Weather Breaks For Day 2 At AMP

It was great to see the sun on my way to Atlanta Motorsports Park for day 2 of my Just Track It weekend after it rained most of the day before. The rain made for a good first track day, but I was ready to see what my M2 and I could do on a dry track. Being familiar with the sign in process, where to park, how to setup my car and seeing some new friends in the paddock made day 2 a bit easier.

After our driver’s meeting and the first novice class session, I was excited and not anxious to hit the track. Shortly after our two yellow flag laps to warm up our cars one of the drivers in our group went off the track and our session got black flagged. After a day of rain and witnessing an unfortunate red flag incident, Sunday wasn’t starting off much better!

The second session of the day finally provided me with a dry track and no drama. My instructor started working me through some of the finer points of driving my car around the track at pace. I worked on keeping my inputs smooth with a nice transition from braking before a turn, steering through the corner and easing on the power coming onto a straight.

I was really starting to get a good feel for what my car could do and knew the track well enough to push hard during the 3rd session. By the end of the I was trying to reel in my paddock mate, Michael in his tuned up Lexus IF. We ran out of time before I could pass him and almost went blowing by him after the checkered flag.

Session 4 was one of my better sessions of the weekend. I nailed several of the technical sections of AMP that had been giving me fits earlier in the weekend. I also managed to get through some slower traffic and felt like I had the track to myself for much of this session. With no traffic in the way, I could lay down some pretty consistent lap times.

The last session of the weekend is notorious for mistakes and I am no exception. I was pushing the car to get the most out of my last opportunity and worn out from 2 days of track driving. When a faster car came up behind me, I concentrated more on giving them a point by and not enough on my line. My two outside tires just barely went off track so I had to pit. Add this to a black flag session for our group, seeing the cause of a red flag in the advanced group and a wide variety of weather conditions to my learning experiences this weekend.