[s-cars] Great, Wet Thunderhills Event! (Long)

[Theodore Chen]

--- Tom Vandervoort <tvandervoort at msn.com> wrote:
> Overall, excellent event run almost entirely in the rain.  Nice technical
> track 2-3 mile track with a lot of terrain changes and a few VERY
> interesting corners.

3 miles.  you must be from someplace really flat.  oh, right, minnesota.
thunderhill doesn't have much in the way of elevation changes other than
turn 5 and turn 9, and those are relatively small.

> No major incidents, just a few agricultural excursions into the very wet,
> red Northern California MUD!

don't recall any red mud.  lots of mud, yes, but it's brown.

> Best turn:  Has to be Turn 5 where you brake up a steep hill, turn into a
> VERY tight +90 degree turn and IMMEDIATELY go down into a VERY steep
> downhill off camber right hand sweeper.  Wow!

the downhill sweeper is slightly off-camber, but that's more than
compensated for by the heavy compression as the hill levels out.  you
should be able to run at WOT out of turn 5 all the way into 6.  a car
that sticks well and is well-driven shouldn't even have to brake for 6
at all.

NASA sometimes runs the turn 5 bypass, which is a really interesting
turn.  the bypass is an off-camber corner on a small hill (the side
of the hill that turn 5 is on), and to make things even more interesting,
there's a change in track surface as the bypass rejoins the main track.
lap times with the bypass are several seconds faster.

i like turn 8, myself.  it takes a certain amount of intestinal fortitude
to take it flat on the throttle at 100 mph.  every time i do it, a small
voice in my head asks me "are you sure you really want to do this?"

another of my favorite corners is turn 9, a 3rd gear uphill corner
with its entry and apex at the bottom of the hill and exit at the
crest.

the turn 11-12b complex is reminiscent of the esses at sears point.
it's not very challenging in most sedans, though, because it takes
a lot of power to drift out to the wall at the exit of 12b.  done
right, it's a WOT run from the apex of turn 11 to the braking zone of 14.

thunderhill is an interesting track, as it was built in two stages.
turns 1-7 are part of the old section, while turns 9-14 are part of
the new section.  turns 8 and 15 are where the two sections join together.
the old section was originally built with formula ford-type cars in
mind - cars with relatively low horsepower but a lot of stick.  the
new section is more of a horsepower section and rewards horsepower more
than the old section.

-teddy


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