Earning Free Track Driving Time (part 2)

Overlooking the start/finish line from the control tower and up hill past turn 12.

This weekend I was back at Road Atlanta with the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) working the series of races and driving education events.

The flags were on stand-by for the wet start to running on Saturday.

Back in December I worked at the flagging station at turn 1 and this weekend I was right back at the same corner.  I was hoping to see a different section of the track this time, but turn 1 is a pretty good spot, right at the end of the long front straight as the cars charge pretty quickly up a right hand corner up a pretty large hill.

Looking back at turn 1 (counter race-direction).  You don't get a real sense of how steep the hill is in the photo, but you can just barely make out the turn 1 worker station green roof  a little to the right of dead center in the picture.

The weekend seemed to be a complete flash back to December with a chilly, misty, rainy day on Saturday.  Luckily the weather completely turned around by Saturday evening and by Sunday we had a beautiful clear-sky day for racing.

View down pit road at sunrise on Sunday.

Saturday evening a few of us walked 2+ mile track (in the day light this time).  The amount of elevation change throughout the course is really impressive.  One of my favorite parts of the track walk was some paint and damage left on a barrier just past turn 7.  Hopefully the driver was okay from whenever the incident occurred, but the almost exact imprint of the car on the barrier was pretty cool.

Car imprint artwork near turn 7.

Overall it was a pretty safe driving weekend for almost all of the participants.  With two working weekends in the bag, I'm doing some final car preparations and getting ready to do some on-track driving (hopefully) in May with NASA at Carolina Motorsports Park (CMP),  Stay tuned!

Control tower at sunrise.