I was scheduled to go to the Northeast Region PCA Drivers’ Education event at Watkins Glen July 23-24 but unfortunately the 6-hour tore up the Esses pretty badly and they had to repave before the Sprint / Nascar event this summer. Well, the paving window was Jul 14-24 meaning our days got canceled. The worst part was my parents had already booked flights and hotel rooms to come see what this track day stuff was all about…
Well, not wanting to miss out on seat-time I started looking at other events in this time window. Most of them had ALSO been canceled as they were at the Glen so I started looking further away. NERPCA was doing one at Le Circuit Mont Tremblant (about an hour and a half North of Montreal in QC, Canada) July 7-9 and then co-hosting one with NCR (North Country - VT/NH) and UCR (Upper Canada) at Calabogie Motorsports Park. My friend Luke and his dad were doing LCMT - his dad Club Races a Boxster and was one of my first PCA instructors, so we made a new plan: I’d trailer up to LCMT from the July 4-6 carshow / Indy / Grand Am race at the Glen and Luke would co-drive his dad’s car there and my car at Calabogie.
Let me start with this: Mont Tremblant is INCREDIBLE. It’s beautiful, the drive there is spectacular (other than crappy Montreal traffic) and the town feels like it’s lifted out of the French countryside. Most people spoke ok-to-good English, or at least understood enough to help you or find someone who could, everyone was super friendly and man are there a LOT of gorgeous girls there! 
We stayed at a great B&B owned my the two nicest people: Nino and Kay - Auberge du Coq de Montange - literally walking distance / just across a small lake from the paddock. The facilities at that track were excellent too, it’s been really improved and well kept by the new (private) owner.
So on to the fun stuff.
We got up there the night before - trailering, thats pretty crucial IMO so you are well rested and ready to go. I parked next to a silver 993 Cup and a Cayman S and noticed a lot of GT3s (and a lot of trailers with who knew what). Went over the run groups after dinner and saw I’d been placed in the blue half of Yellow/Blue (they split them strange, Green then Yellow/Blue, Blue/White, Black/Red1 Black/Red2). I didn’t so much mind as I’d never been up there and would have found an instructor to show me the track for the first session or two anyway - but as the day wore on, it became VERY clear that there was a lot of Yellow and the variety of speeds and capabilities became frustrating and a little scary (more on that later).
Talking you around LCMT:
Pit out takes you up the hill where the crest is the apex of T1. The blend line keeps you left until you descend down into T2 which is a high-speed right hand kink at the bottom of the hill. Done right, you brake moderately before the rise of the hill before T1, let the car track out left toward this tall birch tree that pops into vision as you crest the hill, maintenance throttle through the apex and down the hill and through T2, get FAR left and straighten the car for HEAVY braking before the Esses (T4-5). Taking 4-5 is tricky - you stay late then its “right / left, GO” - you clip the curbing of T5 and as long as it’s not raining / damp / cold you can actually use the turtles on track-out a bit. T6 is a high-speed WOT sweeping left-hander, you brake to settle the car (can’t just lift, need some front-end bite) then get into the apex on T7 - if you take 7 wrong it’s disastrous as it’s a near-100mph [b]high-speed blind-apex off-camber downhill[b] right-hander (that’s a mouthful). There is a LITTLE camber/grip on the absolute inside but it falls off REALLY fast if you’re late (and if you’re early you’ll upset the rear as the front gains grip and the rear washes out down the hill). I had a good oversteer moment on the end of the 1st day when I tried a little more throttle a little earlier causing me to miss the apex by less than a foot - ended up countersteering with my foot to the floor the whole way through there so as not to wash off track backwards into the wall… YIKES!! T8 is HEAVY braking into a hairpin / carousel then out to the middle, back in for T9 which is a mild/slight left kink at the crest of a hill, you’re deep into 5th gear at the end of the very fast back straight, brake moderately hard for T10, I usually just go down to 4th there, WOT through the apex, I don’t brake for T11 (left hander into a steep uphill) I just downshift to 3rd which is enough to slow the car / get weight forward, WOT up the hill, trail brake it left, full throttle, then shift into 4th after the “bridge turn” and up into “Namerow” - a 2nd gear TIGHT hairpin that leads to the left hander onto the front straight. You HAVE to brake before the crest of the hill or you’ll end up in the gravel trap (one guy did exactly that this week) - I found that a slightly deeper / later turn-in you can get a straighter / faster run at the last turn (left) before the straight. I was shifting back up to 3rd right before turning in left there, 4th right before the start-finish - usually picked up at LEAST 1 pass there (often 2 on the back straight and 1 or 2 between 6-7 and 7-8).
So that’s how you get around LCMT… I picked it up really quickly (I think) and soon it became apparent that between that, the reasonably quick car, lots of grip and a decent level of experience that Blue/Yellow was a bit slow (last year I usually ran with White except for new regions or new tracks). I had several people come up to me and comment “wow you’d just pop into my mirrors out of nowhere” - and while nobody was being delinquent about point-bys I was having trouble putting together a single lap without 4-5 passes!! A quick check-ride with my instructor and the chief instructor and I was moved up to White starting the morning of the 2nd day. MUCH more fun! I was getting around 110-115mph after the crest of T1 down into T2 (for comparison Luke’s dad was seeing 103 in the Spec Boxster) and while I was still passing everyone handily, point bys came faster and earlier and I had several strings of clear track for 3-4 laps in a row, awesome.
Unfortunately on the 2nd run of Day 2 I got black flagged for noise - they are SUPER strict up there because of the town - 92.7db - the .7 was how much over I was, sooooo close!! Turned out to be a good thing as the welded-on “tabs” on my test-pipes had started to crack - one was actually tearing a small hole - the tabs aren’t structural and are used to attach the o2 sensor “clips” (we just zip-tie them up to the transmission cradle, much easier to take on/off plus it keeps the wires higher up and safer) but a combination of heat and vibration caused the welds to fail in JUST THREE AND A HALF TRACK DAYS. Gonna be calling TurboXS about that one 
After putting on my high-flow cats it quieted the car down considerably - at the loss of maybe 8-10hp but oh well) and I still made my 2 afternoon runs with a minute to spare for the first! I can’t thank Stan (guy with the Cayman S next to me) enough for his help playing “Surgeon’s assistant” during that… 10 hot-as-heck bolts in nearly impossible to reach places under the car / on the ground with just a jackstand was NOT my idea of fun… but oh well, it was quieter and I knew Calabogie was picky about noise too (we’d just planned on swapping them COLD between events as we had a day of downtime).
Rest of the 3 days at LCMT went smoothly, kept picking up more and more speed, no more “oversteer moments” (well, one SLIGHT one - a tad too much throttle through T11 resulted in a “steer and catch” correction - but no real drama. Changed pads at the halfway point of Day 3, got new tires and put the fresh spares on the car so we would have PLELTY for CMP (I had 9 days on my Pilot Sport Cups). At the end of the day, I let Luke take the Z out to get a little seat-time in it and become familiar rather than having to learn BOTH the car AND the track at CMP on our last run - unfortunately there was an incident and he only got about 10 mins but it was better than nothing.
Just passed a 944 Turbo at 13 (they consider 12-14 a “straight” for the sake of passing zones).
Day 4, we bled the brakes (they were fine but I’m picky about that), packed up, did some laundry and grocery shopping (there is NOTHING out near Calabogie, its quite rural / remote) and trailered over to CMP. We met up with some Rennlisters and some friends we’d met at LCMT and bbq’d steaks and had a few beers before turning in for the night.
(continued below)
Engine was in the mid-40K miles range, it was driven into the shop where we swapped my turbo / built motor for this one (kid bought my APS TT setup and I got his low-miles stock engine in trade as part of the payment).
