It’s like GranTurismo, but in real life!

It was like a dream come true… Well sort of.

I finally got a chance to drive the world famous Laguna Seca (no I’m not going to call it the Mazda Race­way, it was Laguna Seca when I was lit­tle, and it will remain that way), home of the infa­mous corkscrew.

the Corkscrew, is con­sid­ered one of the motor­sport world’s most chal­leng­ing turns, due to the drop in ele­va­tion as well as its blind crest and apex on the uphill approach

This was def­i­nitely one of the more chal­leng­ing por­tions of the track. You can even see me spin it in my 2nd video here. You see, if you enter the turn sloppy or don’t com­mit (lift the gas pedal) to it, you’re going to have a bad time. For­tu­nately this only hap­pened to me once. After that first time, I decided to con­cen­trate around that corner.

The team this time con­sisted of:

• 2003 Impreza WRX
• 2012 Evo MR
• 1993 Sub­aru Impreza Wagon
• 2005 Honda S2000
• 2014 Mus­tang

We got to Mon­terey on a bright and sunny day. Laguna Seca was def­i­nitely per­fect, weather wise. Unfor­tu­nately, that’s where the day started to go a lit­tle gray for me.

On our first ses­sion, I got meat­balled (mechan­i­cal fail­ure flag) and had to come back into the pits. Appar­ently 97 db was way too loud for Laguna Seca (the sound limit that day was 92 db). Unfor­tu­nately for me, this meant that I had to either quiet my car down by replac­ing parts, or just let off the gas by the mic. Since I didn’t bring any parts I went ahead and throt­tled off for turn 5.

As you can see from the map above, turn 5 is a on the right side of the track. I was pretty para­noid after get­ting my sec­ond flag (sec­ond flag was for spin­ning on the cork screw), so I started throt­tling off around turn 4 and I didn’t get back on the gas until turn 6. I know this was unnec­es­sary, but I really didn’t feel like get­ting kicked of the track at the begin­ning of the day.

I ended up with a decent, but not out­stand­ing lap time of 2:03 around the track. I don’t think this is a hor­ri­ble time, but I could of eas­ily broke into the 1s if I didn’t have to let off.

Before I come back to Laguna Seca, I must have a plan for qui­et­ing my car down.

The Mus­tang on the other hand broke well into the 1:50s. That thing is a beast and sounds the part. Unfor­tu­nately a cheap and rather stu­pid auto­matic trans­mis­sion really killed it for track use. I’d like to see what a man­ual can do.

Go ahead and check out my sad, sad videos above and let me know if you think you can be faster than me! (PS — I know you can’t.)

Tags: evo mr, Impreza, Laguna Seca, Mustang, s2000, track day, WRX