From an email that Paddy sent me (he basically wrote down all I had to say):
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Calabogie was awesome! The track was amazing. Brand spanking new
pavement, curbs, paddock, heck, even the tire walls were all brand new
bridgestones (seriously)! The track is really challenging. It would
have been a crash fest if they just let everyone run 100% in the
morning. Everything is super late apex and some corners are very
deceptive/blind. At first my thoughts were that it was a tight
technical slow track - but it's not. Raj and i must have hit 125mph
into turn 5. With practice - that number can only go up.
There was no one there who knew the track. Everyone was new to the
track, even the instructors. No one could say do this here, brake
here, lift here. I always catch myself asking everyone a ton of
questions about the tracks we go to. I love talking about where you
brake, where he turns in, etc so i can go faster. There was only 1
person who really seemed to be getting the hang of things and that was
a guy named Ron with a Porsche GT3. Raj and i attacked him with
questions before our very last session and we went right out and
changed almost everything about our line. This guy pulled away from
us like we were standing still. We pointed him by and he was frickin
GONE. Experience is going to go all long way here. It's not about
the car's performance at calabogie. The fast miata guys will love
this place i think.
The track opened on Sept 27th 2006. 3 weeks before we got there. It
had a projected opening date of sometime in 2002! Needless to say the
owners and workers had sooo much anticipation for the opening. The
sense of excitement was really incredible.
The track owners, the car club president, and other participants were
blown away that raj clare and I came all the way from MA to drive the
track. They got excited by the fact that we drove 8+ hours to
experience something they put together. It was an awesome experience.
They truly wanted to see us have a great time at Calabogie.
The cars were great - not a peep out of either STi.
There was a bit of frustration over the amount of track time. We got
very little track time over the 2 days. half the track time was
behind a pace car at 75% the other 25% was fantastic although in
heavy traffic. The drivers meeting on sat was over at 10:45am! the
first cars were on track at 11:20am! ahhh so frustrating!
<some personal stuff snipped>
I can't wait to go with COM next year. Calabogie is up there with
Mosport and Tremblant.
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Thanks for saying it for me, Paddy
If COM doesn't go there next year, I'm running with some other club there.
One thing I want to add - there were no real facilities. However, by next year, they are expecting to have a real control tower (instead of the shack), real bathrooms (instead of porta-potties), and real male strippers (instead of Paddy).
Raj
You'll probably wind up in SSGT/ST1 with it.
