Yep, that's the carpet

I am on my flight back from the test weekend with my team at Watkins Glen. Chris and I did a test weekend with an organization called Trackmasters. It was a really great weekend and I think we accomplished a lot. Trackmasters did a great job of running the weekend giving us great track time. Aside from one black NSX that I was ready to punt, most of the other drivers were great. You had to get a point by in order to pass and apparently this guy thought he was Michael Schumacher. It was about 70% street cars (Carreras, NSX’s, BMW’s. etc.) and 30% race cars. We race there in about a month and I was very surprised that we were the only Continental team that was testing this weekend.

Chris and I entered Friday and Saturday since it appeared to be more track time than the Saturday/Sunday test. I was trying to limit my time off work and flew out mid afternoon on Thursday. I arrived at 12:30am at Syracuse and had almost a 2 hour drive to my motel. I got lost in Geneva when my navigation system kept telling me to take a right on 14 and then “make the next legal U turn”. After 4 passes through this town, I had a cop follow me the last two laps of Geneva and then finally pull me over when I was about ready to sleep in my car and figure it out in the morning. He asked why I had driven through town so many times…Help, I’m just trying to get to Watkins Glen! After asking me why I was going there (duh!), he finally sent me to the correct route. By this time, it was about 2am and I was exhausted and just wanted to get to my hotel. I was doing about 90+mph (stupid at night) and saw a deer on the side of the road which actually made me slow down to about 80mph. All of a sudden, I saw some lights behind me and I knew no one would be as stupid as me to be going that fast at night so I figured it was a cop. Sure enough a couple miles down the road he turned on his lights. I pulled over and it took him at least 10 minutes to even come up to my car. I was about ready to just pull away since it seemed kind of creepy in the middle of nowhere being a city girl but then thought if I’m in jail, I definitely will not get to drive in the morning! He finally came up to my car and asked if I knew why he pulled me over and where I was going. Being the honest girl I am, I said I was speeding and heading to the race track. Crap; not good! He asked if I knew how fast I was going… I did but wasn’t sure where he clocked me so I just told him I had no idea. He said he clocked me at 78mph in a 55. So, a good thing that he got me after I saw the deer but apparently he knew I was much faster and said he knew I saw the deer. Oops. He took my license and rental agreement and was in his car for about 30 minutes which was just making more angry that I had even been speeding in the first place since this was wasting all the time I was trying to save myself. He finally came back and apologized that it had taken so long. He said it took a long time for the information to come back from California; probably our lack of budget! He handed me my license and rental agreement back. I assumed I had a ticket in there as well. and asked if I could just mail it in and he said, “I didn’t write you a ticket, just please slow down.” Thank you!

I finally got to my motel about 3am and couldn’t remember where the lady said she was going to leave my key. After driving around, I finally decided to try the office door. There was a sign posted inside the front door that said, “L Olson, Room 37, key is in door, light is on”. Definitely country! I was shocked when I walked in my room and found a total 1960’s décor, complete with the pink tile in the bathroom; gold, brown, and green carpet, and a paisley bedspread. The next day when I got up, I found a beautiful view of Seneca Lake from my back window. The place was very clean but very dated. I met the owners that morning when I officially checked in and found out that Vic has been racing since the 60’s and had done some Can Am racing. He had all sorts of old, very cool, racing pictures of so many drivers. It was a great collection and he and Linda were very nice. I will be staying there again for our race in June.

We had to get ‘checked out’ by Trackmasters before we could go out on track. I thought a SCCA and Grand Am license would be sufficient but I was told that even Boris Said had to go through it the previous year. I took my rental car out (don’t tell Hertz) with the instructor and it was just too slow and horrible for them to even assess me. They told me to take out the race car and we’d do a lead and follow. I guess I did okay as they signed off on me. The first couple sessions were pretty tough. The track intimidated me more than I thought it would. I didn’t do as well as I thought I would on Friday but was very glad I had decided to test.

Friday night I was going to go back to my hotel to work and watch some video but Chris, my co driver, invited me to dinner with he and his wife. They had driven down from Rhode Island and hadn’t met her before. I decided to join them for dinner and had a great time. Janet is a great lady and it was really nice to get to know her.

Lara Tallman came out to test with us on Saturday morning. She drove with us at VIR and it was good to see her again. Saturday seemed to go together much better for me. I dropped 2 seconds in the first session and another 2 seconds in the second session. Jeff, my team owner, asked me after the first session what I had done to go faster. I told him I had reviewed some video and just thought through some things. I felt like he was a bit disappointed in my performance but I tend to start out pretty slow on a new track until I figure it out. By the end of the day, I felt like I had made a lot of progress and was super happy I had decided to go out there and test before the raceweekend. It was very beneficial to me and I couldn’t imagine trying to get up to speed in our Grand Am weekend.

I am racing in a National SCCA race in my MX-5 Cup car at Lime Rock in two weeks. I wanted to test in the BMW but we couldn’t get any test dates that worked with my schedule so Randy was kind of enough to coordinate a SCCA weekend for me. I’m looking forward to it and hoping I can get acquainted with the track since we don’t have a promoter test day for the Lime Rock Grand Am race.

I’m completely wiped out tonight after two back to back race weekends and trying to catch up at work only to leave again but I still can’t help but think how lucky I am. I am having such a great time this season and feel so incredibly lucky to be doing this.