Road America Business Trip

[Bru]

100 Journalists, 80 cars.

They let us run on the entire course except for the front stretch up the hill and past the race control tower. The cars were separated into cars that can only go on the surrounding roads and cars that could go on the track. Every car was open to drive.

Except the IS-F. They had professional driver Scott Pruett giving laps around the track. I got a one-on-one drive with Pruett and he was totally conversational at 140-plus mph on the back stretch It was the most extreme drive I've ever been on and made me feel completely inadequete in my road course abilities.

On the second day there was autocross in the big lot and that was a blast, too.

The ride up I took up there

Waiting in line for the instructional drive around the track from a fellow employee. EVO X GSR

Click to read more...

 

[CamaroSS]

damn, i want to come next time

 

[Euro]

shit son, that's awesome. What cars from GM were there, besides a vette, hummah, and hhr?

 

[Mr Baytchos]

I bet the mini clubman was a blast

 

[IDAFC21]

so nice

 

[sickmint79]

did you drive the m3? why didn't they have an is-f available to drive ?

 

[BluBeaSSt]

Fuck your job Joe LOL

 

[Bru]

I guess the copy and paste, "select all" didn't work with photobucket, so here are the rest.

 

[Mook]

fucking baddass

 

[Euro]

damn

 

[IDAFC21]

god. that challenger is just sex on wheels

 

[sickmint79]

ah so it was them in autocross, is-f on track?

 

[Bru]

ah so it was them in autocross, is-f on track?

Huh? The IS-F wasn't open to drive at all. Track time was day one. Autocross was day two. Only about 15 of the cars were designated for autocross on day two.

 

[sickmint79]

why didn't they have one of those for you to kick around? seems odd. they do this weekend, i think it is today actually, that lexus is having their driving event at autobahn. i believe it's $295 for instructor led hours of track time today, then free the weekend which is (i think) any other lexus on track time (wonder if it's at speed, or with autox cones and makes you slow down a lot or what) and an instructor driven lap in an is-f.

 

[Bru]

They likely wanted to show us what the car is capable of because it's unlikely that any of the journalists can even approach the skills of Scott Pruett, who was the pro driver throughout the day.

 

[sickmint79]

was lexus putting on the event? i'm sure the avg journalist wasn't capable out of maxing out any of those other toys either but it sounds like it was open season, pretty sweet opportunity dude!

 

[Bru]

All of the cars are owned by the automakers, so representatives were there from each of the automakers to represent their brand/cars. Lexus decided to bring Pruett, who races for Lexus in the Rolex Sport Car Series for Ganassi racing.

 

[sickmint79]

ah i see. sweet

 

[slowchevy]

saw one in person yesterday, gorgeous car.

 

[Bru]

You can spot my goofy ass in one of these pics from the event.

http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2008/05/track-photos.html