Thoughts from the Curb

Oct 16, 2008 - Behind the Scenes: Monumental Failure at Edmunds Track Day

We later wrapped the day with three driving competitions. I was placed into the Champagne Driving course (pictured) where a tethered tennis ball is placed in a Champagne-glass-like saucer atop the hood of a car. The goal is for a two-person team to smoothly go through the course quicker than everyone else without the ball coming out and each driver taking a turn at the course.

Accepting the fact that we had no shot against driving pro Josh Jacquot (who ended up not winning), photographer Scott Jacobs and I decided to adopt an opposite approach: If we're not going to win, we might as well monumentally fail. I brake-torqued the car on launch, but the Altima 2.5's CVT acceleration was so sluggish a beach ball wouldn't have rolled out. I then braked late into the first curve and chucked the car ever-so-not-smoothly into the first corner. No luck. A quick left followed by an abrupt right finally got the ball out of its perch. I then had to jump out of the car to replace the ball (hurt by the Altima's auto-locking doors), got back in and "tore" off for the end where I performed a late full-ABS stop to no tennis-ball avail. Jacobs basically duplicated my run to equal (non) success. We finished the course together with a time of 74.69 -- the next worst team was 60.09. I'd say that was monumental failure.

So mission accomplished for the day. Both in terms of actual driving training and experience, as well as purposely driving like crap.

-James Riswick

8:33 am | Categories: behind the scenes at edmunds.com, driving adventures Permalink | Alert Administrator

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