Day Six: Carolina Motorsports Park | BMW Performance Center

Some bench racing was had at Fatz restaurant the night before with party of 12 or so. We get to bed around midnight to humidity but clear skies. The morning weather report is wet, it poured at some point last night and the rear wing is filled with H2O.



The day looks like it will clear but my first session is WET and this track wet is gorilla snot slippery. I do everything I can not to accelerate too aggressively, if I do the tire light up and forward motion stops.



Turns are not better, the car is slipping and sliding. My competition for 3rd overall is in a 4wheel drive Subaru, this is not good. I do the best I can to keep it close but I hear the Subi edges me out by less than a second.

Unfortunately the track is drying out quickly the sun is out, so the later track cars will go way better than us. Cars are still running so we will have to see what is does for our point’s battle. Update in the afternoon.




1st round results are in and I miss beating Tony’s run in the Subaru by a few tenths of a second, ouch.

For the second session the sun is out and the humidity is gone. The track is dry so hopefully I can get enough ahead of the Subaru to open the door for a few competitors to slip in and steal some points.

Yikes it is dry but the grip is still lacking quite a bit. I run as hard as possible and perhaps overdrive the car, one enty into turn 1 was a late braking affair and I barely pull entry into the corner off. Let’s see what the results yield…a solid 2 second gap ahead of the Subi, but no one slips a time in between us to steal any points from him.

So at the end of the CMP event we are still a solid 4th overall position but are still 15 points off the 3rd overall we are shooting for. On to the BMW Performance Center for a fast autocross on their mini track.


BMW Performance Center

I jump on my competitors bicycle for a quick ride around the mini track. One of the wildest parts of the track is the back section where they set up cones to send you over blind downhill and going down are 2 semi banked turns leading into a decreasing radius 90 that then takes you up the hill to the left at a good clip.



At the end there is a very tight gate to slow you down before blasting past the start finish. This tight gate of cones was near the bottom of 3rd gear in the Active SCM3 so on the last lap of this trial I decide to try 2nd gear to see if will shave a bit off my time…BAD IDEA I cannot get 2nd gear to even consider an engagement ok lets go back to 3rd…nope. While I am through the gate and rolling I have lost all forward momentum and the clock is running, I grab 5th and go back to 3rd and it goes back in.



Well, so much for gaining ground with that event. Luckily that mess up only drops me to 6th for the event and we drop a bit farther off the Subaru’s stellar 2nd overall finish to the GT-R’s 1st. I was not the only one with bad luck, my Team Cannon Fodder GT2 hit 2 cones on what would have been a 1st place finish and ended up with 19th Overall. Same old story with One Lap, don’t mess up.



Now we are are on the longest leg of the event a 562mile drive to BeavRun Raceway in Pennsylvania. The GPS has us arriving at 2:30am add one more fuel stop, figure around 3am arrival. Then get some sleep for the 7am wake up to walk the track and the last 2 road course events on the schedule.

This week has flown by and we are within reach of 3rd overall.