Page 56 - KCRPCA July Aug 2020

show me about how to approach corners and what to look for in a racing line. Talking about corners and theory was great, but nothing could compare to seeing how it was supposed to be done first hand. After seeing the lines it became much easier to see how to position the car, what to look for as braking landmarks, and looking up enough to see the corner stations. Between run sessions, we had classroom time. Here we talked about the two and a half mile racetrack and the corners that were giving us trouble. We learned how to see a fourteen turn course into having fourteen straights, as well as getting advice from the instructors that drove with every one of us. Personally, as an engineering student, I found the discussions over chassis balance and tire grip enlightening. Most of the things I had learned when building an open-wheeled race car with the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers at the University of Minnesota. Getting out on the track was everything I had ever dreamed it to be and more. It was just the kind of excitement that makes you giddy, keeping you bouncing on your toes wanting more. It was the little things, like signaling a car that it can pass you that really made the whole experience feel alive. There was nothing like grasping a steering wheel with one hand and the other arm at full extension out the window at eighty miles per hour down a straight. That same straight that ended in a blind turn had been the location that a car spun out earlier that same 56 Der Sportwagen