Nice day for some laps. This was a very low key and controlled teaching experience.

Mike had three students out using his track cars and two of us in open lapping, thus we only had one time in the morning where the students were alone on the track, then it was fun time in your MINI.

The open track folks were both MINIs, my 07 MCSa and a very nice CR 06 Works MCS, nicely driven.

It was open track time, pretty much all day until you ran out of gas.

I was down to two red clicks on the gauge at 2pm, so I packed up and drove to the Sinclair in Golden, my gas nanny told me I had one mile left before I needed to call AAA. My tank took 13.78 gallons.

I have to admit, I was just over half a tank when I got to the CSP facility.

Track is open and safe. It is hard to drive fast since you do not know braking points or the technical aspects of the turns.

What you see on google maps or google earth is not what you drive to go fast. It is a technical track and can be driven slow or fast but to do fast well, you need to know the line consistantly.

Towards the end of day I had a clue, but I was not fast. Of course, I did not push the MINI real hard, but I did see 110 on the back sweeper.

This picture is out of the front sweeper going towards the first rise then into the chicane. Fairly slow out of this short sweeper (55-65), then on the gas to about 75-80, then on the brakes hard for the chicane which is very tricky.

If you run the CSP course, watch the rises (think BMX air) and the off camber changes in the turns, it is a thinkers track 1.4 miles in length.

 

Sounds like you had fun Don. Great pictures by the way.

 

Hey how the heck did you manage to find the entrance? I circled the area around it, ignored a few gates and signs and such, between 7:30 and 9:45 best I could get was an overlook to see the paddock. (and for as much as I passed through the prison and around the academy I was amazed I wasn't able to find a human for directions either!)

Glad it turned out well though.

 

That entrance was the dirt road at the top before the paved road went off to the left.

The one downside to the CSP track is that bit of (dirt) before you get to the track entrance at the end, then it turns back to pavement.

First entrance off to the right which is a dirt stretch is to NREL.

I imagine the CSP keeps it dirt to keep the kids from finding the track since not a lot of folks go up there except to play with cars.

Sorry you missed us. We did have fun.