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It was time for another school at the famed Virginia International Raceway (VIR) road course. Since our car isn't ready yet, Bob and Wade Witmer generously allowed us to use their Spec Cobra to help gain some familiarity and participate in the weekend. Dave Lewis rented their Mazda Miata. The Witmer's could not have been more helpful: they helped us understand a lot more about the cars including little things like where to put seat belts when you get out and shared information like tire pressures and performance. The Witmers played a huge role in getting me (Dan) signed off and were the key to an absolutely wonderful weekend!

Saturday dawned to a rainy, grey morning. Harry did the first laps with the Witmer Cobra in the rain. A new car, a challenging track, and rain. Made it tough to get a handle on the car and track. When Dan's first session started, it was raining hard and fog had rolled in on a part of the race track. He ended up using the Miata for a bit of a throw-away session on the track.

But the sun came out the track dried out. That's when things got more interested. Both Harry and Dan were relatively gentle with the car, but that didn't stop us from blowing by other cars. The low RPM torque means fast acceleration. Cars with better suspensions (like BMWs and others) can go through many of the corners faster, but the Cobra more than holds its own with the light weight and good acceleration. We had so much fun and learned so much thanks to the Witmers.

The event was incredible well run and, as usual, featured all sorts of fun cars. Look at the pics of the Le Mans Cadillac LMP car. This is the car that ran at Le Mans and is in the STS commercials (filmed at VIR).

On the South course at VIR an event was being held for Cobra replicas. These cars were basically for the street and some had some astounding horsepower: over 500hp. Most were hard to drive on the track, but their owners seemed to have a blast anyways. It was fun for us to see them!