This is one of our favorite tracks and my friends and I rent this track out as often as we can.

Turn five is referred as "the valley of death".  That can be quite foreboding for a driver that is new to this track. 

Picture one shows some cars coming out of turn seven (just after the valley of death) in the front was a Miata, Mustang and then a 300ZX TT.  Picture two has a couple of Vipers accelerating out of turn nine.  Picture three shows a GT2 class 911 screaming down the front straight.  Picture four shows my friend Fu blowing the doors off of a Viper GTS down the straight in his TT RX7.  Picture five is Darryl Savage's fire breathing Porsche GT2 going in to turn 6.

7/15/00

I joined the Seattle Corvette club at SIR last night for a Sat night drag event.

I have never done any 1/4 mile racing, but this is what I did for 4 passes.

1st pass. 60' time of 2.245, 1/4 et. 13.299 and mph was 108.97. Tires spun off of a launch of 2k, hit rev limiter once.

2nd pass. 60' time of 2.374, 1/4 et 13.411 and mph was 110.26. Tires spun a little, lowered launch to 1700 rpm. Hit rev limiter once and red lighted launch (reaction time .499)

3rd pass. 60' time 2.372, 1/4 mile 13.689 and mph was 110.38. Tires spun a little at 1800 rpm, red lighted again, forgot to turn traction control off, but no hitting of rev limiter this time.

4th pass. 60' time 2.344, 1/4 mile 13.329 and mph was 109.79. Tires spun big time with launch of over 2k, remembered to turn traction control off and no red line! Reaction time was not great though.

Over all, I feel the C5 is capable of high twelve's, if I could just hook up and not make any mistakes. For my first time drag racing, I was not disappointed.

SlowC5 was there with his TT Ligenfelter C5, he ran a 11.99, man that car was moving!

Picture 1 shows a gathering of the Seattle Corvette club waiting for their chance to get out on the track.  Picture two is of Mike Cheng's (SlowC5) Ligenfelter TT C5, saw his dyno results, 570 rwhp and the car was not even producing max boost!  He ran a 11.99!  Picture 3 shows some of us lined up waiting for our turn on the strip!

Picture 4 shows Mike Cheng lined up and ready to run.  Picture 5 shows me getting ready to stage.  Picture 5 shows me ready to haul ass!

This is the best picture of me staged against a silver C5 Coupe.  I beat this guys pants off BTW.  Steve Theodore's excellent photographic talents came in handy on this day.

Copyright ©2000 Rik Johnson. All rights reserved.