Projo Cars Blog

Okay, I confess, this is a dream job.

So many of you tell me that and yesterday's visit to Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Conn., was a good reminder that you are right.

Journal photographer Steve Szydlowski and I went to the famed race track to get an update on the $5 million makeover that is currently underway. And while we were there, we got a chance to drive a couple of race-prepped Mazda MX-5 Miatas.

Click here to view the video of a day at Lime Rock.

With the main track out of commission, we joined a number of members and would-be members of The Club at Lime Rock at the Auto Cross track in the middle of the park. This is a short track between half and three quarters of a mile long but extremely curvy.

Instructors Peter Argetsinger (son of the late Cameron Argetsinger, founder of Watkins Glen) and Brit Simon Kirkby, racing veterans with wins and championships on both sides of the Atlantic, were timing runs when we arrived.

After they had each taken a run, we broke for lunch and then returned for our runs. I squeezed into the cockpit which had been stripped of every comfort. A framework of steel piping reinforced the door, forcing me to slither into the tight bucket seat. (Getting out was also a procedure involving leveraging myself on the door and roof, NASCAR style.)

Once in, I was strapped into a four-point harness and the steering wheel was attached.

Kirkby joined me on the first few laps, pointing out how the track had been "mapped" with cones to indicate where to take the car as it entered and exited bends. He also talked me through, telling me when to accelerate and when to brake (while still going straight before I turned the wheel.)

It was exciting. The speeds do not sound impressive - 60 mph down the short straight - but when you are going through very tight curves at full speed with your bottom six inches off the ground, it seems very fast indeed.

Kirkby then told me to pull in and said we were going to change places. This was my first indication that race car driving is way beyond anything one can imagine from everyday driving. Accordingly we slithered out and slithered in and were again strapped down and off we went.

I don't think he was showing off, although it did cross my mind at first. But once we had settled - if you can call it that - into the blistering pace he set, throwing the car through beds at speeds I could not begin to come to terms with, I did comment that my tepid driving must have been driving him crazy.

No, he said. He just wanted to show me what the car could do. And what I could do.

I was just beginning to regret that lunch when he brought the car in and we again changed places. I was a completely new driver. As he had demonstrated and confirmed by talking about it, there was no way I could roll the car. The speeds were not great enough and the wide, low-slung design combined with fat racing tires provided enormous stability.

Nor could I damage myself or the car on this track as there were no barriers to hit. That was by design: it's a safe track for beginning drivers to get a sense of controlling a fast car going through very tight corners at high speed.

This time I threw the car through the corners and jammed down my foot when he urged me to, earning every so often a much appreciated "Good," and "Well done."

After three laps or so, we pulled over and I was exhausted. More than the astonishing stablity of the car, the sheer muscular strength needed to control a car going through a corner while accelerating with my foot to the floor was astonishing.

And no sooner had that curve been negotiated but I was in the middle of another one in the opposite direction. As Kirkby kept reminding me, I had to keep looking ahead to the next curve.

Three laps of that effort literally left me breathless and now it was time to do a series of timed laps by myself. I felt like an out of shape athlete staggering up to the finish line only to be told the next race started immediately.

Gritting my teeth through my exhaustion and wanting to put a good show, I set off trying to internalize the pointers of Kirkby's short lesson. Full acceleration, braking on the straight as I enter the corner, work the car round it using all my strength, accelerate out, brake again, wrestle the wheel the other way, up a short hill on the curve before hitting the accelerator full speed again to take me over the brow and another brake and curve, holding the wheel with all my strength while I went round it.

And so on through about five more corners before coming round to the short straightaway with it blast of full acceleration, and then brake and back into that first hairpin corner and off we go again.

By the end I was aching and shaking. I told Kirkby I could not imagine what it takes to keep up that kind of pressure up in a real race, lap after lap. He laughed and said race car drivers have to be very fit. No kidding.

I lost the car on one bend in the second lap, the tail spinning out before quickly recovering. But it cost me time and my final tally for the three laps was about 2 minutes and six seconds which was four seconds slower than Steve (But he has driven race cars before!).

After we had done our laps, we were each treated to a couple of laps in a new Porsche 911 Turbo courtesy of prospective club member Paul Marsala from Long Island.

Oh dear, I'm afraid I really did regret that lunch sitting in the passenger seat as he put his Porsche through its paces!

Did I mention that this job does have its drawbacks?

- Peter C.T. Elsworth

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