David McNett (Nugget)

equiraptor and I skipped out on the world for a few hours during lunch today and headed south of town to check out Harris Hill Road, a new track that's about to open. H2R (as they like to call it) will be an enthusiast-built, privately-owned motor sports park -- a 1.8 mile road course track for eating up tires and wasting prodigious amounts of gasoline.

The finished up all their asphalt work earlier this year and have started opening up the track to small groups and prospective members. I've been considering joining the track as a member and have been trying to find a good time to schedule a visit. At the last minute we sort of realized that today was that day.

We headed down around 11am and I finally got a chance to meet Bo and Eric, the track owners, face-to-face for the first time. We'd been exchanging emails for over a month but had never managed to meet. We hadn't been there 5 minutes and Eric managed to goad us out on the track for some hot laps. We spent 95% of our time driving -- it was great.

The track is fully paved but there's no barriers, no lines painted, and the buildings are just framed in so far. Still very much a work in progress. But -- of course -- the track is drivable. You know how when you move your computer is the last thing you shut down and the first thing you set up at the new place? Well car geeks are that way but with their cars. I'm pretty sure they were more interested in getting the track to a drivable condition than they were with getting port-a-potties set up.

So the driving experience is a bit rough -- there's pointer cones but no lines, no good track edge visual indicators, and the surrounding terrain is in so much flux that there's not much in the way of visual landmarks you can use to set your braking and turn-in points. Still -- it's a blast. And the surface is pristine.

We were in my car, on my street tires. It was equiraptor's first time tracking my car, in fact. We got a good 20 laps each, in both directions. I got some rough video, but the camera setup was plagued with technical problems so the quality isn't what I'd hoped. It'll work much better with the top down and with some better placement of the battery packs. Overall, though, the concept of multi-camera video was a success. I got both bumper and cabin cam stitched together.

Bottom line -- I'm hooked. We're going to join and I'm going to learn that track. It's so much less of a hassle to have a track right here in town instead of driving halfway across texas to TWS or Motorsport Ranch to get in some good track time. decibel45, you'll have to join us next time. It's a great NSX track. :)

Equi posted her thoughts in her journal as well.