NER's NHIS II May 14th, 1999

If you just want to see the photos I've scanned from this outing, click here.

A Beautiful Day

PCA's Northeast Region hosted a one day Driver's Ed event in May. Turnout was good, with a rumored 125 drivers at the track. This was my second time at the facility, but my first time driving it. The image above is not the actual track configuration we used that day; we ran the South Oval and the North Infield on the 14th.

A gorgeous, brisk New Hampshire morning.

I'm proud to say the Northeast Region runs a pretty tight ship, and things went pretty smoothly - and for something that starts at 7AM sharp, that's saying a lot. I get up at 4:30AM to drive up to these events... Tech inspection was well organized, and the drivers' meeting was held in the shiny new media facility. NHIS isn't a big place, and seems to be a minor stop on the Busch and Winston Cup circuits, but everything you need is well maintained and right where you'd want it. All in all a very nice facility.

This car was simply wonderful to look at in the early morning sunlight.

Mark Padgett can be seen behind his 550 Spyder in the left hand photo above. I think I heard that this is a reproduction, but that may have simply been speculation because this car is so clean - I can't recall what Mark said. If you peek underneath, a tray has been bolted on the length of the underbody to provide smooth airflow and reduce drag. I do recall Mark saying that the engine is developing about 125 horsepower, which is a good deal of motivation when the whole car only weighs 1300 pounds...

Mark Padgett's 550 Spyder exiting Turn 9.

After the drivers' meeting, a separate meeting was held for the green and yellow run groups (the beginner and novice experience levels, respectively). You normaly receive some extra instructions and cautions, a review of track safety procedures, and a description of how you'll interact with your instructor. At this meeting, chief instructor Doug Adams also talked about how NER is hoping to expand the tutorial nature of these novice meetings to include basic skills and develop a real teaching cirriculum. He also promised to have visual aids next time.

My car, the rolling roadblock in the yellow run group.

While we were in the novice meeting, the red run group (instructor level) was out sizing up track conditions. The weather could not have been better - sunny with a light breeze, and no clouds visible anywhere. And unlike the April 26th event, it would stay that way the entire time. But towards the end of our meeting Doug was frequently drowned out by some of the louder cars on the circuit, and people were starting to squirm in their seats.

A New Track

This was my first time driving at NHIS. In fact, this was my first time not driving at Watkin's Glen. While some of the turns at NHIS can be described in terms of similar turns at the Glen, the two tracks seemed wildly different to me.

A stream of Porsches running into Turn 3, then coming back through Turn 9.

The course at Watkin's Glen is about three times as long as NHIS, if I remember correctly. All the turns, and the straights between them, seem to be scaled up as well. My impression as a (novice) driver is that I had loads of time to think about what I was going to do between exiting one turn and entering another at the Glen. At NHIS, things are a lot closer together. You'd really better not spend a lot of time thinking about what you did on the last turn, or you'll blow the next several.

Next page