Quote:
Originally Posted by BikeNBird
Good afternoon C5!
All of my "racing" experience in the past has been in a straight line (yawn)
I have since become pretty bored with that so I recently bought a new to me 2014 2SS 1LE and and i'm ITCHING to get it on the track, but I have NO clue what i'm doing or what i'm even looking for.
I'm located in San Antonio Texas so my first thought was to check out COTA since it's only about 60 miles away from me. But unfortunately, most of my searches are providing little information. So I basically am stuck with a list of questions that I was hoping the fine folks on this forum could help with!
-Where to go?
-What does it cost?
-Can I drive my car there, race, then drive it back?
-Do I need to do any special modifications to the car?
-Any other info you could provide?
I'm incredibly excited by dipping my toes into new waters and just overall eager to get out and improve as a driver. I also run a fairly large YouTube channel so i'm hoping to document the whole process to better help aspiring drivers in the future. Thanks in advance for the help!  |
I'm envious. COTA to me is a bucket list track. Answers in order of your questions:
-go to that track
I'm sure there are smaller road courses that would be less pricey to go to in Texas, but I am not familiar w/ them
- I believe a day at that track can run anywhere from 500-1000. It's definitely pricier than most, which usually end up being between around 350 per day or less (you can find 2 day events for under 500 quite frequently as well.
-Yes, you can. That's what I do. Pack tools, a jack, and a gallon of water for yourself.
-get your brake fluid changed before you go at a bare minimum, and make sure your tires are in good shape... both will be put under way more stress than they are in street conditions. Other than that, bone stock cars are perfectly acceptable.
-There's a wealth of info here, and in the road course section of this forum. As others have stated, it's worth registering with one of the sport driving associations for deals etc. I'm with NASA, and am pretty happy with how they run things. They have different regional chapters as well.
-while not a necessity at all, if you play video games / driving sims, it's worthwhile spending some time lapping the track beforehand to learn the layout well. It will save you some acclimation time on your first outing or so, and you'd be quite surprised at how accurately sims get tracks now.
Enjoy yourself, track days are an absolute blast.