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

[Tom Vandervoort]

Thanks for the Thunderhills track tour, Teddy.  Yep, us flatlanders
appreciate the hills at Thunderhills. It was my first visit to a California
track, so I haven't experienced Sears or Laguna.  But I will this fall and
next winter with my car.

There are some interesting hills and off-camber combinations on the back
side at Mid-Ohio and a sequence of big up and down at Watkins Glen.  My
"home" tracks of Brainerd in MN, Blackhawk in IL, and Road America in WI are
flat, although RA has a few small hills (Turn 5 and up from the famous
Canada Corner).  Oh yeah and the big hill on the front straight at RA where
you appreciate having hp.  Then there are the looooong gradual very fast
downhill sections leading into RA's Turn 5 and Canada corner.

Anyway, my S2 loves 'em all.  Oh yeah, that mud sure looked red to me!

Tom
S2

-----Original Message-----
From: Theodore Chen [mailto:tedebearp at yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 1:55 AM
To: Tom Vandervoort; Audi-S-Carslist
Subject: Re: [s-cars] Great, Wet Thunderhills Event! (Long)



--- 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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