I will be attending my first CCA Driver's School at Lime Rock tomorrow (Lakeville, CT). The past few weeks have been extremely stressful in trying to get my 21 year-old car to be up to the track standards. Because of that stress, there are some minor things that I overlooked, do not know the answer to, and do not know who/where to ask at the last minute. First of these things is this: Can the regulation about having a muffled car be further defined? I don't know what they qualify as too loud. I know that the Porsche Club also uses the track occasionally and their cars seem to be louder or equal to my decibel level. How can I compare a Porsche to an E30? My brother finely tuned my exhaust note and it does sound impressive, but I don't know if it would be too loud for LRP's regulations, and if so, it would be an awful shame to forfeit my registration fee and be sent home because my car is too loud for a race track. Second, would there be any storage areas at the track? Instructions were given to empty my car completely upon arrival, including glovebox trunk, and every other nook and cranny. This is a problem for me because I keep lots of essential things in the glovebox, such as my GPS (which I will be using to arrive at the track), my insurance/registration information, etc. Where will I empty these things once I arrive? I can't carry a bag with to put things in because I can't keep it in the car. I would be travelling alone to the track, so I can't have anyone watch over it for me. If anybody can provide answers to these questions, I'd be very grateful.
Take a deep breath Fiirst of all take a deep breath. You are and will be among friends and stress is normal before ones first drivers school. We have all been there. Are you breathing? If your car is street legal then it will be quiet enough for the track what is being refered to here is a racing noise rule that will not effect most cars at this event, and certainly not if it is a street driven car. Now, about your stuff. The rule for cleaning your car out is so that things don't distract you during driving like noises coming from the glove box or trunk area, not to mention things flying around inside that car that could cause safety problems. However, this is not a stressful thing either. Upon entering the paddock area you will stake out a piece of pavement in and around other fellow drivers. Some drivers put all of their things in a big pile, others have small pup tents to store things in case of wet weather, others just have large garbage bags held down from the wind by their spare tire. The point is that your things wil be safe while you are out on track and everyone looks out for one another. You will not be the only novice driver and I encourage you to ask questions about everything. You will find everyone is always willing to help out, quite frankly the driving is a blast but socializing in the paddock is at least as fun. Relax, you will have the time of your life. In fact come back to the forums and tell us all how it went. Doug Wittkowski BMW CCA Iowa Founder www.eurowerkzlc.com
I've heard some pretty loud cars at Lime Rock track days that were deemed okay. If your car has any sort of muffler it should be okay. I usually use one of those plastic storage boxes to hold my stuff. It will most likely be raining tomorrow and these keep your stuff dry. I'll be running there tomorrow, silver/grey 330i with ETAY plates.
Most of the stress is behind me. The only real stress I'm having is the damn thing stalling on me for no reason....... and picking out what I'm going to listen to on the long, early morning drive there. lol Perhaps I'm thinking they're not as strict as I imagine? Either way, I'm not letting anything ruin my day tomorrow. Rain? BRING IT. -Red E30 -- see ya there etay. And BTW, thanks a lot for the info EuroWerkz. That was all I needed to hear.
How did it go? I just wanted to see if you did the lime rock event yet and if you did how it went. If you have any advice for another novice attending my first school. Thanks
