We Talk About Our Favorite Race Tracks

Welcome to the Porsche Club Insider, your one stop for all things Porsche and PCA.

Here's your host, Vu Gwin, and the Insider crew.

Welcome everyone to episode 207.

We are at PCA's national office.

Of course I have Manny, Alvin to my right, Damon, Lowney at the controls, and I have

a special guest that has been here before.

She comes today with a nice tan because I don't think you've been hanging out the

same place Manny and I have.

We're kind of locked in here in Maryland with snow.

Snow and ice.

I'm naturally tinted.

You're naturally tinted.

I am too.

But we were thinking of places we'd rather be.

And today we're going to be talking about our favorite race tracks, either to drive it

or to spectate and why you need to know about them.

But before we get into it, let's thank our presenting sponsor, Pirelli.

Pirelli tires have to achieve the highest levels of performance, safety,

noiselessness and grip on the road surface, innovative tires that can satisfy

even the most specific mobility needs of the end consumer.

And of course, I want to thank you all for listening.

If you aren't currently a PCA member and own a Porsche, what are you waiting for?

Be sure to have your Vin handy.

And for those of you that don't currently own a Porsche, check out our test drive

program where we can unlock some resources to help you find that special Porsche

for your driveway or garage.

Again, just head over to PCA.org.

So don't you feel so superior with your winter tires?

I got Pirelli so to zeros this year.

We just had the course of you listening to the news.

Maryland was part of the whole ice snowstorm we had.

And it's been about a decade since Maryland dealt with it.

And they've totally forgotten how to do snow.

And it was so I feel so superior when I get in my car knowing that I have

winter tires. Oh, absolutely.

And you just motor away without a care in the world.

Yeah, even if you have simply a real drive and winter tires, which you do in the Z

three, it makes a world of difference.

It's literally the difference of dry wearing dress shoes or cleats on a football.

Now I'm using sports analogies.

How do you like that?

I'm listening to say where's he going to go with this one?

But yeah, the confidence that winter tires inspire is incredible.

And I learned that when I lived in Boston and when I first moved there,

I only had my Fox body Mustang.

And all I could afford was winter tires as opposed to an extra vehicle.

And I got through the first Boston winter.

No problem.

I mean, that's how I learned that, you know, there is a difference to have the

right tire.

All right.

Well, Mia Walsh is at the table.

She's been at the table before she's past president of the Potomac region.

Long time PCA member, a club racer, and the list goes on and on.

But her official title for PCA's her volunteer job is our National

High Performance Drivers Education Committee chair.

That's right.

So you obviously between you and Manny club racers driving in D.E.

Being the committee chair, lots of experience at tracks on tracks for myself.

I used to do quite a bit of track time before I became executive director of PCA.

I've continued to drive a few tracks.

Mostly I'm spectating Damon's track experience.

I think mostly is have you done you've done like one or two.

I've driven five.

So three laps at Laguna Seca, which I'll talk about that in a little bit.

That counts.

But barely one day at Thunder Hill, two days at streets of Willow, the two or

three days at Barber and then I'm forgetting one, I think.

But we'll have our list out.

So we'll cover it all.

And when Manny sent out the homework to fill out your favorite tracks and such,

I felt like I didn't study because the question was, you know, what were your

favorite tracks?

But that, do you mean like tracks that I've driven with helmet and helmet?

No, no, no, no, no.

I specifically would have read it and had it broken in.

I did.

I saw it, but I thought to myself tracks that I've driven at speed helmet, you

know, D.E. like or a track tour or, you know, or I've been driven in as a

passenger or spectating.

So it's like, man, it kind of made me feel like, man, I need to get out there.

We had five open slots on the list that Manny sent for each and I've only driven

five tracks in all my years, which is why me is here.

Yes.

So I think I went into double digits.

I like I might only want to be talking about track.

I think I've driven actually at speed, not pre-lap 34 tracks at speed.

34 tracks.

Wow.

I'm pretty high up there, too.

Well, I guess so.

Your job now, my job and the track that I didn't put down, but it's closest to us.

And I've driven the most at some point as much as I love some point.

Like I, there were other tracks that were sort of more grand and the experience.

Like, you know, and it could have been something personal that was exciting for

you at a particular track.

Yeah.

So anyways, let's get into it.

First, Mia, you know, we talked about your background in PCA.

You're currently the committee chair.

What first interested you into track driving to start off with?

So I was a off-road driver and my husband did a Friday at the track at

summit point and said, Hey, you might like the circuit.

And we did our first PCA.

I did my first PCA event with Potomac and that was, I think 2007 and absolutely

fell in love with it.

Uh, apparently I was very heavy on the accelerator and less so on the brakes,

but it was a much different experience and, and I loved it.

Now, when you say off-road, is that like Baja type or is that like trails, Jeep,

Jamboree or what?

I had a four wheel drive cars in college and we had about 40 acres of off-road

trails on my campus.

Okay.

And so just that kind of going off-road, nothing, nothing competitive.

Okay, gotcha.

So now you go out and you kind of get the bug, right?

And there's no, there's no looking back.

No.

You know, my husband drives to DC every day from Baltimore and said, there's no

way I want to do this for fun.

Why do I want to drive for fun?

And after his first day, he's like, okay, this is a different type of driving.

So we shared a car for one year and then said, well, that's not going to happen

anymore.

So of course he goes out and I think his next car was a 05 cup.

Yeah.

And so I felt pretty, pretty far into it as many do.

Yeah.

And that's the interesting, we were talking about earlier about how me so, so

many of our friends and so many of our members and probably to the folks that

are listening have not driven on track.

And you know, they, it's funny because sometimes I'm listening to side

conversations, kind of eavesdropping and, oh, I just did a tune on my car and I

did big breaks and I did a suspension.

I'm wondering where are they like taking advantage of all of these modifications

they've done to their car and come to find out they've never taken their car

on a track or done an autocross or done, um, you know, anything like that.

And it's all on the street.

And I'm thinking to myself, I, I, I started out, I remember when I started

out DE's, my car was stock and I was the, the limiting factor wasn't my car.

The limiting factor was me.

Like I wasn't daring enough to, you know, go deep into the break zone, right?

I didn't, you know, transition between break and gas, smooth enough to catch

a car in front of me.

I'm going, man, these people are missing out on, and they've probably spent a

ton of money, but they've missed out on how their car is already capable.

And you can't really do it on the street.

You like, I know Manning drives like he club races, but even, even that is not

taking it anywhere to the limit of what a Porsche can do on drive.

I chuckle when people upgrade their brakes for a street car.

When they barely use them.

Yeah, you're never going to think about drivers that, especially PCA drivers

that, uh, which I owe all these tracks.

I got the drive because of PCA, um, you really learn how, how the break, you

think you break broke, you know, how to break hard because you've done it in

the street cause a squirrel ran in front of you.

Yeah.

Nothing like, uh, when you learn on the track, really what your car

can do and not only breaking hard, but being able to control the car, keep

your balance, go into the turn.

And that's all stuff that's, uh, uh, relatively safe on the racetrack.

Uh, you don't have to worry about mom in a minivan coming up behind you as

you're trying to late break into a corner.

It's, uh, not like that.

Everyone's out there for the same reason.

Yeah.

For the first time I did a DE in my 87, 9, 11, it wasn't the power or the

handling that really like impressed me.

It was the breaking power.

Right.

And, and doing it over and over and over and always having the breaks there

for me, because I had done a track event in my Fox body Mustang, like in

college.

And I remember how my rear drums had swelled because they got so hot.

Like when I came into, uh, the pit lane, I could let my foot off the gas and the

car would just automatically stop because my rear brakes were so swollen.

And that's an important, a bone stock in my car is an old 87 and the

performance of the brakes were phenomenal.

And then if you're lucky enough, you get a ride with an instructor that also

they've kind of put you in, um, with a similar car.

So they know how to instruct you in that car.

And I forget the gentleman's name, um, but he had a blue 87 career, just like

mine pretty much.

And the way he drove it, I'm going, what did, what have you done to your car?

And he's like, nothing, I just drive it.

I'm like, man, I have so much left to learn.

Right.

Well, you had said though, why aren't people getting on the race track?

Well, PCA is amazing.

I think.

Oh, geez.

Very good.

We've got 80, about 87 regions that hold DE events and then additional

regions that hold club racing events with about 250 or more DE events in Canada,

US and our territories.

So there's so many opportunities for PCA members to get out there on the

race track.

And if they're not committed to a full day, they have different programs

like track experience or DE 101 to get your feet wet, to see if it's

something that you want to do.

Or even just go out to a DE and spectate and do the lunchtime laps.

A lot of times they have lunchmaps, parade laps, just so that you can see

what's like to be not dry.

Resed.

Don't be that.

Don't be that guy in the parade lap that spins their car.

Right.

But, but you can, you can see what it's like to have elevation change or what.

It's, it's a very cool experience.

And what I like is, and what I enjoy most about HP DE or HP DC is the time

in the paddock with your friends and seeing what people have done to their

cars and, you know, just, just hanging out.

And, um, yeah, with, with today's cars, really, you don't need anything

other than a helmet and a tech inspection.

These, these cars today are so incredibly capable.

And if you're worried about getting into an incident, if you're signing up

for your first track of it, of course, you're going to be in the, in this area.

It's green.

So it's like the most novice run group.

You're going to go at the pace that you're comfortable with.

You will have an instructor.

Everybody will be driving in the same direction.

So, and also you can stay away from stuff.

You're really, really that nervous.

I remember first time going out or second time going out.

My instructor's like, Hey, why don't we work on some things and you, you get

into the, um, the lineup at the end.

So then you can take your time and you have like a lap to just kind of get

comfortable.

There's so many things for you to kind of ease your way into it.

But I tell you what, the first time you do it, you'll just, you'll

go home going, Oh, that was incredible.

No, the cool thing is, and it's why we are doing this podcast is you're

going to be able to drive almost any track you want in the U S and that's

what, uh, be a driver's ed, be just coming to watch you do a parade lap.

Uh, PCA is, uh, one of the main organizations that'll give you just, uh,

this ticket, this gateway to being able to try to track U S but Canada.

And I literally yesterday got back from Puerto Rico where I was at two

race tracks, Selena's there and they're opening a reopening one in Ponce.

Yeah.

Ponce and so, uh, you know, not just the U S we've got coverage everywhere.

So what was the first track that you drove on?

Summit point.

Okay.

Mine was also summit.

Your first track.

The actually drive one.

Yes.

I'm a point.

Damon, your first track.

Yeah, my first track was, uh, streets of Willow.

So Willow Springs, big sort of raceway park and they have tons of tracks there,

like four or five.

I drove streets of Willow, which is the slower, more technical one for

beginners.

So as Willow, does it have any sorts of elevations?

Oh, yeah, there's all it does.

Oh, yeah, it's just shorter.

You don't get out of, I think in my old nine 44 S two, which is what I, um, did

that first track day.

And I think you touch fourth gear for like a split second before at the end of

the straight before it decreases, you know, decreasing radius turn, which is a

pretty hairy turn.

So I remember first time driving with a helmet on, right?

And even that in itself is a very unique experience because you can drive

your car all the time, but driving with a helmet and adjusting your seats to

like be track ready, that in itself is a different experience than street driving.

I remember renting my first helmet from OG, and then you get the credit back

when you buy a helmet.

When you, and I felt so cool putting it on.

I remember taking a selfie.

I was like, I'm going, I'm a race car driver.

I had never been on track photo with your wristband.

Every time I got promoted, I was at the first racetrack you ever, ever, ever

been to, or was that the summit point also the first time you ever went to a

racetrack summit point was the first ever, like I, I before that, I only did

autocrosses in the area and I had never been to a racetrack before.

If you count the beaches of Daytona, that would be the only one that I had

gone to beforehand.

They were set up for racing.

Oh, just, they were just the beach.

That doesn't count.

You don't look that old me.

Mine was, so my funny story with that is my first racetrack I went to was

Nazareth Speedway in Pennsylvania for IndyCar and for Porsche.

Now, I was, I think, I was about 20, I guess.

And Roxanne and I went up, my wife, and all she remembers is that it took

three hours to get out of the parking lot.

It was a grass field.

It was a park with one car at a time coming out with about, I don't know,

let's say 30,000 people part.

It took four hours.

She was like, never again will I go to a racetrack.

But we did get to see the Indy, uh, Porsche, uh, cart, uh, they didn't win.

They were, that was, I think their second year when they were

sponsored by Foster, but that was my first experience at a racetrack.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Just like I said, in the pits to see the logistical preparation that

different levels of drivers have, right?

You've got the person that showed up with their bone stock brand new car and

they literally just showed up and they may or may not have a helmet and

they're not, they've got the blue painter's tape on the window and they

don't know what to do.

And on the other end of the spectrum, someone has like a car hauler and, uh,

a lift inside the hauler and a crew to help them, uh, and everything in

between and just observing.

I love to people watching observing that also is very cool.

Um, so we'll have to say as well, um, I'm going to put the summit point

up on the screen in a second.

And that's West Virginia for the listeners who aren't from the east coast.

And, uh, this shows, I believe the, uh, the main track, correct?

Yes.

But we have to, we have to note that summit point has like two or three other

tracks and a Raleigh cross course and multiple skid paths across.

So, uh, we do want to throw that out.

A lot of racetracks have more than one track and summit point is one of them.

Thunder Hill has several that you can put together to make.

I think is it a total of seven miles when you put all of the tracks together

and you can run them each way.

That's the other thing that I like is going to race tracks where they'll say,

we're running counterclockwise for this event.

We normally run clockwise.

So it's a whole different way to learn a track that you

driven multiple times.

Yeah.

I like, I like the old tracks.

Um, um, I'm old school in the sense that I love the tracks that are, um,

dangerous and that they would never build again.

Not tracks have gotten very safe.

Um, but there was a point in motorsports where, uh, safety wasn't

a main consideration in track design and those tracks still very much exist.

They put a lot more safety features, but nonetheless, the outline of the track,

if designers had to do it over again, they would redo the track.

So knowing that this is still a design that would happen in 60s or 70s.

And then I'm, I'm able to drive it to me is very cool.

I've driven the safer tracks and I'll take an old school track any day of the week.

Like I said, I haven't driven a lot since the late 2000s.

And what came to the track back then is much different hardware today.

And, and some people would argue today's hardware is much faster.

But I would also say today's hardware, I think is much safer because of cars.

Like, you know, when I was out there with an 87, no power steering,

no anti-lock brakes, you know, there's nine 14s, nine 44s.

Like there were some basic cars out there.

And then now you fast forward.

There's some, even the most basic new car has a lot of stability, stability has

power, um, you know, they all probably can run with air conditioning.

They're all very comfortable cars.

You had a pampered car.

You know, no, I'm just saying today's cars are right now, you're going to get

all these comments from people that say, and the guy don't know how to drive

unless they have ABS.

So the one thing I can say about the newer cars is unlike something,

something that's like a base model, for example, from 15, 20 years ago,

that might be a little bit slower than some people's preferences.

But I can guarantee if you were new with the track, the slowest 718 is much

faster than you need for your first track day.

Oh, yeah, you don't need to do any mods.

You don't need to do anything.

It has to work.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, my recommendation and the reason I bring this up is because,

you know, I've got a modified Cayman, um, that's a 987.

And I, you know, think I've made it all fast at auto across at least.

And then these stock, you know, 718 show up, whether it's a GT4 or an S or,

and they are just miles away from where my car is and my driving skills, apparently.

But yeah, I say anybody can go fast in a straight line, right?

So it's the, it's the corners and the breaking.

I like to think it's the car.

So when we started Mia, yeah, well, why don't you go over your favorite,

top five favorite tracks you've driven.

Okay.

At speed.

So we just talked about, um, Thunder Hill in, in California.

I think they've taken every fun, different type of, you know, corner downhill,

blind, this and that, I think from all of these fun, different tracks around the

world and they've put it all into one track.

So, which is not, that sounds great on paper.

And that's what Bill Scott wanted to do with the Shenandoah circuit, right?

A miniature version.

Which the execution was horrendous.

Well, that is for, especially for a high speed car.

I think, yeah.

Because if you're watching it on YouTube as well, I'm going to scroll

through, uh, the track layouts, um, that we can note here and talk about a little bit.

But this sort of shows how modular Thunder Hill is.

Yeah.

So I really, really enjoyed that just because every time that you took another

corner, it was a different experience, lots of elevation.

Um, Watkins Glen, first track that I drove to when I, when I pulled up into the gates,

I looked around and I was like, wow, this, this is big.

And, you know, when you're early on and you're driving, you're thinking, oh my God,

people are going to be watching us.

So the grandstands are everywhere and there's not a soul in any of them.

So, but it's still so incredibly intimidating to see all that.

You're going, oh my gosh, I'm going to go out there.

Uh, my favorite, I love the, the S's.

Um, two of my favorite tracks, VIR and Watkins Glen.

The S's flat out.

Yeah.

And every time, I think maybe, maybe 50% of the time I could pull the flat out on

the S's, but I mean, you had to nail it so perfectly.

And if you felt the car understeer a little bit, you had to lift off the gas

because you would never make a bone.

You nailed it.

You could see your, uh, your speed differential at the end of the straight.

But, you know, Watkins Glen was on my, I think it was on my list.

And it's very intimidating, uh, always been intimidated.

Pete Trempner, who I think had over 600 track days, uh, at Watkins Glen would

try to teach me and say, follow me and everything.

And when, when I was chasing him, I would forget about the blue walls.

Yeah.

The arm, cow.

Somebody put that.

I put it in there.

But visually, I could, I could, uh, visualize a wreck at every corner that I had seen.

And so I played really with my head about it.

I can't go, I can't go 10-10s to this track.

Yeah.

Uh, so VIR, Watkins Glen are really my two favorite summit.

Is my favorite cause it's my home track and I've had a lot of successes there.

I remember podium on my first race there.

I remember getting rookie of the year of my first club race there.

And honestly, when I got called that in the pat, you know, in the big tent, the

whole place just stood up and started shouting.

And it was really, you know, cause that's the family piece that you talked about.

These are my, uh, PCA family members in the paddock.

And I think that they were almost as excited as I was.

And honestly, it was one of the happiest moments of my life.

That's true.

And, and you'll find, uh, you may be active in your region now more than likely

that people that you're hanging out with that tours or dinners and stuff like

that is going to be somewhat a different crowd that's going to the track.

We all kind of have limited time.

So you have to pick and choose.

And a lot of times the track people kind of stick to the track people and

other events, people kind of stick to the other events.

So you'll, you'll make some new friends as well.

When you kind of go down this road,

I will say all the tracks that so far that I'm in the Thunder Hills, I can't

speak for that, but the other ones are also great, uh, spectating tracks, uh,

big, well, obviously walking the Glen is, um, made a whole a couple hundred

thousand spectators, uh, but it does that gives you access to either, uh, drive

your car around the different corners or simply walk.

And you can see a lot, uh, being that there's elevation changes, uh,

BIR, same way you can be ours bigger, I think, than walking the Glen and, uh,

acreage, uh, but you can get a lot of great sight lines from the top of

roller coaster to the, um, uh, to the, uh, where the Oak tree used to be turned.

Um, it's, and you can even see turn one from the, uh, and grab a hot dog.

If you want, it's, uh, it's really well done.

Of course, some of the point is the rustic cousin of them all, um, there,

you just go through the woods and pop your head out and be watching the cars

and whiz by.

So yeah, from a spectator point of view, uh, for people who just want to go

watch a race, uh, you're not going to be stuck in a grandstand seat the whole

time.

You can do a lot of walking and see a lot of different points of the race and

go right up to the cars and the car's owners and they're very generous about

letting you sit in the car and, uh, really being able to touch all of those

cars that are out on track as well.

One thing they changed from years ago was years ago, you could go all the way

down to turn one and, uh, I think something happened and they cut you off.

So now you can't go any further than start finish.

I think, uh, well, you can go down to the tower and you can see one, two,

three, four before you could go right to the fence.

So one into two, and that was, they only let photographers do that.

Yeah, pretty well.

I think when the guy, uh, he came close to hop in the fence with the car, that's

right when they thought, uh, maybe we shouldn't bring people down here.

So I would recommend, I think the first time I started going to DE's, I went by

myself and eventually I got to know folks.

I was, I was just, if you're, if you go down, try to find someone that can

shadow, because all these places that Mia and Manny are talking about, you

won't necessarily know where or how and you could just have someone that's

been there before show you around and the experience will just be richer.

Like every track has its charm and every track, the locals or someone that goes

there, a lot new, something about it that you should experience that you

wouldn't necessarily read somewhere, right?

Right.

And if you want to go look at a DE event, especially if it's PCA, you can

look at the master calendar on PCA.org and all you need to do to get in is

sign a waiver.

Yeah.

So you don't charge to go into the paddock.

So if you see a specific, a particular track where you're traveling and there's

a PCA event there, you're welcome to go in, sign the waiver and you can

walk around the paddock.

Yeah.

For me, you know, like you sum up point being our home track and so many

experiences there and it's, it's, how do I say this, like you said rustic or

whatever, it absolutely is.

And also because it is that way, it's also quite reasonable, cost wise to,

to drive there, right?

Um, Virginia, uh, VIR, Virginia International Raceway.

That's if you live here.

Yes.

People that live here, Virginia International Raceway too.

So, so, and they're very lucky because I think VIR is just so beautiful.

It's a country club setting.

I mean, it's gorgeous and lots of runoff room and the, you know, the S's and

the condos by the S's.

Yeah.

To me, that's, that's a very cool place.

This is the way I like to think of some at point.

Um, that is unlike a lot of tracks, uh, some at point was part of some of the

really big races, you know, Imsa back in the day.

So some real big heavy weights race there.

Um, but it's not anymore.

So it has that big track Imsa feeling, but the grass roots sort of vibe.

I think it was only GTO, maybe we went to race there.

Wasn't ever a top wrong track for, uh, um, uh, for motor sports, but, uh,

they did a lot of SCC, SCCA still does, uh, a huge amount of, uh, race.

No, Scott was a, uh, Paul Newman race there.

Yeah.

Paul Newman, Tom Cruz.

Oh yeah.

When they were practicing, they were doing a lot of SCCA transams stuff.

And it was a summit never feels busy, you know, in the sense that like it's

always a fun time.

You're never going to wait in line trying to get in or do whatever.

I think the first time I saw some at point, uh, uh, was, uh, a couple

of guys from the region went to the Jefferson 500.

It was the first event they said it was vintage race and Brian

Redmond's going to be there in some, we heard a nine 17 and we went out and, uh,

that was my first, uh, time seeing summit and it felt like I was going to

like a Boy Scouts campsite.

Cause there was nothing paved except a paddock in the track.

That was everything else was dirt, but it was, uh, yeah.

Very, very cool experience because as a spectator, you felt like you had a VIP

access cause you get to so many corners and so close to the cars.

And there wasn't any parties telling you to get back or anything.

Well, Damon brought our West coast experience.

So we're all talking East coast tracks, but let's talk about some of the

tracks that are in the middle.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So I'm much the same as you guys, you know, summer point, VIR, Watkins,

Glenn, the blue arm go that was so incredibly intimidating.

And I remember, uh, my instructor just going out because my car is not that

powerful as you know, uh, Ellen was like, you know, you can just like floor it here.

Right.

Like you'll, you'll eventually get up the hill.

I'm like, I don't know if I should.

And you know, it's, and to think all the races that were there and all the

fast cars you see going around, watching, watching the higher run groups, uh, run

at any of these, uh, tracks is very cool.

Um, you know, Barber, I liked Barber, Barber was surprising to me.

Uh, I went down there for an event and we got to drive at speed with helmets

and everything I, for some reason, I didn't think there would be any kind of

elevation, but boy, was I wrong.

And, um, it was a lot of fun.

Uh, probably because I got to drive Porsches that weren't necessarily yours.

And I was using, uh, other folks, consumables.

And there's the article up on the screen.

If you're watching YouTube, it is the, uh, it's a 2018 Panorama article.

Sorry, I'll cut out the time.

A Porsche sport driving school.

I did that early on.

Yeah.

Our, our Panorama app is not working all that.

And then, and then the last track that, uh, I didn't really get to drive at

speed, but got to drive a little bit spirited was Laguna Seca.

Oh my gosh.

The corkscrew.

Oh my gosh.

That is you can't even explain how scary that is.

And when not only you see people in cars do that, but when I see motorcycles go

over that boy, those people must not have any kind of fear because I'm in a car

and I'm going, how do you do that at speed?

Um, but yeah, that's, but it's also another great spectating track because of the

elevation change that you can see a lot of the track.

You were willing to climb a little bit.

That's the one I got to see for a Rensport reunion, the last one, I got to

see some of those races going on.

Would you say that the corkscrew is the most iconic section of track in the U.S.?

In the U.S.?

Uh, it might be a good argument.

In the world.

I think Spa, I think Spa over top of, uh, yeah, I guess so.

But I mean, I think there's just one, I think, uh, uh, uh, uh, there's a lot of

iconic turns that have been flashed up on the screen.

Everyone's going to say, I know that.

Well, the carousel at the ring, right?

Everybody knows a carousel.

Yeah.

I think that's iconic.

Yeah, it's, um, but yeah, it's definitely a, everyone's bucket list would be

able to go down the, uh, the corkscrew.

What is it?

Seven stories all the way down to the, uh, it's a mate.

If you play a sim, um, racing game or Gran Turismo or anything like that, it

looks in real life, it looks way steeper and bigger.

You don't even know what you're in for, even if you've practiced and practiced.

We, we were doing, I forget what event it was.

And, uh, we were out on, on, you know, a touring lap and, um, uh, we, we had, we

stopped and actually got out of the car and just stood on the corkscrew and you

can barely stand on the corkscrew.

Like you're leaning into the elevation just to, just to stand upright.

It's yeah.

So anyways, that makes you really appreciate what real drivers can do.

Um, Damon just kind of mentioned in terms of sim racing and that's one thing

that we didn't have back in the day.

Like now, if you, now if you decided you want to go to any of these tracks,

there's a YouTube video of, you know, uh, someone that drives it well, hopefully

that you can look to kind of be familiar with where you're going to turn left,

right, or what to expect.

And then there was even, of course, the, the sim racing games where they've

scanned these tracks.

So you can, you can be very, very familiar with the track before you.

It's not the same.

I can't imagine that it's the same.

Um, but you, you get, you get a head start as opposed to back in the day,

kind of going blindly and then relying on your instructor and then hoping within

half the day, you'll remember most of the turns.

I did that for Barbara, that downhill right hand that's completely blind.

Oh yeah.

I drove this sim, I don't know, probably 10 hours before I went, because

when I show up, you know, I, I don't want to be the person that does

something really bad and turns the wrong way.

So I crashed multiple times on the sim on that downhill right hand time.

So I wouldn't have to do it in real life that way.

Is it the downhill right hander that comes a little almost right after the front

straight and then goes back uphill or is it different area?

It's the one, um, well, you know, where the store is and it comes down and it

goes down and then goes straight and then it comes, comes back on the left hand side.

But it's a blind, you know, we talk a little bit about when I'm training new

instructors, your mental memory and that's a particular corner where you,

your mind has to remember where it is that you need to go because you can't see it.

You can't see where your track out is.

You can't see, you know, what's coming out around the corner.

I think, uh, I've said this before in a podcast, uh, the advantage

autocrossers have against only track only people is we can learn to track so fast.

And I've seen that with friends of mine who were struggled where I would buy

a second lap, I was already, uh, starting to keep up with the locals, uh, where

those who didn't, because you know, an autocross, you got to learn so quick,

that track and be competitive.

Those skills, the skills to be able to piece together how one corner reaches

another corner and how you're going to enter and so forth, uh, really help

out at Barbara, that was a really key, um, although Barbara was the last

time I got car sick because they sent us there for same thing, uh, Barbara

for PCA, we were doing the master's class and, uh, and we get there and they're

like, Hey, why don't you ride with us, the instructors will show you the track

for session and you can hop in the car.

Okay, about six laps into it.

I started to feel queasy because there's so many elevation changes.

You don't know if you're going left or right.

So I finally said to the guy, I'm like, how much longer in this session?

And he goes, why?

I said, I'm not feeling really well and I want to, I don't want to lose it.

And then I, my equilibrium is off the whole day.

And he goes, yeah, I'll bring in this next lap.

I'll drop you off.

And then as he dropped me off, he just don't feel bad.

He goes, your buddy, he's right behind us.

He's getting dropped off too.

But then we, we luckily, uh, we were recouped and, uh, I picked up and learned

to track just driving it ourselves rather than riding shotgun.

That's something to talk about.

I wish there was some sort of operation that I could get

to disconnect why I'm such a delicate butterfly in the passenger seat.

There's little patches on.

Looks like he has the measles.

And the patches do work, but then there's also side effects of those patches.

Right.

Like you drowsiness.

What about peppermint oil for odor?

Peppermint.

How about I just drive?

If I drive, I'm okay.

Yeah, exactly.

That's even more fun.

If I'm sitting in the passenger seat, I, you know, yeah.

I let him drive Angelus Crest the first time we saw it.

Yeah.

Cause he knew.

I knew he would car.

And because I'm sitting there in the passenger side looking at my phone.

I don't know how he sees on his phone.

He's looking down.

I'm like, no, not me.

I'm very relaxed in the right hand seat.

Yeah.

Lohan, my wife, she can, she's the same way.

I could do whatever I want driving and she doesn't affect her at all.

So on your list, you had Alto Dromo, Internationale de Algarve, Porta Mel.

Yeah.

So that's, that was one where my most recent track experience where it was helmets and I

got to drive something kind of significant and really.

What did you drive?

So we got to drive Taycan Turbo S GT3 and GT3 RS.

And I tell you what, uh, internationally, it's interesting.

I don't want to say that they are not as strict, but it seems to be like you kind of just

good luck and don't, don't mess up because it's going to be on you.

But the track was a lot of fun.

The sad part was.

Where's Porta Mel?

Porta Mel is in Spain.

Yeah.

And Spain and the sad, maybe not so sad, but between those three cars, I had the most

fun, believe it or not, in the GT3, not in the GT3 RS because of my driving skill,

but I felt like I was the fastest in the Taycan Turbo S.

Were any, was the GT3 a manual or were they all?

Uh, they were all, no, no, they're all, they're all PDK.

Okay.

It was fun.

The GT3 RS.

Porta trusts us, but not that much.

Yeah.

Well, no, because at Barber, we drove manuals back in the day.

Back in the day.

Remember?

Yeah.

I don't know if they do it anymore, but back in the day, we drove manuals, which we were

surprised that.

We had a manual, uh, so it was a 997, 991.2 GTS.

We had a manual and a PDK out of those.

Yeah.

And I forget if any of the Caymans that we drove, but the GTS for sure.

I wonder if that's still the case because I don't think it is.

When I drove it, everything was automatic.

Yeah.

It was definitely manual when I did it back in 08 or something like that.

Yeah, but not anymore.

I don't think it is anymore.

So Mia, when you, when you go around doing these instructor training seminars at all

these different tracks, do people say, Hey, you want to drive a couple laps and that's

how you get a ride or how do you get into the cars?

Thank you, everybody.

I get keys handed to me all the time.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah.

And so I was, as I said, I was just came back from Puerto Rico yesterday and some guy said

keys are, keys are on the dash, go have fun.

I don't take, I won't never go out in any of the higher run groups with somebody else's car,

but just to get out there in the lower run group and, uh, and drive a track because a

lot of times I'm in the right hand seat.

So I've driven on in the right hand seat.

So I know which way I'm going.

That's why my list of tracks that I've driven is, is so long.

So I was out at Blackhawk in Chicago and part of my presentation, you know,

I redid the training program and of course I designed the cover of my booklet and one

of my cars was on, on the front and the guy comes up to me shyly afterwards and says,

I have the same car as you.

Would you want to drive mine on track?

Oh, wow.

I said, yes, I would.

Thank you so much.

So I do almost any time I'm somewhere.

I'm too nervous.

I do get offers like that.

Not at the track because I haven't been to many, um, lately, but like even on the street,

like when people are like, Oh, you should drive my, I'm like,

Oh, yeah, I'm not very shy.

I can't turn down somebody else for me.

Somebody offered me at least, uh, it was one of two, uh, factory built race cars.

And the, um, seats were fixed so I couldn't move them forward.

And like me, I'm a little bit high challenge sometimes and, uh, I couldn't reach the pedals.

Uh, without loosening my belt to sliding down a little bit.

That's, and I thought I am not going to let my height limit me from driving this car.

And so I loosened some stuff and I could hit the clutch pin all the way in.

And I remember, uh, I would slide down the shift gears and pull myself back up,

but I got my 30 minutes in the car on the track.

And I, what, what, I think it was some lotus track.

We were at a track event together once and someone offered you to drive their like lotus track car.

That's the one or something.

Is that the one?

Oh, okay.

It's pretty funny to hear that, like, if you know what a lotus at least looks like

and how big it is, that you were too small for a lotus.

That's the way it was set up.

The way it was set up.

Yeah, but if the seat wasn't, I'm, I got to pull my seat up in my 914.

I'm only five, six.

I have room behind the seat to store stuff.

I kind of joke that that's why my husband's car is he puts a fixed seat in.

I'm sorry, honey.

Sorry, honey.

We don't have a seat insert for you.

My little toes just can't even reach the pedals.

Boris said, who's the opposite.

Boris said used to be the racer for BMW, I believe, mainly.

He was very tall and I, someone asked him, I might have been talking to him one time.

How do you, is there any race cars you cannot fit in?

And he was like, if someone offers me a ride, I will fit into anything.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So to back up just a little bit, for those of you that might be a little bit

apprehensive of taking your own Porsche on track.

We just mentioned Barber, but now they also have a driving experience

because they're partners with Laguna Seca.

You can sign up for these programs.

They're very popular, kind of hard to get into.

So you kind of have to watch when they open them, but they offer these,

you know, arrive and drive programs through Porsche and you drive their cars,

their brakes, their tires.

Obviously it's a, the value is to go with PCA in your own car.

That's where you're going to be able to get on track for the least amount of money.

But like I said, if you're not comfortable taking your own car, Porsche's program,

it's still a good value, but it's just going to be more expensive because you're using

their hardware.

Also, whether you're going through PCA or with Porsche, there's the option of getting

insurance for your car when you go on track because certainly

anything can happen.

Likelihood of a novice person having something happen is relatively low.

If you're risk averse, I just, and I am for a couple of hundred bucks to cover your car

on track because your policy may or may not cover your car when it's on track.

So one, most likely not.

Most likely not.

And so should something happen to your car while on track,

if you buy this track insurance, it'll cover, you can buy different coverage levels,

but it protects your car and your car will get fixed for some sort of amount of money

that you have to put in your deductible.

But it doesn't, it's completely oblivious to your normal street driving insurance.

It's completely separate.

And honestly, when you said that, it gives you confidence in your head as well when you're

out there because part of driving is definitely a mental piece.

There's a big mental piece to it as well.

So it gives you a little bit more confidence as a driver if you've got some of that coverage.

Speaking of mental, and I know he's mental.

When you drive on track, do you, and say the car's warmed up and everything like that,

like do you automatically say, for me to have fun, I got to drive at like nine tenths, 10 tenths?

Like I'm the type of person, you know me.

I'm a very like kind of chill person.

I just want to get home safely.

So I want to have fun, but I feel like I would never be a competitive race car driver because

I always like to be in my comfort zone and I will drive, you know, reasonable,

but at never ever eight tenths, nine tenths, 10 tenths.

How do you, how do you approach it?

You know, golf is something you may want to.

Yeah, I was going to say I disagree.

I'm just being honest.

I go out there, I love the social side of it.

I love driving on track, but I'm just not a competitor.

I'm not a, I'm not a super competitive person for the most part, except you get me behind

something with the steering wheel and tires, go carts, riding mowers, anything like that.

I will suddenly turn it into competition.

So actually going back earlier in the podcast, when I hear people putting all these modifications

in their cars, and I tell them all the time, listen, before you do anything,

take your car to the track and learn what your car can do and how you can extract the most out

of you. You're driving with that car and then do mods, but you're going to understand what

modifications you're going to be doing because you're going to be able to articulate what your

car is not doing that you wish it would. Simply going out to me and I, we've both seen people

come to the track students with all these mods in their cars and suddenly they start to realize

that the car doesn't handle as great as they thought and, but they don't really know what's

wrong with the car and it's hard for us as instructors because we don't know what the

baseline was. What was it that you added to your car that suddenly didn't make it handle

the way you did? I always use the example where I put fatter tires up front because bigger is

better, right? Turned out I couldn't get heat in the front of the car and I couldn't figure out why

suddenly my lap times were getting worse. Even though you had bigger tires. Even though I had

bigger tires. The traction circle wasn't working. Somebody pointed out to me, he says, you're not

getting heat in your tires. He goes, go get a parameter and check the heat temps and I did

and then I realized he was absolutely right. The tires were too big for the car. I wasn't

sliding them around like they were narrow tires. So they were never getting up to temperature.

But you could find that out on the track and learning how to really drive your car. You

can make all the mods you want. But like I think Damon said, a 718, base 718 is going to smoke you

and you're going to be sitting there with your turbo going, what did I do wrong? So what I'll

say, you know, just to make a comment on what you were talking about, Vu, is I can't be chill.

Like I can be chill enough to know when not to push like too, too hard, but I'm always chasing

like I know it feels like a good turn and a good lap. And if you get all the turns right,

you know, or what you want to do, it's hard to not try and go one better. So,

yeah, there's not a lot of chill, you know, for lap time. I don't have to race, you know, I'm happy

setting lap times, but that can get a little bit dangerous if you take it too hard. My first

track day at, I'll talk about streets of Willow a little bit. As I said, it's a shorter track,

a little bit slower speed. So for a beginner or somebody moderate or somebody who doesn't want

to be going 150 miles an hour, you know, it's a great track. And I had a 89, 944 S2 has about

208 horsepower, four piston brimbo's front and rear stock. I had just put on new brake rotors.

I just put in super blue. If you guys remember that super blue, they can't have the brake fluid.

I think I still have super blue. Yeah, super blue. Yeah, I know some people still have some

stocked away in the garage. But yeah, I was at streets of Willow and it was a two day track

weekend. End of the first day, I had had an instructor the whole day. My instructor told me

this was the end of the fourth or fifth session, last session of the day. He told me, now for

this next lap, I want you to be as smooth as possible. And I'm like, okay. And so by being

smoother, you know, than what I was being and actually thinking about it, I was slowing things

down and being smoother by going a little bit slower inputs, slower speeds, coming up to the

carousel on streets of Willow. My brake pedal went all the way to the floor. I slowed it down

enough that I didn't go over. But my instructor told me, so the reason I was telling you to go

get smoother is because you would slow it down, but I'm not telling you, you know, like your

brakes are about to fail. It's just a way to pull you back a little bit. It is a technique we

teach in our in our instructor school. Oh, it's funny. Yeah, go get smoother. Exactly. Let's

style it back. Yeah. So if there's something I would would say is if if you don't have any chill

and you like to drive really hard, you're chasing that lap time, if you if you're getting faster

and you're getting closer to the locals, I would recommend maybe upgrading your brakes or brake

pads or getting the right fluid, right? Because that was so scary. Yeah, sure. But then I had a

bunch of PCA members. It was actually Steve Gross Kemper, who I believe is the four minute

Black Forest in San Diego. He just said, Hey, man, just take your car over. We'll pump your brakes

in about half an hour at the end of the day, you know, for free just to get me back on the road

on the hotel. Breaks for blood ready for the next day. So on Rotary right there. I go back to how

incredible Porsche brakes are, but brakes is to me, you know, people think of going fast and they

think of power, they think of acceleration, but on the track, like confidence and brakes makes you

so much faster. Right? Yeah. So we have also car control clinics, which is a step before you go

to the racetrack and threshold braking, swerving to avoid are two of the exercises that we teach.

Most people have never done a very, very, very hard brake because they, you know,

haven't had the need to on the street. And it's a good feeling to know that how far the brakes

will stop you and to keep you safe out on the street as well. So that's a skill set that we teach,

both in the HP DE program in our car control skills programs. So how about tracks that

you haven't driven before? Well, let me get through. We haven't gotten through the tracks we driven.

We have so much to share. Where are we? It's not like we don't have a listen.

He did send the run of show. Why waste time at home doing a run of show now?

Yeah. All right, Damon, you tell us, I'm taking control. You tell us your favorite tracks you've

driven. My favorite tracks that I've driven. All right, I'm going to put the camera on me for a

second here. First one, and we haven't talked about anything quite yet in this area, but Midwest,

it's Road America. Now, I'm a little biased because I have my dad's side of the family is from

Wisconsin, and I love visiting there. But I think even if I didn't have family and friends out there,

it would still be my favorite track in the US that I've driven, of course, but I still think

it's so good that even if I drove other tracks, it would remain up there for quite a while.

It's four point something miles, four and a half or so, very long, very quick track. It's old,

so it's narrower than a lot of the new stuff, which may sound bad to some people, but it's a

good thing. It's just got a vibe to it that most tracks, if any, really don't have anymore.

And then the whole area of Elkhart Lake. So I'm not even just talking about the track,

which is amazing in its own right, but Elkhart Lake. Elkhart Lake is just...

Do we do that anymore? Do we still do that? We do, we do, we do, we forget.

It's worthwhile, it's worthwhile. I'm a teacher, so.

Yeah, but Elkhart Lake, it's just, if you are a motorhead, it is such a cool town.

There's car stuff everywhere, but it's not overtly, you know, a car place. You kind of

have to dig a little bit, but it's there. All the restaurants, the restaurants are great.

It's beautiful out there. I just love that track in that area.

It's also the track that almost every European driver at the Porsche Plots,

when they're asked, what's your favorite track in the United States? Almost 100% of them will say

Road America, because it reminds them of the North Schleife, because the trees on both sides,

the green hell. So your next one is Barber. Yep, Barber is my next one.

So this is probably going to sound like an odd comparison, but Barber, having driven,

and I'll talk about Laguna Seca in a couple, I think that's the last one I listed,

Barber reminded me of Laguna Seca because of the elevation changes.

Okay. So in my opinion, if you're looking for something that feels a little bit like Laguna

Seca, but you don't, you know, can't get your Porsche or whatever over to California, Barber.

Yeah, very different environment, but the track feels similar in the elevation changes in some

of the blind corners. Just not a very fast track. I remember, I don't think I even got out of third

gear on the straights. Well, we were forced to be in fourth gear as part of the school. It felt

quick to me, but no, I'm not a good driver. Laguna has a lot of sweepers. So if you don't

break too hard in the sweepers, you can get some pretty fast speed going up to that corkscrew,

where Barber is more of a technical track. Barber felt like a twisty road.

Yeah. It rewarded. They had a lot of late apexes. If you early apex at Barber, you're just going

to slow yourself down to a crawl. It's a great track for the sports driving school, because

like Mia said, going fast is not really a skill in the straight line, but taking that speed

into a corner and maintaining it, that Barber really rewards you.

The one turn, that's like a U-turn almost, like you got to take it all the way around.

It's always great to be a track when you can't see what's on the other side of the corner.

And then you got to have blind faith that the track has not changed from one lap to the other,

but still is that hesitation. And that's, to me, it's a rush.

And dissecting each of those corners independently. Yeah.

So that was a great track. And as you said, there's turns everywhere, like you're hardly ever going

straight. You're very busy. I remember there wasn't a whole lot of times, sometimes the

long straights, like at Summit, you get to look at your gauges, crack your knuckles. Exactly.

Barber was like constant, felt like one second and I'm at the end of the straightaway.

And that's why a lot of the low horsepower cars don't like VIR, because that back straight

is so long. More ever. You know, like on Talladega when they're drinking the coffee on the back

straight, on the middle. My arm prepares it to go outside. Yeah, exactly.

Now Thunder Hill, you already talked about Streets of Willow.

Yep, Thunder Hill. It's a, that's a special, it's a sort of a special time in my life,

because it was, I believe it was 2010, I still had my 944 S2. And I had just graduated from

college. I was working at Excellence Magazine. And the editor and I went up to Thunder Hill.

I forget which track day program it was, but it was one of the ones that are still around,

a track day program. I got an instructor and and drove it. So it's Northern California.

In some ways, it reminded me of Willow Springs, because it feels in the middle of nowhere.

But it's not quite like that. I think Mia, you said something about it, sort of, especially in

this big configuration, almost feels like the Nurburgring. It's another one that feels like

a big twisty road, you know, right out in the middle of nowhere. And there are some blind

corners. I think I did the West track. There what, there is, yep, downhill. Yeah, and there are

blind corners, all sorts of good stuff. I've watched Lemons races there. We'll get into the

spectating, but it's a really cool track, very grassroots track, really fun to drive, but not

so big that, you know, it's not a Laguna Seca. It's sort of under the radar. So, you know, a local

thing. I was pleasantly surprised, put it that way when I drove there. Yep. So I'll give you

mine really quick. We covered a lot of the tracks I put, except we did a VIR number one for me.

A second is Sebring International Raceway, which I think we've all been there. I don't know, we've

all driven it, but that's where I did my first club race. For those who've never been there,

it's an old airfield, a World War II training field that they kept and turned into a racetrack.

So I mean, it's all flat, but it has different pavement surfaces. So it makes it quite challenging.

A lot of bumps, a lot of expansion joints. It can take apart cars so easily that aren't bolted

together right. So your car has to be in tip-top shape mechanically if you're going to be to be

driving it. Spectating point of view, I did not like it when I went to the 12 hours. Spectating

at a club race, awesome, because there's no campers and no scaffolding you can drive anywhere.

Spectating at the 12 hours, you're limited where you can drive. And so it was, to me, not the best

for spectating. I know we'd get a ton of people for the 12 hours, but I like to be able to walk

around and look at different parts of the track. And that was a little harder. The other one, which

I put Barbara on there too, I actually lost my place, is Moseport. Moseport's in a little bit,

I think, northeast of Toronto. Now it's called Canadian Tire, Northworth Park. Exactly. Yeah,

but it was called Moseport because it's a combination of the words motor and sport.

Oh, is that what that stands for? That's how they got Moseport. I drove it before they paved

a lot of these sections that would used to be just grass. So I think it's turn three at Moseport that

was always the hairiest to me because it's an off-camber, I believe double apex turn

that really rewarded you in the exit. But entering it, you felt like you were falling off the edge

of the earth and that the end was a tire wall. The grass that you would go down and hit a tire wall

I learned that track, if you will, by myself because it was a club race, so I had no instructor

showing me. So I had to figure out the whole track on the first couple of sessions. A phenomenal

track for spectating too because you can go almost around the entire track for trails and see every

corner of that track. And it's a old Formula One track too, I believe. I was going to say the

diagram, it doesn't look too complicated. A lot of elevation changes. Okay, you can't see that on

that, yeah. Yeah, late apex turns, late, late, late, late apex turns that if you don't have to

patience for that late apex turn, you're going to be early apexing and then you run out of track.

That was definitely one of the ones that I... One of your favorites. My favorite because it

was so difficult for me. Let's see, Rotolanta. So Rotolanta, one I've never done a driver's

ed on just club racing. My first one was before they, excuse me, was the first year they eliminated

the famous dip. So I never got to do this dip. I got the chicane on my first year. Always a fun

track. One of those old-time tracks where they'll never repeat again. And knowing in the back of

your head that they were landing drug planes on the back straight. And that's supposedly the reason

why they bought this track was because when they were smuggling drugs in from... In the 70s,

when would that have been? Yeah, I think in the 70s, yeah. That's pretty cool. It's also a place where

the GT1 did the loop-de-loop in the, I think, yeah, because the Mercedes did it at the Le Mans,

I think. But anyways, it's a very cool track that with PCA, you can do a driver's ed there,

you can do a club race, you can definitely get the opportunity to drive it. And I put Watkins

Glen, like I said earlier, because I have a love-hate relationship with that track. But it's

definitely a top-tier track that, once again, through PCA, you can drive it yourself and be

able to say you drove... I like tracks that when I know they're former Formula One tracks, it's

pretty cool to think that F1 raced here. So PCA has a lot of events at Watkins Glen with many,

many different regions. And we had talked a little bit about Porsche over at Laguna Seca. We only

have, in 2026, one region that's doing an event at Laguna Seca this year, California Central Coast.

And that's because they're very limited with sound dates, right?

Yeah. And I think that the Porsche took over 50 or 60 days out of the, out of the, is what I

understand. They don't have to worry about sound, the violations. I think Laguna was very,

friends of Laguna was very happy with this new partnership there, obviously.

I think also, for those of you that don't know, you don't necessarily have to do a track day with

your local region. As a PCA member, you can sign up and do Potomac region or Mid-Ohio region.

As a member, you're a member of the club. You can go to any of them. Well, before we head over to

tracks you would like to drive, I just want to remind you to head over to PCA.org to sign up

for PCA's newsletters, performance news, e-brake news, and Mark Fresh, all free.

All right. Where would you like to go?

Let me start.

Okay. Well, I did not take Damon's philosophy of picking tracks in all international ones.

So when I put my list together, it was PCA focused. And so Mo Sport, Canadian tires, one of them.

I'm going there in June with the Upper Canada region. Very excited about that.

Laguna's sake, I've never driven before. And I really, really would like to drive that even at

parade laps. I'd like to do it more at speed. I did check California Central Coast's date,

and I have a wedding right there. So I can't go. I might be hooking up with Porsche,

one of their 50 plus days there. I wrote America, big on my list, big, big on my list.

Yep, definitely.

And Chicago region has a bunch of events there and a couple of our other regions do as well.

And what other ones were on my list?

You have Lime Rock and Sebring.

Oh, Lime Rock. You know, Lime Rock's not that far for us. And I know it's a small, really,

you know, quaint track, but I have a lot of friends who work there and a lot of,

you know, I like the area up there. And Sebring is my last one as well. I mean,

that is one of the iconic tracks that PCA has run in.

I'm kind of surprised you haven't after all this time.

I was so close two weeks ago to getting down there because I was at Daytona, I was at the 24.

And, you know, we had the big snowstorm and there was a lot of complications. And I know

you flew home early. So I just couldn't make it work. So I was scheduled to go there. I will

get there and I will get there. I'll probably get there in November this year. I might have to rent

a car for that one.

What you won't be able to do is what I got to do the first time I went there,

which I didn't realize was going to be the last time they were going to have the back

straight wide open. Because the following year, the FIAGT came to race and they made Sebring move

the paddock wall all the way out and made almost like a two lane back straight. Before,

it was the whole tarmac was wide open. And I still have memories of going down the back

straight at my first club race and looking over and seeing like 15 other cars. It looked like

the Oklahoma Land Rush with the covered wagons. 15 of us going down the straight knowing that

we're going to squeeze them, maybe three people in the turn 17. And it looked like control chaos.

And I thought that's how it was always. And then the next year we came and suddenly we so

went out the first session. I'm like, I remember this being a lot wider than found out that the

FIA had come and made them redesign this because I guess it was a little scary having that many

cars funnel into into one. And then ever since then, they kept it as a much smaller

and with wise back straight.

There's some a lot of new tracks being built as well, mostly as a country club or membership

track. So I always have a lot of people ask me, have you driven thermal? Well, that's not a new

one, but there's two down in Florida, one near Orlando, one near Tampa. I know there's a new one

in Texas. So I don't know. I guess I can't even add them to my list because I got getting

waited to go there. But you're not to worry that a lot of these tracks either new or ones that are

being bought are turning into country club. So they're not member only. Yeah, member only. So

it's not like how I got to drive all these tracks was because PCA regions rented them

and had events. And now that I'm hoping that this doesn't become a situation where

clubs get excluded from renting it because that'd be a shame that, you know, that

fairly affordable. Someone can go to this track and have an instruction all because of, you know,

a PCA region. Yeah, big, big topic of conversation right now. And you compound that with so many

tracks being sold for real estate and land and your race being one of them. Yeah. So

mine aren't as esoteric as you hear from Damon. You took the homework a little more seriously

than we did. My five that I would love to drive is spa, of course, who doesn't want to drive

that famous track Silverstone only done in video games, but it looks like a complete

blast and has so much history. The one I got a ride in, but I never have driven. I don't think,

have you ever driven a Newburgh ring? Nope, only gotten a ride on me too. And I'm ashamed to say

I fell asleep halfway through it because I sat in the backseat because my wife gets

carsick easily. So I let her sit in the passenger seat and I just remember swaying back and forth

to start to get drowsy. So I think I remember about three quarters of that course. And the driver

was explaining to me every quarter in the mirror, looking at me in the mirror telling me because

he was a former or current Carrera cup driver, Monza. I would love to drive that just because

of seeing Formula One and such an iconic track. And the last one is Le Mans. I don't think it looks

to me reminds me kind of like Daytona. It's probably doesn't seem like a super challenging

track, but the history just trumps the fact that it's probably not the most technically

challenging track, but just being able to say you drove a piece of history. It would definitely be

on my list. I missed that global opportunity because I would have had some fun ones as well.

All right, Damon, you get to tell us your story. Here we go. He's got a great list.

Yeah. So when I was thinking about this list, Spa came up, Le Mans came up, and I was just

thinking, yeah, two pedestrian for you. Two pedestrian for me. No, it's not exactly. So Spa

was really close. But I'll go into that. But Le Mans was exactly why you said I'm thinking,

how much fun would I really have driving like a normal car at Le Mans? And I'm like, no Le Mans.

So anyway, here's my list. So the Nurburgring Nordschleife is probably hands down my top favorite

track. And that's probably the most cliche thing about this list at this point, because everybody

loves the Nurburgring, but for a reason. I grew up driving the Nurburgring Nordschleife in

Gran Turismo 4. So I have probably hundreds, if not thousands of laps around a virtual version of

that. Sure. And it still hasn't lost its charm and its challenge. And I'm sure in real life,

it's probably the exact same way. So that's probably, that's got to be the number one.

The next one would be Suzuka. So some of you might know, I love Japanese culture, anime,

grew up watching anime, playing, you know, JRPGs and all this stuff, super big video game nerd.

And so anything in Japan sort of catches my attention. But I would say, and I would argue

that Suzuka, regardless of where it is, if it were anywhere else, it would still be like the

best track ever, except for the Nurburgring maybe. Because it's technical, it's fast, you know, it's

got the scenery, it's big, so it can hold huge races. And yeah, I just love Suzuka. There's

nothing like it on the F1 calendar or anywhere else. The next one sounds similar. Also in Japan,

it's Tsukuba. If you play Gran Turismo, probably two. I started with four, three and four. But

if you play Gran Turismo back in the day or still do, or you watch Best Motoring, a Japanese show

that's been on for several decades, you can find that on YouTube, is Tsukuba, really short track.

But I've seen so many races with Porsches versus Ferraris, you know, versus all sorts of stuff

that the best motoring has done over the years. And I've driven it a lot in Gran Turismo and it's

super fun, super short, super fun. And you, like that last turn, you can just pitch the car in,

and, you know, it's a long, fast turn that you can pitch a car into, which is, you know, not

something, you know, in a video game at least. My next one is actually in the US, and that's

known as Sonoma Point nowadays. So I lived in NorCal for a couple years when I worked at

excellence, and I have some great memories. My mom visited Sonoma Point. It was in Phineon back then

when I lived up there. So, you know, I remember spending the day just driving around watching

the goats eat all the grass because they don't use lawnmowers there. But really, it's about that.

Yeah, right. It's really cool track. But the elevation changes. Some of the sweepers are pretty

wicked. And it's got that balance of sort of danger and excitement, I think. Having not driven it,

but ridden in cars and, you know, driven it in video games. That is one where I have

spectated. And I saw the sprint challenge there last year or two years ago. But we do have a couple

regions that are holding events there. I know that Golden Gate is. I think that they have two days at

Sonoma coming up in 2026. Yeah, but it's an excellent, you know, track to look at, you know,

since I've never driven there. But and then the area is awesome. It's right between San

Francisco and Napa. And yeah, it's a great track. So the next one, a Mario Kart course.

All right, so I'm actually going to put something onto the screen. Okay. And it's

Porsche related. Well, how do you pronounce it?

Toge. I used to call it toge, but you know, it's it's toge. And this is a, I believe 991

Cup car or some sort of modified car that, you know, the best motoring guys are racing. And

what they do here, and this is a closed course, this is a motor sport park that has a random twisty

road, you know, somewhere in Japan. And what they do is they have one car in front, one car in the

back. Now, if the BMW started to pull away, he would win, but the Porsche is keeping up. And so

you'll see at the end of this video that the Porsche won this round, then they swap places,

and the Porsche is in front. And if he pulls away from the BMW, he wins at the BMW. So anyway,

looks like my morning commute, right? Exactly. They're racing in a forest with no runoff,

no runoff at all. Well, think about Targa Florida and all those, all those races back in the day.

Yeah. So, so I don't know, it's just, I was thinking, what would be really fun to drive that,

you know, I've seen people drive on and know is a real place. And I would love to do that. Just

think I'm, you know, in best motoring in one of the episodes. And I think there's one more. And

I think I got one more than most than the list allowed, but Mount Panorama, Bathurst in Australia.

So that's a really cool track. It just go Google it and look at the views in addition to the track

itself, but such a cool place. Two very long straights. Going up the hill and then coming

back down. At least I've only done in video games, but there's two very, very long very technical

and very fast in places. So, and that's, that you didn't write any boot. I didn't because you

guys probably covered everything that I would have asked for. For me, it would be like the bigger

circuits that I would, you know, it's like the bucket list. I mean, road America, I've never,

I've only driven on sim racing and the how fast those, those turns are. I'd love to do that one

day. Kota, I've driven that as a, as a parade lap, but I would love to attack that hill like at

speed and come back down. That would be fun for me. Of course, Nurburgring having ridden on it,

but not at speed. That would be, it'd be pretty intimidating, but I think fun as well. So, yeah,

there's nothing that I could bring to the table that's different from what you guys have listed.

I would, I would, it's not a track per se, but I would like to,

uh, I would like to do the mountain run that, um, in Colorado up to the

pike's peak, like the mountain run. That's a track. It's not a track, but I feel like that.

No, no, no, that's legit because you got to learn. Yeah. And I mean, talking about punishing you if

you don't know the course. Exactly. I think that's, that's why, but you can't go there just any day

in practice. No, no, no, no. You can drive up any day. And I have driven up and I'm like, how do

they do this? That's me. This is the ramifications of making the wrong decision is a, yeah. So,

other than that, uh, I agree with you guys. There's so many opportunities. Thankfully for us,

stateside, Canada, Puerto Rico, even, uh, those of you that are able to travel and, and through

the connections of PCA, you're going to be able to find track time through the local region. If you

go overseas through Porsches driving schools, you go to barber. Um, I think the summary of all of

this is you've got very capable cars, even if you haven't done anything to them, but to really enjoy

our cars, you have to kind of explore them at their limits. And I can tell you, you will never,

ever, ever do that on the street, even legally or illegally. They're just the streets are,

streets are not made for, for what you're trying to do. And also to do it repetitively, you,

you talked about never really breaking, um, hitting your breaks hard on the street,

because there's no place really to do that. You know, at a hundred and on the front straight,

at some point, I remember taking turn one for the first time, you know, you're only,

now you look back, you're doing one 10 or something like that. And then you got to make

pretty much a 90 degree turn. Yeah. Yeah. And then you see like, okay, if my breaks don't work here,

there's, there is a gravel little pit, but it doesn't go that far. So it's very intimidating.

And to do that for the first time and see how capable your car is, you'll, you'll, as Manny

always, you know, looks at people that modify and without thinking of the whole system, you do

realize how kind of silly it is to spend all that time, money and effort when you really don't know

if you need it. Right. Yeah. We always say you can direct drive right from the showroom to the

racetrack. Who needs it? Right. We just want it. If you have tons of budget, more, more power to you,

but for me, like I got a pick and choose. Yeah. And, uh, I would say tires and alignment. I mean,

and, and fresh brake fluid, that's, that's pretty much of really all you need. Yeah,

first year of driver's ed, I still ran with single piston calipers in the rear of my nine six four,

because the nineties came with two twos at single piston. And, uh, it wasn't until I changed brake

pads and I was just, um, the brakes weren't at the capacity anymore with my speed. Then I started

looking at ways I could make the brakes, uh, improve the braking, but I listened to my instructors

and I said, I'm going to, we're going to learn how to drive first. So then I can really articulate

why I want to modify my car to do a certain thing. Yeah. Save your money until you know what you're

doing. And more than likely someone at the track has a similar car to yours and they've already

gone down that road. There's no, you're not going to reinvent the wheel. See how they're doing,

how they're driving, what modifications, get, get advice from the people that are actually doing it

and they're, you know, a couple of cycles ahead of you so that you don't make the mistakes because

you have to think of it as a system. You can't just change front shocks, rear shocks,

brakes, tires, wheel sizes, and possibly negatively affect, um, the rest of the car. And even if you

got the best of the best equipment items and put on your car, if they're not installed correctly,

if your alignment's not right, tow in, tow out, camber, caster, like it doesn't matter. You could

have the best suspension, but if you didn't have it installed and dialed in correctly, you might as

well have just, your factory suspension is probably better. And we have our PCA product experts,

right? Yeah. Yeah. So if you have a specific car, then that's right on our PCA.org website. So you

could maybe ask some of those questions. Yeah. And you can also find within your local region or

when you're going to these track events, either the dealers or the independence that specialize

in track driving, they are the ones that you want to go to. You want to go to the people that do

this for people that do it all the time. They know the tips. They know the tricks. They, they,

have you never heard about corner waiting your car, right? That's, that's something that's a tool

that a track prepared, you know, shop has and can do. And I'll give Kudos to Damon and his approach

to his car, like he approached it as a system. And every time he changes something or considers it,

he does think it through. Yeah. And in the results show for themselves. Yeah, it may not look that

on first glance, but I definitely thought through everything on my car. And you've talked to a

lot of people, right? In fact, I thought through it so much that I still haven't taken it on a

track day yet. Oh, Damon. I know. Come on, let's go, buddy. It's like I've done all the preparation

now. It's just getting new track. I'll instruct you. Thank you. You don't need an instructor,

right? You're solo. I like to think that, but I'd rather have an instructor. There you go.

All right. Let's see. Let me just remind folks with regards to PCA events. Works reunion Amelia

Island is March 6. Judge area is sold out. We do have a few slots for the Corral Lake Placid. Man,

is that shaping up to be an incredible Porsche parade? Phase one registration has already opened.

The event itself is June 14th through 20th. If you don't already have accommodations and you

haven't registered for Lake Placid, it's probably going to be a bit challenging for you. This is,

you know, it's going to be a record setting Porsche parade. It's a fantastic area. We have

a huge concentration of members in the mid-Atlantic and northeast and they are all excited to be at

a Porsche parade and the numbers show it. And I registered and I'm most excited for the driving

tours because the roads that are around where Lake Placid is, they are going to, it's going to be

phenomenal. Before you even get to parade, your, your drive to parade is going to be great.

Incredibly scenic. I think I've mentioned it before. Rarely do I drive somewhere where you

lose complete cell signal. It's like that rural. Yes. Right. Download your maps. No, no, in Lake

Placid there is, but there's, there's parts of the roads, the highways that going to Lake Placid,

like it's, it's, yeah, no cell signal. Download, download your driving directions. How many of you

never watched Deliverance without telling me? Yeah, no fear, no fear. It's a wonderful area.

Back to PCA Sim Racing. We talked about learning some of these tracks before you even go out.

If you want to check out some tracks and race with a fellow PCA members, check out PCASimRacing.com.

If you're looking for some PCA inside your swag, you can head to our web store, which is PCAWebStore.org.

We have bottles, mugs, t-shirts and such, but if you're just looking for two decals,

we'd be more than happy to send decals out to you. Send us your address information to

podcastatPCA.org. And I know we've gone over a little bit, but I think you've, you know,

you've learned a little bit about why you need to go to the track, what tracks are,

our favorites, where we want to go. But again, at the end of the day, if you haven't had the

opportunity, don't be too intimidated to give it a try. And at minimum, find a track near you,

go and spectate. That is a fun trip in itself, but it gets even better once you decide to throw a

helmet on. And hundreds and hundreds of events that PCA puts on all throughout the U.S., Canada

and our territories. One of the biggest benefits of being a PCA member is like we have a lot of

these dates and we have the availability to do it. And we have a very systematic approach to getting

you to becoming a better driver. You're not doing this on your own. You've got people that are

willing to sit in the right seat and instruct you. And we tailor that person a lot of times to the

car that you're driving so that you get the best experience. 100%. Anything else before we wrap up?

Nope. All good. All right. Well, again, thank you for listening. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe.

If you want to let us know what is your favorite track, comment below. Consider sharing our show

with fellow Porsche enthusiasts until next time. Stay safe and we'll catch you down the road.

We Talk About Our Favorite Race Tracks

About this episode

race tracks

Pirelli

VIN

winter tires

Ford Mustang

PCA

Summit Point

autocross

DE

late braking

ABS

Porsche 718

Porsche Cayman

modified car

stock car

cornering

grandstands

VIR

Porsche Taycan

Porsche 944

driver's ed

Formula One (F1)

Lime Rock

Sebring

24 Hours of Daytona

FIA

Mount Panorama Circuit

Pikes Peak

Toyota A90

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