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Thunderhill raceway has 15 turns. It consists of drastic elevation changes, high speed turns, and long, off camber sweepers. This is a fantastic racetrack to drive if you ever get the chance to travel up to northern California for the weekend. Since this was our first time out to this track, another way we prepared for this event was by visiting the track’s website, downloading the track map and studying it. Yes, studying it. This is good prep for any track you’ve never been to. It may not resemble anything on a piece of paper, but it does help you retain information faster once you actually DO get on to the track. Knowing all the turn numbers can give you a clearer reference of how you can drive the track, and it is definitely a more efficient way to discuss track locations with others when sharing driving tips and stories. And now with YouTube, you can probably find somebodys posted driving video of pretty much any racetrack in existence.
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Our team, the 1UP Mother Cluckers faired well against the field of 158 cars, placing 15th overall. This included the roughly one hour worth of black flag penalties we received for a variety of reasons. These penalties included insanely difficult car quiz questions (do YOU know how much a BMW 327 cost in 1947?), revisiting grade school memories by writing out what you did wrong on the hood of your car, and the humiliating, but wildly entertaining “Ghost Ride the Whip” where the judges bump the song in their car while parading around the pits and the team being penalized has to dance around the car.
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Garbed in our “East Coast Gangsta” gear, we also won over the judges by earning the Judges Choice award for this event. Retribution, indeed, since they put us through the wringer after our last event at Buttonwillow (more details on that in a later article).
