05/29/09 (photos added 05/31) Finally, after much effort and planning, the first Palatov Motorsport trackday took place at ORP and was a success. Why post on the truck page? Because the Ford truly deserves a Best Supporting Role award in this production. Before I go on, I must give credit where it's due - M planned, organized, scheduled, managed and generally made this event happen. It's a huge amount of work and she did 99.9% of it (I drove the truck).

As some may recall we had originally scheduled the event for April but with ORP being a new facility a number of things didn't come together so we had to move it to the end of May. This certainly worked in our favor weather-wise. April was 32F and 40 mph winds. The forecasts for May 29 varied but all agreed on about 85F for a high and guessed roughly 15-45 mph winds. Potentially an issue for bikes but at least it's not freezing.

To make things more interesting, Wednesday Fedex messed up the delivery of a new crank sensor for the Atom and UPS messed up the delivery of new rotors for the Mini. We were facing having two undrivable cars but things did show up on Thursday with 3 hours to spare (after much scrambling and countless phone calls). We were able to install all the parts, give them a quick test and start loading.

We packed up with the help of Tristan and his friend Nate (many thanks to both for great work throughout the event). Our task was to transport 7 bikes and 3 cars to the track and back, a bit over 300 miles roundtrip. The Mini would go under its own power which left the rest for towing. Nate brought his truck and we got an enclosed trailer, so Tristan's Bimmer went on our flatbed and one of the bikes went in the truck. The Atom and the remaining 6 bikes would rely on the Ford to get them there. Two bikes went into the truck bed, the Atom and the remaining 4 bikes in the trailer.

Of course we had to load the trailer twice, since the first time we put the Atom in back end first and that ended up with way too much weight forward. We started loading at noon and were finally able to get unerway at 4 PM (just in time for traffic).

Things went smoothly for about 30 miles when I got a call from Tristan saying one of the trailer tires blew out. I pulled over and after confirming that they could continue for a bit on three wheels I waited for them to catch up so we could mount the spare that was onboard the enclosed trailer. The failed tire didn't acctually blow out, just lost its tread. It looked like this:

A couple hours later we were underway once again. This trip is where I really got to appreciate the Ford. It was transporting 7 vehicles (6 bikes and a car) and performed flawlessly. Only being a V6 it surprised Nate following in his Chevy V8 (pulling a much lighter load) by motoring up some moderate grades without any issues and staying well ahead. It's an impressive workhorse.

We arrived at the track in time to watch the sun set (greeted by a sign next to the main road - nice touch). The scenery is absolutely gorgeous, the temperature a comfortable 70 and no wind. For a while everyone just stood and stared at the volcanoes in the distance.

We left most of the vehicles at the track and went over to Wild Winds Ranch which we rented for the night. Their website is still oriented towards the hunting camp stuff but the accommodations for trackday groups are excellent. It IS geared towards groups more than individuals (unless you're willing to socialize :). We had nine people staying there and it worked great. The place is right behind the track and you can actually see some of the pavement from the porch, but getting there takes 2 miles of dirt road to the main highway and then another 2 miles of dirt to the house. Plans are supposedly underway to pave both of those stretches in the coming months or years but for now the going is a bit tough. The Mini in particular was not liking it so we just left it at the track, mostly.

Darkness descended quickly, with lightning flashing all around the horizon and countless stars overhead. M and I had to go back to the track to retrieve a couple things and since the gate was already locked we had to walk quite a ways across high desert illuminated only by moonlight. It was surreal. Back at the ranch Paulyne (another friend whos support and efforts are greatly appreciated) had prepared an excellent meal and after some food, beer and conversation we called it a day.

At 5AM I was awakened by sound of rain on the skylight and a massive gust of wind. Not good. Looking outside the sky overhead was cloudy but not overly so. M was not pleased, after all the planning and effort. But it was still early and plenty of time for things to improve. At 7 AM the clouds were starting to disperse and only patches of rain hung below them.

In an hour or so the rain was a ways off in the distance and the track pavement was drying. Good.

Having been to countless drivers' meetings it was a bit odd to conduct one myself. The plan is to run two car groups and one bike group. The car groups would run clockwise and bikes would run counter-clockwise. We set aside two sessions at the end of the day for cars to reverse direction and the bikes elected to continue the same way for the whole event. M had everything organized amazingly well and for our first-ever event things went very smoothly. Weather cooperated by providing plenty of sunshine and supposedly record-breaking 90F heat, there were only a couple minor incidents (a wheel fell off a Mini, not ours!) and we were able to get six 20-minute sessions for each of the three run groups.

(Photos courtesy Scott Means)

Being the event administrators M and I didn't get to run as much as the other participants, but she still managed a session on the 900 (ccw) and three in the Mini (two cw, one ccw).

I did one session on the 900 (ccw), two in the Mini (cw), one in the Atom (cw) and one on David's Triumph (ccw).

Driving cars and riding bikes in the same event is an interesting experience. The fact that they ran in opposite directions made it even more so. The main thing I took away from the event is that ORP is an AWESOME track. It's very challenging, most of the time you're just pointing at the top of a blind crest and have to visualize what comes afterwards. It is hard to stay committed to the line (and the throttle!) which can be seen easily in some of the data we logged. Once you do figure it out and get a rhythm going, the place is magic. The half-pipe allows for quite a bit of g load once you get the hang of it and many turns allow a lot more speed than you'd think - if you have the will. Many thanks to all the people who made this track happen!

Now on to said data. First, a comparison of my laps in the Mini and the Atom, a 2:13 in the former (black) and 2:03 in the latter (red), both clockwise.

One thing that stands out is the speed profile - the Atom accelerates furiously but I can't bring myself to hold the trottle over the blind crests, hence the dips in speed (top trace) whereas in the Mini after a few laps I was able to stay on it most of the time. Obviously the Atom has a lot more speed in it than what I was using but it will take many more sessions here before I dare extract it.

M got to run the Mini in the late counter-clockwise session so it provides a data comparison with a motorcylce trace that we got by putting the logger on Rob's bike. Rob is an experienced racer and has been involved with ORP from the early planning stages, so his lap (a 1:58, red) is a representation of a pretty good effort. For M this was only the second session running in that direction (the previous one being on a bike) so she was understandably quite a bit more tentative. Her trace (a 2:17, black) is representative of an advanced driver who is new to this track.

You can see just how much speed the bike carries (about 110 mph top, same as the Atom). There is also the hesitation over crests for M, like the one at the red cursor above. The data shows many places where she can gain time and with another couple sessions at this track she will. She outbrakes Rob in at least one spot already :)

Towards the end of the day clouds were starting to roll in, wind was picking up and we were thinking that we may not be able to do the final bike session - not to worry, the weather held off just long enough for us to finish and rain drops did not hit until we were packing up.

The flatbed trailer makes a useful step-ramp for loading bikes into trucks, by the way

Afterwards we went back to Wild Winds ranch for an excellent barbecue. The lower lodge is normally used for their hunting camp business and is situated about 4 miles of dirt road away from the main highway. The setting is amazing and so was the food. Those who elected not to show up - your loss! :)

We didn't get rolling towards Portalnd until after 10 PM and after a long but uneventful drive we finished unloading at the shop around 1:30 AM. Quite a day! We'll definitely be doing this again. Stay tuned for announcements and details.