out there, a couple of older Porsches (944 Turbo and a 928), a 2007 Mustang GT, a 2009 Cobalt SS, a 2010 Corvette Grand Sport (a very sweet ride), and finally a Mercedes AMG C63 (nice friggin car... http://www.mercedes-amg.com/#/c63-overview), and finally me. The time format is simple, the first lap is under caution so the cars get out and get spaced out, after we came around to start/finish we got the green flag and it was "shake and bake" time. We ran 10 minutes to halfway and then had a 1 lap competition caution for everyone to space out if needed and give the cars a few minutes to get temps down then it was green flag for another 10 minutes. After the full 20 minutes we all came into the pits, gave the cars a bit of cool-down time, got some pointers from the instructor and then it was the same format for the second 20 minute session.

As for how it went out on the track, I was very pleased with what the Camaro did. The car is not totally stock in that I have a RotoFab CAI and Kooks 1 7/8 Long Tubes and the car was tuned by Doug at East Coast Supercharging (www.eastcoastsupercharging.com) and puts down 404RWHP and 428RWTQ on their DynaPak and runs like a beast, a big thanks goes out to Doug, Chris, and Mike at ECS as they are a great shop to deal with and more than welcome to a performance car noob like myself as they treated me as if I had been going to their shop for years. As for handling I have Nitto Invo 275/40/20's on 20X10 CCW's up front and Nitton Invo 315/35/20's on 20x11.5 CCWs on the rear as well as Pfadt front/rear sway bars and Pfadt drop springs and running within GM alignment specs (-1.0 camber up front and -0.7 in the rear), and a big thanks goes to the folks at Pfadt (www.pfadtracing.com) and Brandon at IPS (www.ipsmotorsports.net) for helping me out with the suspension decisions.

Turn 1 is the tightest but also the most banked turn on the track at 14 degrees and you can really dive into it with some good speed, Turn 2 opens up a bit with less banking at 8 degrees and Turn 3 is the trick one as it is a long sweeping turn at only 6 degrees and feels like it takes forever and is a bit bumping coming out of it. The car felt like it was on rails most of the time when going through the turns around 95-100mph and only started to push a little bit coming out of turn 3 where it was a bit bumping after getting back on the gas and being at around 110-115. I used the first 20 minute session to get a feel for what the car was capable of as I said earlier this is my first real performance car and first time on a track of any kind. During the first 20 minute session I took the turns around 90-95mph and was getting to 145mph on the front stretch. During the second session I had a lot more confidence in the car's handling and could "feel" it a lot more as to when it would start pushing so I was able to carry a lot more speed into the turns and get on it earlier to get much better runs out of the turns and was able to carry enough out of turn 3 to hit 155mph on the front stretch on three separate occasions. Running the straight-aways the car was smooth as butter, bringing the car from 155mph down to 100 or so to enter Turn 1 was no problem in a pretty short distance and it was rock solid under heavy braking, in the turn the car was very predictable and if it started to push it responded immediately to stepping off the throttle a bit. I spent the entire time under Green Flag conditions in 4th gear and all I can say is even though the car pulls pretty good in 4th it took almost the entire 3700 feet of the front stretch to pull from about 110-115 at 4000 rpms or so to pull to 155mph at about 6200 rpms, this is pretty much in line with Erik@Torq's video of hist 165mph Standing Mile run (http://www.camaro5.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71817) where his 4th gear pull seemed to take forever compared to 3rd. Water temp stayed rock solid at 194 degrees, oil temp was running in the 270-280 degree range and the tranny was running solid at 180 degrees all session long. A few days before heading out there I did an engine oil/filter change with tried and true Mobil 1 5w-30 and a PureOne filter and also a tranny fluid change with Mobil 1 ATF Synthetic, I had put Royal Purple in the rear end a few months ago so I was good there as far as I was concerned.

The video is of the first 10 minutes of the second session before the mid-session caution came out, the first lap is under caution just to get the cars out on track and spread out then the green flag drops. My best lap time during this video was 1:18, my best lap time of the day was 1:15 from the second half of the second session (at least I was getting faster as the day went along). A 1:15 is good for a 120mph lap speed, not bad considering the fastest lap we did in the stockcar earlier in the day was 1:14 @ 122mph but that car had another 40mph or so in it before it started pushing in the turns. The silver car in front of me was the AMG C63 and I saw on more than one occasion him almost eat the wall coming out of turn three during the day so I did my best to keep my distance and back off if I felt I was getting too close.



I would HIGHLY recommend anyone going out to Pocono and doing the same programs I did, it is $249 to drive your own car but the thorn here is the 20 mile Stockcar Program is the minimum pre-requisite and it is about $499 on a weekday, book both at the same time and you get a 10% discount. After doing the 20 mile Stockcar once you never have to do it again to do the Drive Your Own.

As for the other cars out there, I drove faster on the Interstate on the way there than the guy in the 2007 Mustang GT drove on the track, he was there with his grandson and I think he just wanted to drive on the track and never got to over 80mph or so, he only did the first 20 minute session and never came back out. The Porsche 928 was mostly hammering it on the straights but being REALLY easy in the turns, the 2010 Corvette Grand Sport was playing it by the book of 90mph or so in the turns and hammering in the straights, he got about 150mph I heard him mention before bouncing off the rev limiter while in 4th, the Cobalt SS was one mean little car and held its own all day long, the Porsche 944 Turbo was solid all day as he and the Cobalt were passing back and forth, then there was the Mercedes AMG C63 which was a rocket, I could pull on him on the straights but he was carrying more speed through the turns running on PZeros and I KNOW he was pushing it more than me because he took out a couple of cones coming out of Turn 3. With the exception of the guy in the Mercedes, everyone was being pretty carefule and playing it by the rules, giving each other plenty of space, mindful of thier speeds in the turns and just opening it up on the two long straights each of which are roughly 3/4 mile long. The format of the whole day was very geared toward having some safe fun (with the exception of some catastrophic failure on a car which is always possible) and the only way there could have been an issue was if someone decided to act like a jackass behind the wheel.

Sorry for the long-winded write-up, I hope it was enough to give you a feel for the day and enough to wet your appetite to go out and do it yourself.

[DaveT]

Very cool!!

[Mindz]

Looks like a ton of fun. Can't wait to get my car to the track for some road racing. Left turns all day is nice, but when you add in right turns, it doubles the pleasure. =)

[robertway]

Originally Posted by Mindz

Looks like a ton of fun. Can't wait to get my car to the track for some road racing. Left turns all day is nice, but when you add in right turns, it doubles the pleasure. =)

I hear ya, Pocono has some HPDE days as well that is kinda the best of both worlds, you get the front stretch, Turn 1, and the Long Pond stretch before turning into the infield road course section. Hoping to maybe do that later this summer.

[Legend]

That's sounds like a perfect day!!

[2010 SSRS]

cool

[AG454]

That is really cool man, always wanted to do that. As a long time Nascar fan I would love to get out on a track with my SS, but really in a stock car. Almost went to the Richard Petty driving experience when they used to have it at Pikes peak in Colorado springs. Pocono is high on my list of races to go to that I have not been to yet, maybe this year.

[IPS Brandon]

Very cool, looks like a great time Robert.

-Regards

[GRSCAMARO]

Looks and reads like a blast. I wish I lived close enough to give it a try.

[rd-camaro]

poor little yellow car cant catch up

[PfadtRacing]

good stuff robert!

[chilihed]

Uber freakin' cool!

[armysig]

That looked like so much fun. Thanks for posting it up.

[its a syn]

that is cool thanx for the vid so f-ing jealous!