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Laguna Seca June 04, 2004 |
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Laguna Seca 06/04/2004 NCRC Event Justin's Account of the Weekend Once again, got up early head to track, clean out cars, register, we don't need to tape up our lights as the outer lens is plastic. Ok, I have driven on several tracks now, but none with the history of Laguna . I was pretty excited to be driving here after countless laps at Laguna on Grand Turismo 3 and ToCA 2. First, let me tell you guys. This is only like the video game in the respect that the turns are where you expect them to be. So you enter Laguna taking the lane inside of turn 2. Turns 3 comes up pretty quick, as SubyDude found out. You have to steer pretty hard to the left to be able to apex it properly. You can then stay outside for 4. Turn 5 gets you started towards the back of the course, it's a nice left hander starting you uphill and right past the sound booth (92db limit day). Turn 6 is a blast, if you do it right it will let you carry a lot more speed up the back straight to turns 7 & 8. You can kind of cheat turn seven and straighten it out into a braking zone for the infamous corkscrew. Turn 8 starts your descent back to the front of the track (Watch out for the Dragons teeth, these definately don't come across in the video games) and drops you into a very shart, very steep left hander downhil immediately followed by turn 8a a nice right hander that if you aren't careful will have you eating a tirewall. Fortunately it is a scary enough turn that chances are you won't kill yourself. This feeds you to an off camber turn 9, like most of the turns at Laguna if you apex early here you are going into the dirt without much runoff. Subydude's car (with a guest driver) went off here too and lost the bumper but there was no serious damage. This is not a great track if its your first time out, If you are on the west coast and looking to get started open tracking or hitting some HPDE's I would recommend Thunderhill or ButtonWillow. Both of these tracks have very little in the way of walls or anything else for you to hit. Turn 10 is a mid speed right hander (incidentally where you exit the track at the end of your session) that puts you onto a short straight and before you know it, up come the braking markers. Get on the brakes hard because turn 11 is a very slow left hander, Shane spun here(heh DonutBoy). You won't gain or lose much time here as this corner is so slow. This puts you onto the long front straight. Stay outside and you can straighten out a good bit of turn 1 and carry lots of speed down to turn 2. You have two options for turn two (oh yeah, Shane spun here too. We call him Donutboy for a reason. haha.) you can double apex it if your car handles like a porsche, or a long late single apex if it handles like an STi.This gets you back around to turn 3 and I already told you about that. During the day there were a few spins but no major damage. Skip Barber driving school was in session while we were there. They started off driving a Dodge pickup truck on a wetted down skid pad. They then graduated into some Dodge Neons in their own private autocross course. After that they really cranked it up and fired up a pair of badass Dodge Vipers. These things just screamed around the course and looked like a lot of fun. You should probably spend some of your hard earned money here. All in all Laguna was one of the most fun tracks I have driven on. I highly recommend you pay the extra few dollars and make the effort to drive on this track at least once, but make sure you are going to pass sound. View more pictures here |
 The Uber Cars  Erik trying to out run a Porsche  Hood modification  Justin's in the cork screw  Subydude's bumper modification  Justin going into turn 4  Shane in the cork screw  Erik and Subydude ready to go play  Justin giving Erik some pressure |