Thunderhill 2000
Thunderhill is located just west of the town of Willow, about an hour and a half North of the Bay Area in Northern California. It's an ideal track to learn high performance driving on, as it possesses a little of everything, long fast straights, tight turns, long curves, elevation changes, on-camber and off-camber sections, blind approaches, the lot. Best of all, there is acres of runoff from almost every turn, so the cost of an off-track excursion is relatively low...
...Which was pretty
fortunate, as rain was forecast for Saturday, and rain is what we
got. Not quite a deluge, but enough to make things somewhat
tricky. I regretted my decision to bring the Yoko A032Rs, rather
than the rain-happy S-02s, and somehow it seemed unlikely that I'd
even have a chance to get the Porterfield race pads up to
temperature. Still, a little slick.
Friday evening, after the one-day instructor's clinic, everyone went through tech inspection, more or less without incident, and went over the course layout at the drivers' meeting, under Ken Bennett's supervision. Contrary to expectations, we would be able to use the whole track on both days, as the Thunderhill management had paved a sufficiently large area of the paddock for the lane-toss, slalom and threshold braking exercises.
By mid-morning everyone
was finding their grip, and getting more confident on the circuit.
Sadly, some people were perhaps overconfident, with most
notably a Viper spinning off and coating a 200m stretch of track
with wet mud as he got back on. Even then, it must have been a
fun job trying to clean the mud and debris from the Viper's body,
cockpit, seats, floor, stereo...
Still, the track remained challenging enough on its own. The opening section is a wide, long series of turns, that caught a number of people by surprise. I suppose that we should be pleased how surprised the track staff were that the quattros could even get out when the buried themselves in the infield.
There then follows a turn that's
better described as a launch ramp. However, it's sufficiently
daunting that only one car failed to make it, and he just slid
past a bemused track marshall. The off-camber exit, however
requires some care, and saw a few mistakes over the weekend.
After that, it's pretty clear sailing to the esses at the start
of the back straight. These again caught many people out, and yet
more people (including myself) spun out or off courtesy of the
mud that built up there.
The
back and front straights were open for passing after the first
downpour in the morning, and we were soon able to separate out,
except, as ever, for the occasional slow moving big ego. Still,
for the most part, people watched their mirrors and moved over
whey could afford to, rather than waiting until they couldn't
afford not to.
Sunday started somewhat
damp, but was generally dry enough for the Yokos to grip, and for
everyone to have a blast. In the dry, the Viper was a fast beast,
but not notably faster than the best of the Audis, or the
Porsches that ran in the instructor group. The new S4tts were out
in force.
Undoubtedly they're faster than a stock UrS4, and more nimble. It's always hard to compare different cars with different drivers, but they seem much more of a match for the M3 than the old S4 is, while the UrS4 remains a grand tourer more in the M5's league.
All in all, though, a great weekend's driving, and a wonderful track. Thanks should go to Ken and Andrew Bennet, of 2Bennett Audimotive, who were eventmasters for Thunderhill, who ensured a relaxed, fun weekend for all of us.
 Dick Hurdie's UrS4 |
Assorted
Paddock Shots, Thunderhill 2000 |
 Another of the S4tt rocketships |
 Johannes Erdfeld's S4tt |
 Jeff Baldwin's UrS6 |
 Perry Eyges with his beautiful S6 |
 Scott Lampkin's awesom S4 |
 Elliot Lampkin's Camaro |
 A 993 Cab roaring down the front straight |
 A V8Q parked at the paddock |
 A very slick UrS4 |
 Corey Smith's A4 |
 Steve Sherwood's S4tt |
 A
group of... what else? Silver A4s, including |