today I learned what a "track day" is

Kinja'd!!! "parkrndl is enjoying his midlife crisis" (parkrndl)
07/24/2017 at 21:17 • Filed to: None

Kinja'd!!!4 Kinja'd!!! 3

Ok, so my 15-year-old and I were in southern NJ this weekend for a baseball tournament. Long story short, last night’s torrential downpours flooded the fields for today’s games, so they were cancelled. Before we left town, I wanted to check out New Jersey Motorsports Park, which was about 10 minutes from where we were staying. The woman at the gate directed me over the bridge to the infield, where I found a couple of sets of bleachers and a building with a high deck overlooking a long straight. While watching 25 or 30 sportbikes run increasingly faster laps, I asked a guy nearby sitting at a trailer with a bike exactly what I was looking at. He said it was a track day, and you pay about 150 bucks for the privilege of flogging your ride all day. He said the bikes were probably coming off soon and then the cars would come out. I went up on the deck and shot a couple of minutes with my phone. (Sorry about the dumb dialogue, that’s me trying to explain stuff to my totally disinterested 15-year-old. If my 12-year-old had been along, it would have been a completely different story.)

I thought this was AMAZING. I don’t own any vehicle close to being track-worthy, nor do I know anyone who does. “Track day” was just something I had read about on Jalopnik and Oppo; the stuff of legends for people who had fun doing things like autocross and LeMons. Seeing real-world street cars (those S197 Mustangs tho!) run on a track like this was fascinating. I gotta get back to a track and watch a real race...


DISCUSSION (3)


Kinja'd!!! Bman76 (hates WS6 hoods, is on his phone and has 4 burners now) > parkrndl is enjoying his midlife crisis
07/24/2017 at 21:28

Kinja'd!!!1

Aw yeah, CAM-C style Camaro.


Kinja'd!!! Thomas Donohue > parkrndl is enjoying his midlife crisis
07/24/2017 at 22:34

Kinja'd!!!4

I dont own any vehicle close to being track-worthy, nor do I know anyone who does.

While you may think your vehicle is not ‘track-day worthy’, I can assure you it’s definitely autocross worthy. Because every vehicle is autocross worthy. You won’t hold anyone up like a track day, and you will have more fun than you realize at the slight expense of your brake pads and tires.

Try it. Even in a minivan. And if anyone you know has a Miata, VW Golf, Honda Civic, or anything remotely like it, sign up for a track day. It’s well worth it.









Kinja'd!!! TheRealBicycleBuck > parkrndl is enjoying his midlife crisis
07/25/2017 at 07:54

Kinja'd!!!1

Track Day. Awesome day. Hard on brakes and tires. Yes, you MUST experience a track day for yourself, whether in your car or in one of the rentals at a track school. It’s absolutely worth it. I stand here with a stupid grin on my face after watching the videos of my first track day. Here’s a couple I’ve shared.

And from the Charger I passed (right before our session ended).