September 13, 2011 - Gander.
One of the highlights of the event. Why? Because it's every commuter's fantasy. An entire subdivision is shut down and we get to go mental, constantly turning left and right at every intersection. There's no way I could retrace our steps, and I swear we should have crossed over our tracks several times. Just five minutes of sheer madness and a very big workout for the driver, the navigator and the brakes.
The first time through, I took full advantage of my ability to throttle steer. The balance of the car was perfect, even to the point of letting me get loose under braking and come into a corner already a bit sideways with lots of powerslides coming out. It was so busy I was having trouble processing Janel's calls, as she sometimes would call one when I was just approaching the previous. They were very tight. We took something like 14 seconds of penalties, which is very good for Gander.
The second time through, I realized that if that had been an autocross, it would have been a spectacular but slow run. So I decided to drive it properly. Janel also changed her pacing and only fed me the next corner when I was through the previous one. The result was a time that was 8 seconds faster - although our base time was also faster. So we took 17 seconds of penalties. Again, very good for Gander.
Whew.
tags: 2011 race, day 2, navigation |
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