RX8Club.com - Great weekend

I have to tell you about my weekend. I spent Friday and Saturday at the Rolex sports car series/Grand-am cup in Phoenix. In addition to the race they were promoting something called GT live. GT live was an interactive car enthusist's dream. It involved auto-x, rally-x, drifting demos, sport bikes and something called GT sims. GT sims people to get a ride with proffsional drivers around the track used for the race. You can see details on GTlive.com. It was nirvana!!

Along with the GT live events, the pits and garages were open to the public. I have never been to a "real" race before but i was amazed by the openness of the mechanics and the drivers. We stopped to admire the mustangs from the GS group and one of the mechanics comes over and starts talking to us. After answering our questions he says "you want to open the hood and look inside?" He then pulls us into his work area and begins to open the hood and tell us all about the engine and how this level of racing works and their relationship with Ford. After that we went into the main garage and saw the DP/GT cars. I never imagined we could just walk up and look into the cockpit of a DP car. Just before the ST cars were to go out for their race I found the Speedsource Mazda RX8 tent. They had 5 RX8's ready for the race. We were able to watch all the drivers get prepped and leave. They came in 5th, 6th, and 11th, the other two fell off. The heat was brutal on all cars (it was 101).

The only bad/good thing was there was no one there. Maybe 500 people in the stands to watch a great day of racing. So few people were here I hope the promoters will due this again. I have a ton of pictures I will try to post of the weekend.

I wish every weekend could be like this...