Its been a while since I posted anything relating to my race car, so I thought I would share a couple of videos from the track. I filmed these last Sunday at Virginia International Raceway ("VIR").
My car is a 1989 BMW 325i (E-30). It still has the original un-modified engine with about 250,000 miles on the odometer. The rest of the car is purpose built for the track - it has a roll bar, racing seats, 5-point harnesses, a racing suspension, racing brakes, racing wheels, racing tires, and a stripped interior. I bought it about 4 years ago and slowly have been building it to compete in the SPEC E-30 racing series, which is a racing series for 3-series BMWs built between 1983 and 1991.
1) In the first video I pass a 1990's era BMW 3-series (E-36) and then get passed by a couple of corvettes. I spend the rest of the video chasing the Vettes. As you might expect, I have a hard time keeping up with the Vettes in the straights because they have 8 cylinders and somewhere between 300 and 500 horsepower, which is more than twice my car, which only has 6 cylinders and 168hp. Despite the lack of power, I was able to keep up with one of the Vettes.
2) In the second video, I pass the red Vette and then spend the rest of the time chasing a Porsche 911 Carrera 2, which again has substantially more power than my car.
At the end of the two longest straight-aways I was going between 115-120 mph. The silver Vette easily hit 140 mph. For some reason, I wasn't filming on Saturday - a day on which I had separate incidents where I (1) spun out and (2) skidded off track.
The videos may not be too exciting (nobody crashes, spins, or runs off track), but they give you some sense of my hobby.