Street Survival 2020

These events have been cancelled for 2020.

The dates for the Mossville Street Survival are now on the calendar for September 26th and 27th (2 classes, one each day) and open for registration.

Several Lincoln Trail members volunteer for this and have since the beginning.  We always need more volunteers so if you can spare some time to help young new drivers learn car control please contact Rick Largen. We have many volunteer jobs from registration and managing the various course obstacles to in-car coaches.  The Illini BMW Club with support from Lincoln Trail, Kauth & Mayeur, and Caterpillar (and many others) have been hosting the Street Survival in Mossville Caterpillar building AC parking lot, and using the Caterpillar AC building and auditorium, since 2011.  This is a great way for car people to give back to the community.

Driving events on the calendar already

It's still January but car clubs are already busy getting driving events on their calendars.

Autocross

The biggest autocross club in Central Illinois is the Champaign County Sports Car Club.  Here is their autocross schedule they just posted.

The Central Illinois Region (CIR) of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) also hosts autocrosses in Central Illinois, including Mossville.  I have not seen their 2020 schedule yet though.

High Performance Drivers Education (HPDE)

Some of us LTR members have already signed up for the CIR PCA Spring Brake HPDE at Putnam Park April 24 - 26.  This is a great event for all from beginners to experts.

The dates for the St Louis Region PCA HPDE events at Worldwide Technology Raceway at Gateway are:

• April 24-26th - Registration opens 2/29
• June 5-7th - Registration opens 4/4
• October 16-18th - Registration opens 8/15

More clubs will be adding events soon so this is just the beginning.  You can search for driving events at Clubregistration.net and Motorsportreg.com too.

Leaderboard

As discussed in an earlier blog post, Las Vegas (and other places) has places you can go to drive high end sports cars and supercars on the track.  Generally normal people like you and me do 5 laps or more on their track with an instructor.  Exotics Racing times these laps and posts them all on their leaderboard here: https://exoticsracing.com/michelin-time-trial-world-challenge.html .  Notice what cars make the vast majority of the fastest laps.  The Porsche GT cars.  Right now the Porsche GT2 RS and GT3 RS hold the top 5 spots.

It took F1 driver Charles Leclerc to get a Ferrari to number 6.  Only 4 of the top 20 are not Porsche.  What this shows to me is how easy it is to drive the Porsche GT cars very fast compared to other supercars.  Even YouTuber Shmee150 can make excellent lap times in his first time out with these cars on this track.

I was really impressed that they were able to hold 1.49g cornering in a stock GT2 RS at this very short track.

On paper the GT2 RS sounds like a monster.  Yet several have taken them to the track for their first time and were surprised how easy it is to drive this car silly fast.  Consider this comparison between a GT3 cup car and a stock GT2 RS at Road America.

Listen to the drivers comments about the relative ease of making fast laps in the GT2 RS.

Next time you are in Las Vegas, see where you fit on the Exotics Racing leaderboard in the GT2 RS.

Car stuff in Central Illinois

Here in the Midwest we enjoy a rich car culture. Even in Central Illinois, away from the big cities, we have plenty of car related things to do. We also have many activities within a few hours drive from here as well. I wanted to share some key website to get people started. 

Social Events and Groups

• One of the larger social groups is the Central Illinois Automotive Enthusiasts group on Facebook.  
• Peoria Cars & Coffee and Friday Night Lights events.  These events draw hundreds from all around and feature every kind of car, 4x4, rat rod, classic, custom, sports car, pony car, etc.
• Bloomington/Normal Automotive Enthusiasts group.

Driving Events

There are 2 main websites to find and register for automotive events, Clubregistration.net and Motorsports.reg.  Most PCA, BMWCCA, SCCA, Audi club, and others use one of these two sites so they are a great place to find events. 

Autocross

The Central Illinois SCCA has the most autocrosses in Central Illinois.  As with many clubs, they use Motorsports.reg for their event registration. 

Drive to Uptown Grille, Lasalle

The Lincoln Trail PCA will have a driving tour from Autohaus in Peoria, to the Uptown Grille in Lasalle for lunch on September 21st.  We will meet at Autohaus by 10am.  Please RSVP to ltr.news.letter@gmail.com by September 18th.

Here is a link to the waiver we will need each participant to sign before we begin the drive..

Here is a link to the map of the route.

Here is a link to the route step-by-step instructions.

Here is a compressed video of the route.

Use this link to add this event to your calendar.