WA State new race track - drag n road course [UPDATE]

[TK73]

http://www.ridgemotorsportspark.com/

North of Olympia in Shelton, WA.

[RallyeMike]

Gonna check it out this summer for sure.
On a related note, found this hilarious blog by what is assumed to be the typical new sports car owner. A typical bitch (edited for length) about the track owners and officials sooooo often heard, and the hilarious spot-on response.  



cbloom rants

6/03/2011
06-03-11 - New race track near Olympia
The Ridge race track in Shelton is scheduled to open this fall. It certainly doesn't look like it from the video but they claim they are ahead of schedule, and already fully booked through 2012.
The Ridge has a decent road course, but it's rather short, it's 2.42 miles, a small upgrade over the 2.25 miles of Pacific Raceways ; I also really don't like the long straight into a chicane that they are planning at The Ridge, that is the exact kind of feature that kills people. Hopefully PCA runs it without the chicane.

Portland International Raceway (PIR) is even shorter at 1.9 miles ......................blah, blah, blah .......................

It's very hard to find places to drive fast up here. My understanding is that in Europe the track days are open in the sense that you just show up and pay a fee. In the US that does not exist at all because of liability shit. It's always through some kind of club, and they have to pretend that it's "education". (there's also obviously racing, but that's always through a club and then you have to have a race license and a car with cage and fire system and all that). So all the track days here are called "driver education" which is a bit confusing.

Whether or not the event is actually run as education depends on................... blah blah blah ...........

The Proformance school at Pacific Raceways, for example, is super nitty and pedantic at first, you have to take the class, and the class is pretty terrible; they actually put up cones on the track to force you to drive "the line". Once you take the class then you can do open lapping after that which is okay.

A lot of the problem with these "racing education" classes is that they are just horrible teachers. They're super pedantic and just not very smart. They teach you what you're supposed to do without teaching you *why* you're supposed to do it, and they don't let you experiment and learn for yourself. It reminds me of the bad old days of being in primary education with small-minded teachers who are teaching you the exact machinery of how to do something instead of teaching you the fundamentals and letting you do it however you want. At the first "ground school" that I went to some guy describes early apex and late apex and then asks "what's the right way to corner?" , and here I am still being optimistic and engaged I say "it depends, it depends on the track surface, and what corners are before and after the current corner", and he says "no, we always late apex". Oh, okay, my bad, I though we were human beings who could think and discuss and be realistic and intelligent, in fact we are just supposed to repeat some rote nonsense that you read in a rule book once and treat like dogma. So the "education" is unfortunately just really depressing usually.

A couple of us did the Dirtfish Rally School out in Snoqualmie recently, and it definitely suffers from being overly pedantic. Their faccility is amazing, it's literally like a video game level with rusted old warehouses and big gravel pits, and driving on gravel is really a shit-load of fun, I was jumping with joy every time I got out of the car. I like gravel track driving a lot better than driving on pavement because you get car rotation and so much more crazy weight transfer dynamics and fun stuff going on and slow safe speeds. But I don't really recommend Dirtfish, it's too expensive for the amount of seat time you get, and they're just a bit too serious about doing things the right way. It would be worth it if doing the class qualified you for open lapping (for example the Proformance class is excruciating but the whole point of it is to qualify for open lapping) but of course Dirtfish won't let you do open lapping in their gravel pit.



Posted by cbloom at 1:00 PM   2 comments:
Tom Forsyth said...
I have found ProFormance at Pacific Raceways to be consistently good over the last four years. Yes, in the first-day lapping stuff they expect you to shut up and do what you're told, because you're a newb with a Porsche, and they tend to be dangerous opinionated morons.

Once you have graduated to being merely a competent snob with a Porsche, then you can happily discuss with them why the line you like is wrong. Because it is wrong. They've all done zillions of hours in a huge variety of cars, and the chances of you picking a better line are the same as the chances of them writing a new more optimal compression routine.



June 4, 2011 10:41 PM  
cbloom said...
Ladies and gentlemen, mister Tom Forsyth!

June 5, 2011 8:50 AM

[69bronzeT5]

Awesome!!!

[TK73]

UPDATE

The Ridge will have a Mopar drag day with swap meet in June (23 & 24?).   

Rocket Reatorations in Olympia is organizing the event.

Will scan the flyer to post later.

[TK73]

Mopar event

[472 R/T SE]

Years past @ Kent they called it Mopar day but other makes were still allowed to run.  That's what I liked about Woodburn.  They said Mopar & it was all Mopar.

Every once in a while you'd have a poser, Crumaro with a 440 or a Dart with some Pherd motor about to greanade, ha.

[69bronzeT5]

Mopar event

I'm in!!!

[MSRacing89]

Mopar event

You know I will have to show up for this one.