Wednesday through Sunday, we spent our days at the Racetrack with Scotty B White and his racing friends. I’ve known Scotty since elementary school, and when he invited us to come be part of his crew again in Atlanta, we gladly accepted! We’ve turned into his “Hospitality and Go-fer” crew. 😄 We fix lunch, keep snacks and hydration available, and run for gas and parts. 😊. And we get to watch some fun racing and be on the ‘inside’. On Wednesday, we drove from Adel up to Braselton, which is just to the northeast of Atlanta.
Along the way, I was amazed at what looks like wild wisteria, with it’s purple pendulum bunches of flowers. It was everywhere! It’s very pretty, but I imagine it’s like ivy and end up choking out the host plants and trees.
We thought we’d be there around 1:30, and about that time we got a call from Howard (Scotty’s truck-driver) telling us that he had a spot for us to park our rig right near their set-up, but to hurry because they were having to fend of vultures for the spot. 😏 We made it to the track around 2:00, got registered, unloaded Kawi out of the trailer, then got Nitro situated.
We were on a bit of a sideways slope, so Kenny drove up onto some boards to get the passenger side up higher, closer to level. Then the automatic levelers actually lifted that side up another couple of inches so the tires were in the air! Crazy. I get to try living on stilts. 😬 We had to put out an extra step stool because the bottom step of our fold out ones was really high!
Here is our view of our four race cars. Scotty’s crew consists of Howard and Mike, who take care of the Viper and Mustang on the right. Scotty drives the Viper, and his friend Randy drives the Mustang. Other friends who own the BMW and McLaren share the expenses of transportation from the Puget Sounds area. Todd drives the BMW, with Jerold’s technical and mechanical supporting expertise. A different Mike drives the McLaren with John’s mechanical support and expertise. Then Scotty’s long time racing friend Ed helps all of the drivers with coaching and technical track and strategy support. So there were eleven of us all together here for this racing event. They are all super nice guys and very easy to be around. It’s a fun environment! 🏎️
Wednesday was “load-in” and set up day, and time to tweek the cars here and there to get ready to race. The cars get put away in the car hauler right after the last race at the last event, which this time was in Texas about a month ago. Then they store the truck and trailer somewhere and everybody flies home. The truck driver flies back a few days early and moves the truck to the next racetrack, everybody else flies in on load-in day, and this is the day when they work on any issues carried forward from the last event.
Thursday was “Test Day” on the track. There were hundreds of cars in over two-dozen different classes. In testing, qualifying and racing, multiple classes will be scheduled together on the track. This is Scotty in his black Viper during one of his Thursday morning testing sessions. There were four sessions for each class on Thursday, so this is when the drivers learn the track and get the car ready to race. It was super fun to watch, because this track has a lot of curves and elevation changes.
For Thursday lunch, the chef grilled up fixins for tacos, which were scarfed down in no time.
This is the McLaren. Notice the ‘jack-stands’? They hook up and air compressor to the butt of the car, and the stands lower down out of the frame of the car and lift it up off of the ground. Fancy pants!!
Just a closer picture of Scotty’s cars.
We had some rain on Thursday afternoon, but not really wet for too long, although it was right before one of Scotty’s test runs. The problem with rain is that a wet track requires different tires than a dry track, and the various cars handle differently on a wet track. There are all kinds of cars in a particular class, so the Viper competes with BMWs and even a Cadillac CT4 here. The guys were saying that the Viper is really squirrelly on wet, where the BMWs are super nimble and fun and do well on a wet track. 🤷♀️ So there was a lot of tire changing going on with the four cars for the test sessions. There was testing on Thursday and then qualifying all day Friday and Saturday morning, then racing on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. The weather forecast showed that Saturday would be sunny and dry, but Sunday was going to be really wet. There will probably be different winners in the races on Dry Saturday vs. Wet Sunday.
Another shot of Scotty after coming through the downhill S-curves and back up the hill. The track wasn’t too wet.
Thursday evening, we went to have dinner with the guys at their VRBO rental house. Randy was their dinner chef, and he prepared grilled steaks which were very yummy. It was fun to hang out with them.
Friday’s lunch was smash-burgers, and the sun was out! Still on the edge of being chilly weather, but a nice day for dry qualifying runs.
The guys invited us over for dinner again, and this time everyone came. Jerold, Todd, Mike & John were staying at a hotel, but they came for dinner too. Randy fixed salmon on the grill and it was some of the best I’ve ever had! After dinner we watched some films from their in-car cameras of previous races, and that was really interesting. It’s like watching a video game, with all kinds of gauges and statistics on the screen along with the view of the driver and view out the windshield. It was fascinating listening to them critiquing and observing different factors at different places on the track.
Saturday’s race was exciting! Scotty qualified for the second starting position spot, and was maintaining that position through several laps. I think it was a 25 minute race, so maybe 14 laps? But remember that I mentioned that different classes are on the track at the same time? They did a split start, with the faster class (including Scotty’s T2 Class) starting first, then a slower class started a little ways behind. Well, after a few laps, the faster cars start passing the slower cars and they all have to maneuver around each other in the congestion and traffic. If you happen to get into that traffic on a straight-away, it’s not so disruptive. But if you get into traffic on a bunch of curves, it can be trickier to get through it all safely. That’s what happened, and Scotty fell behind the number one car by quite a ways. Then somebody went off track, so there was a full course yellow caution, which means nobody can pass anybody else. They keep going around, and must hold position, however, they can bunch back up and close up the gaps. So if you were 20 car lengths behind at the beginning of the yellow, you can close that gap up to be right on the back fender of the car ahead of you. There were a lot of yellow laps, so Scotty closed that gap. Once the green flag came out to resume racing, Scotty slingshotted past the number one car, and held the first positions for the three laps remaining in the race, and he took the checkered flag! Woo-Hoo! It was really fun to watch!!
Later in the day, Mike had a great race in his McLaren in the T1 class, and he took first place as well! YAY! Two checkered flags in our camp! Randy in the Mustang is a new racer in T3, and he is just learning the car and the track, and he had an uneventful and fun race. Todd drives the BMW in T3 and he is a fantastic experienced driver. He usually claims a place on the podium as well, but his car was not behaving. There was something wrong with the ABS Brakes, I think, and he was not able to even complete his race on Saturday. 😕. This is John on the left, and driver Mike on the right.
Saturday lunch was fajitas. Talk about a perfect meal for the Blackstone flattop grill! They turned out fantastic. We had both chicken and left-over steak to go with the grilled seasoned veggies. They went over very well with the crew. 👍
Saturday evening, we went into town to get more propane, hit the grocery store, fill Henry with diesel, and found ourselves a tap-house! They actually had one of our favorite beers from Fremont Brewing in Seattle on tap, called B-Bomb. You can’t even find it on tap in Seattle!! And I had a delicious peanut butter cup imperial stout called Stranger Danger from Monday Night Brewing in Atlanta. It was delish!! I wish they would have had some cans of it to take home!
Then Kenny tried a fruity sour with marshmallow, and it was amazing. I think I am hooked on mallow-beers. 😋. They did have cans of this one, so we brought some home with us.
Sunday was very wet and rainy and cold…like temperatures in the mid 40’s. 🥶💦 Scotty ran first thing in the morning, and took 3rd place. The Viper does not handle nearly as well on a wet track as the smaller, nimble BMWs. We helped a little bit in taking down the camp, but it’s a job that Howard and Mike really need to do, to get everything back in it’s proper place in the big black car-hauler trailer. I think Mike and his McLaren took 2nd in his race. Todd’s car was still broken because they couldn’t locate a part that they needed. Randy’s race was the last one of the day, and we left the track before his race was done. We needed to get to our next campground and adventure while the State Park gates were still open. We had a really fun time. The guys are all so nice, and soooo appreciative of the lunches we fixed. And Kenny did a lot of parts running which was a great help so that the mechanics didn’t have to leave, but could keep working on the cars. It was a very fun experience, and we’ll likely do it more in the future!