David and I spent this weekend driving MSR Houston with The Driver’s Edge. It had been many years since TDE had run at MSR Houston, so relatively few of the participants were familiar with the track. As I had recently run the 24 Hours of Lemons Gator-O-Rama, I was familiar with MSR Houston. While I had 3+ hours of seat time at the track, that was with 100+ cars on track and with open passing, so I was rarely able to choose a technically correct line. This weekend provided me a fantastic opportunity to refine my line and understand the track in my car.
I had one real concern for the weekend. My only time on that track had been laps with open passing. I had never had to wait for a passing signal on that particular track – rather, I passed whenever I felt I could pull it off. My concern coming into this weekend was that I’d fall back into that habit and end up passing someone without a signal. Thankfully, the racecar (even the Triumph) and full gear feels significantly different from my still-street-car MX-5 in just a helmet. As a result, I was behaving as I would at any other HPDE, waiting for passes. I didn’t always wait patiently for these passes, but I waited…
The Driver’s Edge was relatively new to this track at the time. I was one of the few who knew the line. As a result, I had many passengers on my sessions, and rode with other students in blue and yellow, helping them learn the line. I love teaching and I love instructing, so this really increased my enjoyment of the weekend. I was able to share some tricks with some of the blue drivers, but saved a few tricks for my friends in red. MSR Houston can be demanding, technically, and some of these tricks are more appropriate for those with better car control and more seat time.
I did have some particular frustrations at that track. Texas World Speedway is a bit of a power track – there are enough long straights for power cars to leave me behind, even if they don’t carry as much speed through the corners. If I give a pass to a power car in red run group at TWS, I’ll never seen them again. Harris Hill Road is the opposite, a momentum track – the straights are so few and so short that the power cars with poor handling end up giving me a pass. MSR Houston is a great balance. It has some good, long straights, but also has a lot of fun, tricky twists. While this makes the track a lot of fun, it means it can be frustrating for a great handling car with very little power. The power cars don’t want to be caught behind me on the straights, so they don’t want to give me a pass. But then I end up stuck behind them through the corners. If I slow on the straights to build up some space, I’m caught by another car. It can be difficult to find space for myself, space to enjoy those fantastic, technical twists.
I really enjoy MSR-Houston. Hopefully I’ll find more events there to run this fall.