blog.CarlRydquist.com: First meet with Willow Springs

Welcome

Hey, welcome to my official blog!

This is the place where you will find pics and updates directly from my race weekends, plus a lot of other fun stuff such as stunt driving or things not always about racing.

Cheers! /Carl

Pic of the week

Grid before the race, Nordschleife 2008.

Songs to check out

1. Foo Fighters - The Pretender
2. Span - Baby's Come Back
3. Adam Tensta - My Cool
4. Outkast - Take Off Your Cool
5. Alexandra Stan - Mr Saxobeat

Food and Drinks

1. Redondo Beach Brewing Co, CA
3. The Standard, Hollywood, CA
3. Nic's, Bevery Hills, CA
4. Vino Pasta, Gothenburg, SWE
5. Paradise Cove, Malibu, CA

Other things

Spot to be filled with useful content.

First meet with Willow Springs

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Willow Springs Raceway is located north of Los Angeles and used to be a Formula 1 track. This certinly peaked my interest a bit when I went there about a week ago, and arriving on that very clear morning the first rounded shapes embedded on a hillside facing southward looked very enticing.

I was not disappointed! Although not super technical except in one place, the track offered some really nice elevation changes and a couple of very fast sweepers, all in all very enjoyable and also challenging enough to keep you pushing for better laptimes over and over. I had the benefit of running the track in a Boxster S which was very entertaining although a big engine sure comes to its right here.

Closer view of a fun track. Willow Springs actually has a couple of different courses, both paved and dirt tracks.

Now, the mission for the day was to educate and instruct/coach a handful of Porsche owners, to add as much as possible to their skills and knowledge - in turn enabling them to go faster and have more fun with their sportscars out on the track.

Going through the down-to-business matters and in-car coaching I could quickly tell this was a very good class with a lot of experience and talent within the group. A lot of fun to work with and for sure a couple of new aquaintances with the right spirit and mindset! Rain around noon made things even more interesting - when the floods had flowed away the action resumed out on the track and there were no major problems anywhere, just the occasional "learning" spin and as always mastering the rain gave many drivers a big confidence gain. All in all a very good day, definately paving the way for some more activities of the same kind.

On the personal page I got my CA driver's license today, Jennifer and I are moving to our new place in West Hollywood on Friday and I'll be celebrating my birthday in San Diego this upcoming weekend with the Scandinavian crew (Crazy Dane, Flying Finn and Nic "The Hulk"). There are also a bunch of other good stuff in the works that I'll tell you about in a little bit. Cheers and drive safe out there. :) /Carl

Labels: Instructing

posted by Carl Rydquist @ 10:18 PM

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