Some History on Pro Racing Simulators........... Most of you know us as being around for the last several years in our current shop location in Building L up by the Karting Center. But weve actually been at Sonoma Raceway in one form or the other since the middle of 1999! We didnt make ourselves known to the local racing public until about 2006. What were we doing before 2006? Well, for a 2+ year time span from July of 1999 to June of 2001, we were tasked by Sears Point track management to redesign a new Winston Cup Chute. The NASCAR Chute you all drive today was designed by myself, Bob Davis (then track architect), Ralph Alexander and two Papyrus 3D modelers we had hired for the job. I wont go into all the details as that could take pages, but suffice it to say that by the time of the Winston Cup Sears Point race in June of 2000 we had three different versions of the chute on simulators which we placed inside the NASCAR compound for the weekend (that took an act of congress to get done) and asked the NASCAR drivers to run all three versions in our simulators and tell us which one they liked the best. After all, it was the NASCAR drivers themselves that were the most vocal about hating the new Winston Cup Chute the previous three years it was used for the race. This bad press for Sears Point management is what motivated them to make a change, and it is what motivated them to use a simulation of the new chute to let the drivers test before it was built! Back in those days, ESPN did all the NASCAR broadcasting and there was a mid-week NASCAR show on TV produced by MRN called, RaceLine - the video attached is a segment from that show. It tells the rest of the story! Besides interviews of Jeff Gordon, Bob Davis, Mike Skinner and yes, of myself (a very young version of me), there is a quick glimpse of the three chute versions the drivers were testing. So, we didnt just fall off the turnip truck when it comes to racing simulators and driver development. We are now in our 14th year of doing this right here at Sears Point Raceway (Infineon or Sonoma)! And we are still the only serious outfit in the world where you can use a racing simulator for improving your driving and your race craft skills. Note: The quality of the racing simulators we use now is perhaps 200% better than what the Winston Cup drivers drove in this video back in 2000!
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 00:25:25 +0000
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