Page 50 - KCRPCA-JanFeb2017R1

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January / February 2017
Photos by Dic Seltzer
Same Story, Page Two!
I too was both surprised and very appreciative to be selected by the Club for the generous “gift” by Aristocrat Motors for the Porsche Driving Experience at the new, award winning, Porsche Cars North America “Porsche Experience Center” in Atlanta. And yes, it did take a bit of schedule-juggling to nally come up with a date where both Bob and I could be in Atlanta at the same time.
Like Bob, I have been a Porsche junkie for a long time. I bought my rst Porsche new from Sun ower Motors (in Topeka) in 1987. It was a Targa. It was a daily driver for many years and then in 2002, I had my rst experience in the Targa in a PCA thing called, “Driver’s Education”. What a life-changing experience. Three- hundred-plus track days later, the Targa has been retired back to the street (with over 200,000 miles on it, of which 25,000 plus miles were “at the track”) and in 2013, I upgraded to a 996 GT3 (it at least has ABS).
While I have driven on many different race tracks (19 to be exact), I never had
been to Road Atlanta. So, when Bob and I were trying to come up with dates to go to Atlanta, I volunteered to take the lead. Of course, my rst criteria were to nd a DE opportunity at Road Atlanta that t within the Porsche Experience openings. Fortunately, I found a two-day DE at Road Atlanta in late June and open Porsche Experience dates just two days later. Yee-Haw!
My wife, Regina, is always up for a “road trip”, so with a set of new Hoosiers on the GT3, we loaded the car on the trailer and headed south (hey, it was less than 1,000 miles). Using VRBO, we found a “cabin” on Lake Lanier, just 20 minutes from Road Atlanta. It was “in the woods”, but had a decent kitchen, a gas grill and most importantly, a nice Jacuzzi outside on the deck overlooking a cove of Lake Lanier. This would be our operations base for four days.
The event at Road Atlanta was Saturday and Sunday and run by a group out of St Louis called, MVP. They ran a good program. What was fun being that it was a “joint” event with the other group being the Ferrari Challenge Club Racing (CCR) folks. While we didn’t run together, it was a lot of fun to see these 20 Ferraris race (CCR is basically a program where one owns or leases a Ferrari, has a shop prepare and maintain the car, and then all the driver does is show up and drive – nice gig if you can afford it). Road Atlanta is a great, historic track (2.5 miles, 12 turns). While I de nitely was not the fastest driver there, by the third or so session, I pretty much had gured out the basic line and could enjoy the esses and “keep my foot in it” after the bridge and going into turn 12. In two days, I manage to do just over 250 miles on the track (so about 100 laps). While a bit of a hike, I would love to go back there.