Today went real good so far....... we woke up had a big breakfast.... got to Tirerack around 8..... and Tony Swan wanted me to show him how to work some the Display screen in the new GTR... so i showed him... and cranked it up and revved it up a little..... then he asked me to drive it to tech... so i actually got to drive the new GTR!...... it felt awsome... very solid.. he said later in the week i can take it out and womp on it a little.. so cant wait for that... it also feels really big when your driving it.. and looks really big when next to a normal sized sports car.... but all alone.. its really awsome looking....


we unloaded the car and set all the shocks to full soft.... also both swaybars were already disconnected..... we got inline for the wet skid pad and were 5th to start...... i didnt really know what to expect from the car... i know its a good handling car.. but usually a big heavy car or a dodge neon or something like that wins the wet skidpad... none of the faster of the group usually win....

well.. we won.... we pulled .921 Gs average over 4 laps.. 2 clockwise and 2 the other...... we are pretty stoked about this.. we couldn't have started better.... the car was awsome... had a nice neutral feel to it... and i was just as smooth as i possibly could be.....

Davia finished 5th... Popp did 7th... and the Viper was waaaay back in 30 something i think.. maby 40.....

so then we hit the road to Road America... we went though horrible construction work on horrible roads.... then horrible construction work on horrible roads in terrible Chicago traffic.... Then we did horrible roads in crapy construction in terrible Chicago traffic in a little bit of rain.....

so pulling up to Road America finaly around 2pm was nice... ive never been there and the facility is very cool.. and u could tell it was a heck of a track just by pulling into the paddock...i watched some vids the night before and i played it on Forza2..... the warmup lap i took in as much of the 4+ mile track that i could.... for us. this track we will do the worst at.. because ive never been there.. plus it has HUGE straights that dont help us at all compared to the 600+hp cars...... I did my best and i hope its a top 5.... we wont know till later tonight.....

we heading to Iowa now.. and i will try to post up some pics i took later tonight.....


scroll down for pics and texts on yesterday and testing.....

today we arrived at Tirerack...... Donnie picked me up at the hotel in his hauler.... its a HONKER.. as my dad would say....

Not a whole lot going on at Tirerack at first.. but the onelap guys slowly came in through the day..... and we got to see some of our competition.... some of the fast guys backed out last minute.. but we definatly have some serious competitors... like Davia of corse.. going for his 5th win in a row... Dodge factory entry with a Viper ACR and engine tuned by Hennessy..... Also Jon and Danny POPP in the Mongooses.. the car is a mid engine tube frame car.. its a racecar basicaly....

The car i wanted to see the most was the new Nissan GTR..... im a huge nissan fan.. esp Skylines...... So.. finaly.. after 4 years.. i get to see it... they were washing it inside tirerack getting it ready for a photoshoot in their HUGE photo studio...... Tony Swan the guy that works for Car&Driver is driving the car for the magazine for the week.. me and him were talking and he said to come in and take pics..... under the light of the photo stuff you can really see the awsome lines of the car..... its sick....

we stickerd up our GTR.. the FarnbacherLoles GTR.... not from Japan........ and teched it....... then hung out and took some pics..... Donnie knows one of the guys at Tirerack so he took us on a little tour... that turned out to be a complete tour of everything Tirerack you can imagine... it was cool.. but we were tired of walking after that.... so we packed up our stuff and headed out to the hotel....



freshly unloaded

Today we tested the car at CMP in Kershaw SC.... This is the first time ive drivin the car and was very happy how it went...... The GTR is alot of fun on the track..... unlike last year.. i didnt have anything to worry about while on the track... and could drive as hard as i wanted... the car has a nice feel on entry and mid corner.. the mid engine really helps here.... and then i was real easy to do a nice fun 2nd or 3rd gear slide exiting the corner... the brakes are ceramic so they work very well too... while they heat up they are kinda weird.. but once up to temp... they are also alot like the rest of the car.... 'verrryyyy niiiice.... yessssss...... i like.'

We managed some pretty good times at CMP on a very green track... as we were really the only thing on it the whole day and it had rained the 2 days before..... we did a 1:45.5 in full onelap trim while setting up the suspension...... we will get new tires for the event.. as the tires we were on started to get pretty bad...... i finished them off on the skip pad right nice....

The car ran flawless all day with no major problems... we got more then enough testing time and are looking froward to the event...

here are some pics....