Piece Of The Action

There's nothing quite like using a car to it's full potential.  It gives the driver a sense of frustration, joy and an intense adrenaline rush, not likely to be found elsewhere easily.  It brings teams together to accomplish daunting but rewarding feats.  It puts joy and motivation into the eyes of those spectating.  It will swallow all of your money, time, emotions and energy, but when you finally arrive to the moment before it begins, you will realize how worth it all of it was.  Even more so, the moments after, pulling into the pits, everyone glowing with a huge smile glued from ear to ear.  Don't get me wrong, it's not always a happy ending, but personally, when you break, it becomes a learning experience, a pricey one, but that just means you have to build it stronger next time around.

One of the things I love about living in central Pennsylvania is how relatively close everything is located. There are a ton of drag strips locally but that's it.  If you want drifting or a road course then you're traveling a few hours minimum. The thing is though, pretty much 2-4 hours in any direction and you have a track.  

We have Pocono Raceway up north, NJ Motorsports Park east, Pittsburgh International Race Complex out west, and Summit Point Motorsports Park somewhat South. There's more if you add time and such but these are the major ones I keep an eye on for events. PIRC is the one I spun a bearing at and got stuck there the night trying to find someone to come tow me back home. I have yet to attend events at NJ or Pocono, but I am signed up for one at Pocono this June.  

Summit Point, boy do I love it. I have only driven at Summit Point once on the Jefferson track when they first added the extension to it and it was definitely a fast course but so much fun.  They have the Friday At The Track program which is amazing and I highly recommend it!  I plan to write more about my experience there in a later post so keep an eye out!

This past Sunday I attended Drift Nirvana for a few hours as a spectator at Summit Point. One great thing about Summit Point is how giant it is.  They had bikes on one track, what looked to be a Porsche track day on another, and Drift Nirvana on two others!  We got there and just kept moving from track to track whenever one had down time. I mostly went to practice some panning shots with my camera but I must say watching the Porsche's pass made me pretty psyched to get my Evo back on track.

If you're looking for an adrenaline rush or just to better your driving skills I highly recommend checking out either SCCA track nights (no instruction) or FATT (with instruction)!!

 Thanks for reading & happy hump day!