Yah, my only NASA National event podium (3rd) was there, in GTS-2, back in 2010. Love that track and facility.
NICE!!!
yeah, it's sorta mecca for me. I've been involved at various levels since it was just a rumor.
For nearly 20 years, I spent far too much time on the road between here and 2nd-creek, Mountain-View, PPIR and Pueblo. Not to mention Vegas, Pahrump, Willow, Aroyo Seco, thunderhil, Buttonwillow, etc etc.
The irony here, is that our customer base is largely made-up of people who don't know just how good they've got it here. I tell them we used to have to pit in the gravel, drag our own generators and porta-johns to the track, etc.... yeah... they don't understand. And then they start ********************ing because they don't like a policy, or they have to pay $25/day to rent a garage for the weekend. (an air-conditioned garage, with power, compressed air, laser-flat floors, restrooms).
They just don't have a clue what a gift that place is to motorsports enthusiasts in the region.
I'll defend Larry Miller all day long and twice on Sundays against any of the haters.... just for this one gift he gave to me.
Yah, my only NASA National event podium (3rd) was there, in GTS-2, back in 2010. Love that track and facility.
oh, and way to sand-bag me.... got me telling you that you can "go to the gas earlier", and telling you how the brakes work..... hahaha. Jack-waggin!!!! I've never been on a NASA podium..... hahahaha.
But I HAVE won HPDE before. I know I did, because I left feeling like I had. hahahaha
I did not get to experience 2nd Creek, but have turned a lot of laps at PPIR and Pueblo (broke my back in an accident at Pueblo). If you have the chance, come out and turn some laps at High Plains, and if you want to go a little further east, give Hastings a try. Wonderful tracks. Did the 25 hours of Thunderhill in 2009, that was a hoot, and just beautiful out there.
If the current users don't like it there, send 'em to Pueblo - they'll have a new found appreciation. When I learned that Larry wanted to build in CO and was told "no" I couldn't believe it. What a lost opportunity.
And definitely not trying to sand-bag While I've turned a few laps, I still have a LOT to learn. I still can't even heal/toe And winning HPDE is what motivated me to go wheel-to-wheel
I did not get to experience 2nd Creek, but have turned a lot of laps at PPIR and Pueblo (broke my back in an accident at Pueblo).
If the current users don't like it there, send 'em to Pueblo - they'll have a new found appreciation.
I rung my bell so hard in turn 7 at Pueblo once, that I lost the entire morning and half of the day before. Poof, gone from memory. One moment I was driving across I-80, the next the paramedics were trying to get me to sit back down trackside.
2nd creek had a "ledge", about a 10" drop-off if you got too close to the inside of turn 1 (going clockwise).
Mountain view.... the dragon slide.... rumors always circulated about the number of bikers who lost their lives there.
Pahrump had protected-species desert tortoises that would wander onto the track and we'd be shut-down 'til the tortoise decided to wander back off. And rattle snakes!
At Miller they complain that if they run off track they might get gravel in their belly-pans, or mud in their tires. ::horror::
I went over the berm from 6A to the run out from 7. When gravity returned I hit the ground hard. Compression fracture of my T12. Not the only "incident" I had at Pueblo. At Hallet we just ran the turtles over (don't tell my wife), but they had a tendency to upset the car.
I've been to Miller once, and it was a very interesting experience. I was on a motorcycle trip through Utah with some friends, one of who managed an IMSA sports car team. The end of the trip coincided with the race weekend at Miller. As I was about to head home to Seattle, the guy who was the team manager told me that the team had bought a spot in the driver's school, so the team owner could learn the track. It turns out that the owner wasn't going to be able to make it, and there were no refunds. Since I was the only other person he knew with a race license, did I want to take the class for free?
The thing was, since this was the series first event at Miller, all the pros had signed up to learn the track. In the classroom session, they basically dispensed with any actual instruction and we went straight out on to the track. I was looking around me at all these pros, including a former F1 and Indy Car driver! We all piled into the school's vans, and Jonathon Bomarito (current Mazda factory driver in IMSA) was sitting next to me.
In a nutshell, it was a really harrowing day. We used the full, very long course, and I spent most of time looking in my mirrors trying not to get run over, so I had a hard time learning the 20 + corner track. I was a really good club-level racer, but it had been a few years since I had raced, so I was rusty. But I will tell you that the skill difference between an amateur and a pro driver is really, really large. The Mustang GTs we were driving were on A/S tires, so they slid around and understeered a lot. That wasn't a problem for the pros, the would just pitch the car into the turns, and stand on it to steer the car with the back-end to get the car to rotate. This was on the first lap! None of these guys had ever been to this track, or driven these cars, yet on their first lap they were doing things that looked crazy. And I never saw a car spin (other than me ).
So I never got comfortable at Miller. But there was one other civilian besides me in the class, and I passed him, so I wasn't the slowest guy!
VICTORY!!! (I have a strong desire to post the Nemesis video )
Fun fact: that video was at my local track - RPM.
Not so fun fact: RPM is currently under water for the THIRD time this yr. The owner had pretty much given up after flood #2 in May but a couple of volunteers had been cleaning the track up on their own dime. They've only been able to host a few outlaw drag races to raise money. Nothing on the road course all yr. Hard to survive when $$$ are only going out, not in.
Several of our club members went out to RPM in late July to check out how the road course was doing. Amazingly the track had not been scoured by the 2 floods. Just some weeds growing in the cracks in the asphalt. They had cleaned them from the front straight and T1-T7, but still had T8-T15 to go. The paddock was a mess but not yet their priority. Our goal was to host a 1 day DE on Oct 12. We were willing to look past a few inconveniences to be able to pump some needed $$$ into their coffers. To incent people to come we set the price at $100. Based on the contract with RPM, we needed 24 cars to break even. We didn't know how many would actually register, but we were going to donate any profit to RPM. As of 9/18, we had 25 people registered, with a bunch waiting along with a bunch who were just hearing about the event and wanting to register. It looked like we were going to have a large batch of cars.
And then the rains came...
We got another blast of heavy rain locally late last week as well in northeast Neb / northwest IA. RPM quickly submerged for the 3rd time from the surge in the Missouri river. There's no way it will be dry / safe by Oct 12. We had to cancel. I don't know their financial situation, but we're very worried RPM will go under. It would be a shame to lose our local track. Keep RPM in your thoughts. They're having a tough year.
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Last edited by husker boxster; 09-27-2019 at 05:49 AM.
While I've turned a few laps, I still have a LOT to learn. I still can't even heal/toe 
And winning HPDE is what motivated me to go wheel-to-wheel 
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