Off-season blues

Kinda sucks that this forum was opened during the off-season for SCCA. Once we defeat Old Man Winter, though, it's back to the track.

Does anybody on these forums club race in north/central Alabama? I'm interested in getting into that when I move back there in May. I know Barber Motorsports park has a track, and I would presume that there was one in the Talladega area somewhere. I also heard about some motorcycle test track that the SCCA uses every once in awhile. What series/classes are run? What cars are popular (other than Miatas)? Every region has its idiosyncrasies, and I've been in Texas.

The positive side of winter is it allows us time to rebuild, fix what we broke and reflect :)

(trying to be positive)

... I was out of money for race fees & gas anyway - lol.

Seriously though, I can't wait for the first SCCA Hill Climb of the new year .... going to count the days right now.

Winter? What's that? The break is nice though. Im doing a 5lug conversion on my Mustang, and I'm going to add the 13in Cobra brakes (11.65" in the rear) Now I'll be able to stop w/o holding my breath!

Lots of Miatas and ZO6s here in SoCal. There's also a guy w/ an 05 Elise! That car is pretty sweet.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/runningmole/185.jpg

'05 Elise .... is that Randy Chase from ChaseCams?
He is a former MR2 owner. :)

'05 Elise .... is that Randy Chase from ChaseCams?
He is a former MR2 owner. :)

Yes, that's him! My friend has the Chase cam in his 86GT. Pretty cool to watch the replays on tv

runningmole ... one of our veteran hill climbers has a car you might like.
See here:
http://www.pahillclimb.org/Forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=18

http://www.tgprace.com/

not much wheel to wheel racing there, but they do have club track days there. It's 8 mi norht of Talledega Superspeedway.

Talledega Superspeedway does have an infield road course, though I don't know how recently it's been used. There were a coupel of IMSA roval races there in the late 70's.

Barber is the obvious choice.

Talladega Gran Prix was the motorcycle track I was thinking of. The infield track at the tri-oval is so badly designed... it could have made much better use of the track and the runways than it did. I guess it's the same at Texas Motor Speedway, too, though, which is my "home" track right now (see picture below).

I took a tour of Talledega about 20 years ago, so my memory is a bit hazy on it, but I do recall the infield course being at least a little interesting, with a couple of camber and small elevation changes, and a couple of corners that were somewhat interesting. It is quite possible that things have changed, though.

IMO, the road course at Texas Motor Speedway is about the worst designed permanent circuit I have ever been to (was there in 2001). It was basically 4 slow flat u-turns, the oval, and a very poorly designed chicaine at the end of the front straight/pit lane.

runningmole ... one of our veteran hill climbers has a car you might like.
See here:
http://www.pahillclimb.org/Forum/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=18

Sweet. That's a nice car, I wish mine looked that nice. Nice forum there too. Too bad San Diego, CA is all flat. Something that would interest me and my friend. Here's his car...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v474/runningmole/42501Patrick_s_su-mustang.jpg

Yeah, the Texas infield course is pretty small, too. It has one good interesting section, a couple of sections that are fun the first couple of times, and the rest of it is pretty straightforward. It uses none of the main tri-oval, none of the flat-track, and very very small camber/elevation nuances. It also has one route that has no straightaway, which is even worse than the with-straightaway setup. It's not bad, but it's definitely not good either.