My Viper Days Experience

[SUN RA KAT]

I want to thank everyone at Viper days at Mid Ohio Sports Car Course for the 3 great days I had this past weekend. And I do mean everyone. Everybody was very friendly and would go out of their way to help everyone else. From Skip Thomas and his team to total strangers, everyone made me feel like part of a very large extended family.

Next to our Armed Forces, the bravest man on this planet has to be my instructor, Rick Hinig, for getting in my Yellow Roe Supercharged Viper as a passenger and urging me to drive faster than I ever thought possible. He already knew that Yellow cars are faster because he drives a Yellow car. And he also knew that I had a Roe Supercharger. And this was the very first time I ever did a road course. Ever.

I was doing Viper Days to become a much better & safer driver, not to be a hot shot speed racer. I quickly found out that once I was out of the pits that 4th gear was the only gear that I needed to use. The torque and power of my Roe Supercharged Viper was of such magnitude that from 30 MPH corners to 150 MPH straightaways I never even came close to flooring my Yellow beast. I had the throttle open gently half way and shortly after the 1/3 distance on the long straightaway was reached, I was at 6,000 RPMs and 150 MPH. Rick drove my Viper in 4th gear only and hit 150 MPH on every straightaway, even the short ones, but he drove so smoothly that I was not in the least bit scared. I'm pretty sure that he never touched the floor with the throttle, either. My engine ran cool the entire time which surprised me.

Anyone with a Roe Supercharged Viper can go real fast on a straightaway - if I actually had floored it and shifted to 5th gear I am sure that I would have easily hit 180+ MPH and still had enought straightaway left to brake in a straight line and easily make the sharp turn at the end of the long straightaway, but I went to Viper Days to learn the hard stuff like being consistant and smooth. Rick and I started to get ESP real quick and I would be speaking the exact same words into my microphone as he was speaking them to me - Rick is the greatest!

Mid Ohio is one tough road course and my brain was full each time I made a lap. I decided to ease on down the long straightaway at 100 MPH-120 MPH, so I could prepare for many series of curves going up and down hill in S shapes at the end of the straightaway. Rick helped me reach my goal of being consistant - 4 runs in a row with my times being 1 second of each other and the 5th run only 1 second slower - because I was afraid I was going to run out of gas and be stuck somewhere on the track.

The Viper Days Challenge Race was run by the fastest cars there. I did make good on my promise that I would have the fastest Viper and the slowest driver there, so I was a spectator and not a participant. As I expected, the PVOs (what several of us call the Competition Coupe) were the fastest Vipers, followed by a few of the "obsolete" Gen II Viper GTS-Rs. The top 3 cars were all PVOs and all had large amounts of Yellow paint on them (Yellow Vipers ARE faster).

BTW - My slowest lap was 2:48. I was black flagged on that lap for being on the track without an instructor and taking a little kid with me to boot. I pulled into the pits and then the flagman discovered the kid was Rick, my instructor, who is short enough to drive a Yellow Mazda RX-7 (I, at 6'5" tall couldn't even begin to get in his car). I have 2" seat lowering kits on both seats in my Viper and he was sitting low enough that it looked like I was taking a little kid with me. The flagman apologised & we all had a good laugh about it.

BTW#2 - I was using 100 octane unleaded gas for an instant 30 HP increase over Sunoco 94 octane - Hey - I was at a race track and I wanted to be like the real racers. I finally got below 10 MPG in my Viper - I got a very respectable 6-7 MPG.

BTW#3 - It felt very unexciting driving my Viper home at only 69 MPH after going over double that at Viper Days. And the curves in the interstate were much too gentle...

Viper Days itself was extremely well organised with great instructors and staff. I would advise anyone with a Viper to attend Viper Days to become a much better safer driver.

I have so much more to learn...