A couple weeks ago, SCCA managed to sneak onto the coattails of PWC and sublet the Circuit of the Americas for a Track Night. Needless to say, it was a popular event that sold out in 45 minutes, and though the Mustang was SCCA Solo Nats bound in a few days, I managed to sneak in with the Mini. It's a 2008 Cooper S that's bone stock except for 215/45-17 Federal 595 RS-RR tires with a couple hours track time on stock-sized BBS wheels, EBC Yellows, and Motul fluid. Unfortunately, I found out the night before that one of my inside pads only had 3mm left (the outside pad looked fine). which sent me to Advance Auto at 8:45pm for OEM replacements

COTA is awesome. Great facility, and the track itself is fun and smooth. The event was so popular they added a second, morning session, and I was able to get a ride with a friend in a C6 Z06 to familiarize myself with the track. Driving it requires patience and late apexing, and it was a blast, despite the fact that I was very conservative with braking to save those no name pads. Running in the advanced group, my left arm was soon tired from giving point-bys to all the high powered machinery, but it was still worth it just to be able to check a track off my bucket list.

Here are a couple of laps at about 8.5/10, in case anyone was wondering what it's like to get buzzed by Andy Hollis in his MP4-12c.


All in all, had a great time, but now I'm itching to go back out there with the Mustang. Gregory Pfaff Photography was out there snapping pics as well, and here are a couple of them.

 

That looks like a lot of fun! Nice driving.

 

I went to the F1 race last year and sat at turn 1( For anyone not familiar, at the 3:00 mark he drives through the paddock area). It's the corner he takes at the 3:15 mark. There's a significant and abrupt decline on the back side of that turn. So much so, that the F1 cars and especially the women's cars the day prior were catching air coming around that turn, the front ends of the cars were coming a foot or more off the ground, it was nuts! By Sunday, they had it mostly remedied, but it still happened now and again. Must've been a blast for you to drive. Looked like a great day!