Temple Academy Dragway

[dameeks]

Ed H. and I went Friday night. I met Greg, the owner, and was able to get in one run (I'll tell you why only one in a second.) Greg seemed like a great guy, and no doubt will be doing everything he can to fix up the track. That being said, I'll never be heading back that way, at least not with the intent of racing down the strip.

This track is seriously dangerous. The lanes are so narrow that you have no wiggle room at all. Literally, the two lanes combined are the size of one lane at San Antonio Raceway. If you start getting sideways at all, you have to shut it down and hope you don't plow into the wall that's 4 feet from you on the left, or the other car that is 8 feet to your right.

The dip in the track that was mentioned earlier is definitely there. The track on Friday night isn't treated with HVT, so it seemed to be hit or miss as to whether you were going to stick or not. There was no way of knowing, at least without having run down the track previously, where the 1/4 mile ended. Then, the track takes an abrupt left turn at the end, not a great distance from the end of the 1/4 mile mark. You have to be hammering your brakes to make sure you don't run out of room.

My buddy that came with us in his Corvette ended up plowing it into the wall about halfway down the track. He wasn't hurt, and it appears his car has only superficial body damage, but it was certainly scary as hell. He was pushing it hard in 3rd when his tires broke loose. He started getting squirrely, and was trying to shut it down when he shot across the other guy's lane and kissed the wall on the full opposite side of the track. He said he felt like he was driving on ice when the tires broke loose. Now, he probably shouldn't have been pushing it as hard as he was with street tires on, but he didn't really start hammering it until he was in 3rd, so he felt pretty confident the track would hold at that point. But the track must have had a slick spot on it and his tires just went up in smoke. I'm not sure if it was in the area of the dip or not, but that could have come into play, especially when he was trying to get it back under control. Just speculation, though.

I know Greg will being working hard to make this a better track, but the first thing I would do would be to find a way to widen the track down the left side and fix the dip. Greg inherited these problems, so it's not like he's at fault for the current shape it's in. I just hope it gets safer before something really bad happens.

So, now we need to organize a group trip to the SA Raceway. I think the crowd would be going nuts if there were a bunch of Cobras there. I was the only Cobra Friday night, and I felt like a rock star!

Darren