Ever since seeing GRC cars fly through the salty San Pedro sea air with a battleship for a backdrop I have been scheming a way to get past the gates guarding Berth 46 and have some fun behind the wheel. The beautiful thing about this track (aside from the views) is that it is the complete opposite of El Toro. Whereas what remains of the old airstrip dictates that we start off with a slalom, which leads into a 180-degree turn, which leads to another set of spread out slaloms, which then sets up another 180-degree change in direction (in the same direction); and then there might be a quick little left-right chicane before the finish line.
Ever since losing the T-section of the runway a couple of years ago, the layouts are essentially elongated courses that push the top of second gear an uncomfortable amount and favors the straight-line ability of the Porsches. However not this time. Today we would be dodging cones on a patch of asphalt marked by slippery surface changes as well as a bit of elevation and as a bonus, there were even a couple off-camber curves. Being a track day in the time of Covid all we had to go on was an in-car video of the course emailed to us the night before. On the morning of, the track walk was helpful as always, but over way too quickly and any instruction is done from too far a distance to be beneficial.
I never thought that simply sitting in the sun for a couple of hours would raise the air pressure in the tires by over five PSI, on only one side of the car. So with one side bled, the gloves feeling good, and the chinstrap tight; that we set out to feel our way around the unfamiliar course. The cones came up so quickly that it was hard to keep your head up and eyes ahead. After pussyfooting around during the practice laps it was time to turn things up for the timed trial. The right foot redline was raised, we got close to the cones and of course and there was plenty of tire scrubbing oversteer. A few times we were able to squirt out of the initial right-hander at the absolute top of first in an attempt to point the car, but that turned out to not be the fastest method. In the end, it was a matter of slowing down to go fast(er) and trying to remember which series of turns were really long sweepers that helped bring our time between the lights into the forty-second range.
