Summit Point
 

Did my first track day since 2012 today up at Summit Point. It's mostly like riding a bicycle, except faster and louder and smells more like brake pads and oil. Oh, and maybe it was the power of suggestion, but the car def felt like it was moving around a lot, which made me start thinking about suspension upgrades again.

Anyhoo, it was a nice event, lightly attended with lots of time on the track, and there were a bunch of Ferrari guys there. I haven't paid much attention to the various Ferrari models these days...I find them kind of boring, honestly, and irrelevant to my life. But there was an F12 and an 812 Superfast and an F8 (?) and a few others.

I'll say this about those cars: They sound cool, and they are legitimately not slow, though the other thing I'll say is that a reasonably well driven Boxster can hang with a not-well-driven F8 any place other than the front straight.

Ha ha ha I just looked it up and it's 300K, wtf.

Also one other thing--a Shelby GT350R is faster on its tires than on its roof, and you should be very careful with throttle application on a wet track.

Ugh the F8 didn't make it into the above. It was on temp tags and arrived in a trailer.

Also, weird how many Montana residents there are in VA.

Is it sad that off all the pics I saw from there today, I was most interested in the C8?

Oh, that's because I forgot to post this one:

I saw the ZL1. Still most interested in the C8.

:lol: but true

Cool pics!

And that isn't a serious question, right?

Montana is very LLC friendly, so people set them up to avoid taxes. A lot of fancy RV's also live in Montana :lol:

I think there is an epidemic of fake plates / license plate arbitrage in this country. Not sure if MT in VA falls into that.

There are an unbelievable number of FL plates in the NYC area. No, they are not snowbirds who are constantly shuttling back and forth. They are likely people with extended family or an address they can easily prove in a lax state getting away with cheap insurance.

Auto-tragic.

Wait, did you see pics from somewhere else?


The C8 is dramatic in person, but I don't know...it doesn't really do anything for me. The styling is kind of weird and overwrought and the car is HUGE. And there's something about the back end that looks like they finished the car and then Marketing told them they needed room for golf clubs, so they just stapled a Camaro trunk on it and called it a day.

Also, it's auto-only.

And, yeah, I was making a joke about the Montana thing.

The people that seemed to be having the most fun were instructors in track prepped Miatas, a 996 GT3, and an M2.

I really do not like the front end of that Ferrari.

The event sounds like fun.

That looks like fun.

I'd like to do a track day again. It's been forever.

VA has personal property tax on cars. So people do like to register their cars elsewhere. Of course, VA also sets of checkpoints in neighborhoods and apartment complexes to enforce that.

What were requirements for soft top cars? I always assumed you needed a cage to track a convertible?

It would be fun to take the 1er to a couple of track days now that it isn't as critical for me to get to work in it as it used to be.

Depends on the group. It ranges from blanket ban, to roll bar, to certain convertibles are allowed (I think that the PCA falls into this category, but I haven't looked in a while), to "go for it."

Yes; this group seemed to be of the "go for it" variety. There was an S5 and an F-Type SVR and a Ferrari California and a 911 Turbo cab, in addition to my car, along with the Miatas. This was run by TrackDaze, though it was a private event organized by some corporate folks down here.

PCA events that I've run generally require a fixed roll structure that passes the broomstick test, meaning a broomstick from the windshield header to the roll hoop has to clear your helment. 987s (and I assume later Boxsters) are generally OK, 986s and 911 cabs generally aren't, at least in stock form.

When I ran them, PCA events also generally required either you to run with the top up or to use straps to restrain your arms in the event of a wreck (that's what the Spyder guys did). Not sure if they still require that. The one yesterday let ppl out with their tops down.

Interesting. Not unreasonable requirements, IMO.

After watching that Mustang flip over? Not unreasonable at all...

I also wouldn't put much trust in bolt in roll bars, unless you know that they are actually attached to something solid.

In particular, factory seats are designed to fold over in a crash so that your spine doesn't become part of the crash structure. Fixed back seats and harnesses combined with sketchy roll bars is one of the worst combinations out there.

Edit: If you look closely at the below picture, you'll see the feet of the roll bar sticking out the floor. I still have no idea how the driver escaped that crash, but it certainly wasn't thanks to the roll bar.

That's horrifying and frankly, poor design and/or construction. The loads have to be properly transferred to the chassis.

Is that a newer merc SL? Hard to see on my phone .

Mustang.

I believe that's an Autopower roll bar. So, you know, mass produced and something that should have slightly more engineering effort than a random dude in his back yard. But, apparently not.

Yes. You were not the only person I'm friends with that was there. :)

I'm not a super fan of the C8 looks. Unlike most of you, I am no longer hung up on transmissions in modern cars (think we talked about this in a recent thread).

My comment was focused more on the car itself. I'm more curious about it than I am about the exotic stuff. :dunno:

I'm surprised there isn't more cracking-down on illegal tax avoidance schemes like the Montana plates thing. I guess when you're rich enough, the rules no longer apply.

Cool on the track day. I feel like I remember seeing track-day posts from you more recently than 2012 but I guess not. I'd have to go through old photos to be sure, but I think my last track day was in 1999, not including karts.

*cough*Maine*cough*trailer*cough*tags*cough*

Sitting in front of rich people neighborhoods waiting for a once-a-week driven car is a lot harder than parking outside an apartment complex.

It's frustrating, on the tax stuff--Virginia law applies to cars "garaged" here, not just registered here, so in theory you can and should pay taxes even on cars registered to Montana LLCs (or your beach house in Delaware or whatever). And Virginia does have inspectors that look out for this; I got tagged with a ticket in 1998 when I was here for the summer and my car had MI plates.

But, as with everything else, the rich are different. If you park your car on the street or in an apartment building lot (like me in 1998), the inspectors can find you. If you have it in a garage or off-street somewhere, it's a lot harder for them to ID it as a non-conforming car.

One hundred percent legal. Unlike the Montana LLC thing. :dunno:

My understanding on the trailer thing with Maryland is that you can register a trailer in other states as long as you have an equal or greater number of trailers registered in Maryland.

It seems that enforcement is not a big thing, but I've heard a couple vague internet stories recently about insurance companies not covering trailers or the vehicles/contents being towed if the trailers were not compliant with the statute.

https://law.justia.com/codes/marylan...i/sect-13-402/

I'm not a law talking guy, so.... :dunno:

What are the options here? My last track day was in ‘14 at Laguna Seca

On the Montana thing... I used to see a lot of MT and Oregon plates in AZ, especially on exotics. AZ also has a form of property tax on cars (although it’s called a Vehicle License Tax), and its based on the base MSRP of the car when new, then drops about 20% each year...

I think OR was popular since they don’t have sales taxes, so helped on the cost when a car was new.

Not sure how AZ enforced it... was probably pretty lax — although I wouldn’t be surprised if they added a violation of pulled over for speeding or another reason and you handed over an AZ license...

Looks like this outfit does days at COTA in Austin and at Cresson Motorsports Ranch (though that looks to be a lot closer to Dallas).

http://www.edgeaddicts.com/events.html

You could also check out local PCA and BMWCCA chapters, both of whom probably sponsor events.


On the trailer thing, I have NFI, but "intrastate service" to me sounds like a for-hire term, and if you're using your private trailer to tow out of state you wouldn't be "intrastrate" anyway. But IANAtruckingL.

Realistically, this will probably be the track day that I wind up doing w/ the e46 wagon:

http://www.cnyira.com/

http://www.cnyira.com/BlackRock14Jan2011_IMG_2130.jpg
http://www.cnyira.com/cnyira-waneta-2010-02-14.jpg

Thanks. COTA is just over 2 hours from my house. Cresson is just under 4 hours :ack:

Then again, I once did a track day at Inde Motorsports Ranch in Wilcox AZ, which was 3.5 hours from my house when we were in Scottsdale (and I took the scenic route home, which was shorter distance, but took about 5 hours)...

There’s an MSR Houston...

2 hours isn’t bad. 4 hours is tough but not so bad if you have two days. I used to go up to NJ for events, which was about that far.

You can visit the new Tesla factory when you’re up at COTA.

Something I always wanted to do when I lived in Wisconsin.

C8 is awkward looking from a lot of angles. And agree. It’s like the size of the Salween S7 car from the 90s? Or the Jaguar XJ220. Weird proportions.

I’ve seen a handful of C8s now, including one in my neighborhood about 10 doors down...

It’s a weird mix of design. Some angles it looks great, others it looks strange, and many of the details are just over designed and heavy.

I don’t think it looks that big though. I’ve seen a few Salween S7s and Jag XJ220s before (I miss Scottsdale auction week...). The XJ220 is very long, but also not very tall — which makes it look bigger in pics than it is in person (and the cabin is really small in person...). The C8 looks to be taller and wider than the XJ220, and the cabin fits real people... might be fun to compare dimensions with a few other designs...

To me the C8 is one of those cars that looks awkward in pictures but is fairly striking in real life. I don't like the tail of the car - the taillights are a mess, the rear wing is a mess, the exhaust tips look like they belong on a 90's Pontiac. The biggest mistake they made, IMO, is all of the factory wheels are awful. With a set of good aftermarket wheels the C8 is fairly transformed and really looks the supercar part.

Probably a lot of your critiques are addressed with the Z06 model with Z07 trim.

I understand why they sell the LT2 powered car, but I bet the new V8 makes the car feel “special”.

The data to me says the ZL1 and C7 preowned markets are still hot because people are dawdling until the Z06 shows up (and/or they missed allotment).