2016 ACR vs. Porsche GT3 at Thunderhill 5-mile

[VENOM V]

Hi guys,

I had the time of my life yesterday at Thunderhill Raceway, my fourth track in the ACR. Thunderhill is beautiful this time of year, green rolling hills with wildflowers sprinkled about. Quite a contrast to the aggressive tracking that we were doing. I was the sole Viper in a sea of Corvettes and Porsches. My friend Joe Kou and about a dozen GT3s and GT4s and a cup car or two were there, along with a group of Corvettes.

Thunderhill has their famous 3-mile course that the 25 Hours of Thunderhill is run on, along with the new "west track." They are separated by a hill. Once in a while, you can run the two tracks connected together for the Thunderhill 5-mile layout. It is unbelievably fun, you literally fly over a blind hill and drop into the west track from the other side. This happens at 1:40 in the video below.

There was one Corvette driven by Rich of Abel Chevrolet that was particularly fast. It's a C7 Z06 with Hoosier R7s. He is running in the Optima Street Car Challenge. We were both able to dip into the 3:05s. I was able to pass him on the session that we ran together, but he had a passenger (he ran a 3:08 to my 3:05). It would have been a good race otherwise.

The day was not without issues. About mid-session on most sessions, my car went into limp mode. "Cylinder misfire" was the error code, or something to that effect. Not sure why, perhaps it didn't like the RPM at the main straight (looks like about 6300). I've seen limp mode if you bounce off of the rev limiter before, but I wasn't doing that. When I turned it off and on, the error code would clear and I was good to go. However after it happened several times, the check engine light stays lit. Time for a dealer visit. I'll keep you guys posted. Still I had an absolute blast at this track layout that I've only been on once before.

Of the Porsches, there was one particularly talented driver of a GT3 that I had a bout with. Below is a video of our spirited session. Also a few shots from the day.



IMG_1367 by solomontodd, on Flickr

IMG_1370 by solomontodd, on Flickr

IMG_1369 by solomontodd, on Flickr

GBMA8862 by solomontodd, on Flickr

GBMA7861 by solomontodd, on Flickr

GBMA8042 by solomontodd, on Flickr

IMG_1368 by solomontodd, on Flickr

Cheers,

Todd