Sunday Fun at Daytona
Guys, I was in the same group as Steve and we had a lot of fun. Steve and I drag raced each other six times and we were evenly matched. The Jeeps were Bad-A--, Awesome acceleration. The Magnums all had Mopar cat back systems and sounded great! The only Viper that we got to drive was at the drifting event. The food was really good, the instructors were fun, plenty of neat products for purchase, and many of the vehicles had performance parts added or new custom grills on some of the cars that we drove.
This event was run by the Petty experience folks and I think I enjoyed the Skip Barber event a little better. It was all fun, just different. The drag racing was heads up with a pro tree so that was a lot of fun. The drifting (new) was pretty cool but somebody in the first class broke a sprinkler head so we could only use one end of the track. Many of us could start a good drift and then get to the side of the circle that wasn't as wet and start to spin. We had a Magnum and a Viper for this event and it was sort of cool.
The handling course had us driving Crossfires around a course with 300 cones.
This was a lot of fun and was different from last year. The instructor told us about the course, drove the course, came back and answered questions. We got to drive 3 laps and we stopped after each lap and the instructor gave us pointers and we went out and tried to drive a little quicker. This was a real challenge.
The Road course performance driving was different this year. They had 3 identical vehicles in a group running together (an instructor and two guest drivers). They ran 2 laps at a quick pace and pulled in. There was a group of Magnums, 300c's, Chargers, and Crossfires, that all ran together in packs of 3. We generally ran around 80 mph.
Last year the instructor drove anything that he wanted and there was at least one of every type of automatic equipped SRT vehicles running together in each group. After an introductory lap, the instructor took off and we followed. At the end of that lap the instructor put on his blinker and the car directly behind the instructor pulled over to the side and the next car in line pulled up directly behind the instructor and followed him and tried to watch his braking and turn-in lines. We ran at least 6 laps at speed. Last year we ran as high as 95 mph on the back stretch and you could drive Vipers.
The thrill rides this year were fun but you were limited to one ride of a few laps. The instructors ran pretty hard so it was good. They brought out a few Vipers and Jeeps for this portion of the event and almost everybody lined up for those rides. The thrill rides last year were very fast, some instructors drifted the entire infield road course in 300C's and Magnums. They even had a few rides in a Viper GTS-R for a lucky few. We got a minimum of 3 thrill rides last year.
I would say that the drag racing was better than last year, This year it was heads-up racing with a pro-tree so it was all out racing. This was really a blast! Last year you ran against the tree one at a time and your time started when you broke the light. This year you had to be on your toes. The Jeep was the most fun on this portion. We got to drive Magnums, 300C's, Chargers, Crossfires, and Jeeps. We got to do grudge racing in the vehicles of choice but nothing was as fast as the Jeep on this short track.
One new thing this year was that we had jump drives to insert in our cars at the Performance drive track portion. We will receive a DVD in about six weeks with all of our track driving on it so we had to watch what we said.
All-in-All it was a lot of fun and everybody had a great time. I'll be back for another SRT Track Experience next year.
Just my two cents worth.,
Mark
