Monday May 2 pm – BMW Performance Center, Spartanburg, SC

We left Carolina Motorsports Park shortly after 3 pm.  There were sever mechanical delays during the day.  Not sure whether we’ll see the broken cars again in the one lap schedule because they looked pretty serious and will take some time to resolve.

Anyway it took about 2 hours to transit to the Performance Center.  There was quite a gathering there of spectators, probably around 200.  They gave us food, had an announcer.  It was a real festive event.  The performance Center test track is a complex set of segments that can be configured in many ways.  For the One Lappers, they had a 2 mile course with a huge banked sweeper at the start followed by a slow chicane and then several second gear tight turns leading the a ¾ mile straight.  Speeds were anywhere from 30 mph in the tight sections to over 100 on the straight.

Both Frank Patek and Steven Schlossman from the BMW National office in Greensboro, SC came to the event and both Dave and I were able to visit with them.  Steven found us a paddock space right in the spectator viewing area.  We setup our chairs and sat and enjoyed seeing the first and fastest runn groups run the course.  The runs were the same format as the other track events, except we just had 2 hot timed laps.  Anyway Greg squeezed himself in earlier than were suppose to run so we could get on down the road to begin our 479 mile trek to Daytona.