Volunteering at Roebling Road Raceway

Roebling Road Raceway, almost as old as me!

The NASA driving group offers a great opportunity if you are willing to volunteer and work at their race weekends. If you volunteer and work two weekends, you then have earned a FREE DRIVE at another two day weekend! Well, I do like free stuff, and I'm retired and can pretty much go volunteer on the weekend! Here's how my first volunteer weekend went. 

Adam Powlas brought the BUNCH OF IDIOTS Coronet to do some testing prior to the April Lemons race at Carolina Motorsports Park. 

On a Friday afternoon, I drove down near Savannah Georgia to Roebling Road Raceway, just a bit west off of I-95.  While I had never been to this track, NMS-South has driven there multiple times, so I guess that makes Brian the NMS lap record holder at RRR (like every other track we've both visited.) I like the triple-R name too, maybe there is a Triple-R ranch out west somewhere! 

Waiting to enter, one unique feature of RRR is that the entry road crosses the racetrack! Here I'm just waiting for a driving session to end, so we can get into the paddock inside the track. 

Track walk heading to turn 1. The brake markers count down from 5 to 1, and I adjusted the #4 sign since it had come loose. You're welcome. PRO TIP: ONLY do the track walk when there are NO CARS ON TRACK!

Typical part of the track, heading into a corner. Note the worker station on the right, and the high sand berm straight ahead to keep you from running into a tree if you go off course. 

Scenic tree trackside. 

I travelled in the Maverick hybrid truck, so let me just point out that a hybrid car or truck gets pretty darn good gas mileage. In the spirit of low cost track weekends and saving money, my plan was to camp at the track for two nights, and then drive back late on Sunday. Hey, that way I could go to work bright and early on Monday. Nah, I planned to stay retired on Monday too!

Front left racecar is a Radical. Makes a great birthday present!

Also in the money saving department, the NASA folks throw in your lunch for free every day, and Saturday night's awards event included dinner! That left me on the hook for a couple of breakfasts and a bit more, so one package of EVERYTHING bagels, a jar of peanut butter, and some bottles of water pretty much took care of that!

You can park on the grass anywhere, or spend a little cash and stay in a covered garage with electricity. 

So I drove down, set up my tent, and had plenty of time to walk around and check out the cars. Shoot, I even went ahead and walked the 2 mile track when it was quiet in the evening, and got a good look at all the corners. After that, unfortunately, I woke up in the middle of the night and felt very sick, so long story short, I came home on Saturday morning and missed out on the rest of the weekend. Sometimes stuff just happens! 

More racecars!

Hopefully sometime I'll drive at Roebling, because the track looks to be a lot of fun, very flat, and with plenty of run-off area. It's mostly gradual curves, so not too tough on the brakes and tires.  

Wrapping up the track walk on the finish straight, maybe next time I'll drive it!