My first roadracing and autocross experience

[Micheal Tomac]

After three days of SEMA, our group from Optima left Vegas Friday morning and went to Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Parumph, NV. Spring Mountain is a country club for people with high end sports cars and racers. The club house features 8000 square feet of resort-style amenities, including a lounge, men’s and women’s locker rooms, massage and fitness center, pool and jacuzzi, an executive conference room, billiards, custom poker facilities and nine plasma televisions. An outdoor veranda with barbeque area and fire pit connects to a 23-foot-tall viewing tower of the track. There is also a racquetball/handball court, an indoor gun range and racing simulators. A one time initiation fee of $15000 plus maintainance fees of $200 month will get you access to the club house, road coarse and access to their in-house professional driving instructors, including Ron Fellows. They also offer six different racing/driving schools, including one GM gives to all new ZR1 Corvette owners They have two main track configuratins; the North/South road course is 2.1 miles and the west "Radical loop" is 1.5 miles.

Optima rented the track for the afternoon so after lunch at the clubhouse we were able run the short coarse in a Lotus Elise or Mini CooperS. We ran two 30 minute sessions of lead follow behind an instructor. The first session was slower paced so we could get to know the track and the car. The second session was fast paced and alot of fun, especially since I had never driven a Lotus before or done any road racing. The Lotus was hard to get in & out of but it was easy to drive and very forgiving on the track. Then we were able to ride side-by-side with an instructor in a Radical race car for an even faster paced 15 minute heavy g-force laden ride around the 1.5 mile short coarse. I had a smile on the face the whole time, what a rush.

Afterwards we were able to run the Lotus or Mini thru an auto cross course that was setup for the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational. I picked the Mini CooperS for the autocross coarse since I had never driven one before and I wanted to see how it would do. While the Mini CooperS is no 1/4 mile racer, it has good power, it's light-weight and it impressed me how well it handles.

Not that I need another expensive hobby, but I really had alot of fun and actually enjoyed road racing and autocross. I wish we had more time so I could have run the Mini on the road coarse and the Lotus in the autocross. But the sun was setting and everyone was getting hungry. So after a day of racing we went to dinner and then to the Hotel for the night.

[TMONEYDIESEL]

Sounds like a great time.

[ride42]

That is killer. I'd love to build an autocross car some day with either an Audi or Subaru platform. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. Very cool stuff.

[haloman]

Sounds like a great way to spend a day.

[StainlessRRA]

I've been slightly exposed to it before, and your right, its quite the rush! Just not a hobby I have the money for. The guy next door builds mustangs to run autocross, but I've never had the chance to go check it out. Which is good, it saves me a ton of cash

I wish I knew we had optima employees on here sooner, I'd be calling you up with a CC#! You guys have some awesome products.

[SwellMel]

My son did the Audi driving experience outside Chicago last year, he's addicted... and yes it's a rich mans sport.