Contemplations - The mind of a car guy

  I left for work earlier than usual this morning, to take the long way in to work. I miss taking the back roads in to work. I don’t have many quality roads on the way in to where I work but, I find the joy and anticipation of those few choice corners to be my exhilaration for the day. In retrospect it is pretty sad that my most enjoyable moments are the ones spent in my car driving, alone, with the music on. I need more bass down low though a, work in progress.

  Helena feels so much better. She is fun to drive. When I push it just a bit I can hear the tires start to loose traction. I can feel the back end start to shimmy ever so slightly. My mind is just begging to get a little more foot in it. Let’s see what this thing can do. However, the realization that I’m on a public road, with a low speed limit, makes me calm down.

   I really need to get her out on the track where I can push and see what happens. My biggest fear is just overcoming the initial newness of this car, the nervousness of trying something new, and the time spent away from the girls. It’s not exactly something my whole family can get in to. Deep inside the need grows to just go have fun with this thing. I can understand how folks get in to Motorsports so deep. There is this yearning to just push the machine as much as you possibly can then, fix what’s left if it goes wrong.

  Not that I’m some kind of expert in these things, however, there seems to be quite the difference in how cars are setup for different Motorsport genres. I mean a drift car can race on a track. Will it be faster than a track specific setup? I guess it all depends on the vehicles involved. In my mind a car made specifically for track racing, is not intended to be a drift machine. Same goes for cone courses, mountain climbs, or drag racing. I’m sure that there is bleed over; however, F1 cars don’t run in the WEC for a reason. Two separately designed vehicles entirely.

  This is not to say that you can’t build a car that does all of these things. I’m really just generalizing here. The real question on my mind is: Can a family car, driven daily on the street, perform well on the track? I’m not sure where I stand on that at this moment as I have no experience in the matter. Where is the line between a family vehicle and a hard, bouncy, rocket machine?

  I’ve never been able to keep up with two separate vehicle projects at once anyway so, I’ll just keep going with Helena and see what happens. The whole reason I bought this car was to get a vehicle with four doors to carry the Niño’s. Now my mind is contemplating how close to a smoky, drift machine I can get this thing; with flappy, smoke stack exhausts of course. Chyeah!