I pulled into the pit about fifteen minutes before the hour was up, since I wanted the guys to check the car over before I went out with the fast group right at nine. I dropped Pete off right in front of the classroom, where everybody who was milling around would see that I’d just completed my mandatory instruction.
Back at the garage the guys only took a moment to check the tires and make sure they were fine before they sent me back out. Parked near the entry to the hot pit lane so I could wait for Rob and his Cayman S, I leaned against my car with my helmet off so every single driver heading onto the track would see me and my long blonde hair, next to my aggressively lavender car.
Sure enough, Rob did pull up next to me. Eyeballing the car, he said, “That was sapphire blue last time I saw it.”
I shrugged and said, “I wanted to stand out on the track.”
“Yeah, you’ll definitely do that,” he agreed. Hey,” he said, “My session is about to start. I’ve got to go.”
“Is your offer still open for a bit of coaching?” I asked. “I’ll go out with you.”
“This is the fast group,” he objected.
“Green means go, right? I’ve got a green sticker on my car,” I replied.
“Really?” he asked, surprised.
“Right there,” I confirmed, pointing at the top left corner of my windshield.
“Well, alright,” Rob said. “I’ll take it easy for the first few laps and you can follow and watch my lines, how’s that?”
“Sounds good!” I said, pulling on my helmet. I followed his solar yellow Cayman out onto the hot pit lane as we got in line for release out onto the track. A few moments later the marshal waved us on, and Rob took off at a decent clip, but I could tell he wasn’t trying too hard. Cold tires, after all.
I followed along at about two car lengths, keeping pretty much the exact distance no matter what. Rob kept increasing his pace as we went, presumably gaining confidence in my ability to match his speed.
Now, to be fair, the field was quite a bit faster in the green group than it had been in the newbies’ coached session first thing in the morning. These guys (and they were all guys) were going pretty well in general, but being really respectful and passing like gentlemen, to my surprise. The slower were good about signaling and getting over to let faster drivers by.
I followed Rob for the rest of the session, and by the end we were up to at least the average speed of the group- we were passing as many as passed us.
I followed Rob back to his pit area when the session ended. He had a motor coach with a big extended awning and an additional canopy to park under, which was big enough for two cars.
He invited me to sit at one of the camp chairs so we could talk. Rummaging around in his cooler, he asked what I’d like, offering up a bottle of Starbucks coffee or a water.
Gratefully, I took the water and sat down.
“You were doing really good out there,” he said, popping the cap on the iced coffee.
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate you taking the time to show me the lines like that. I’m sure you must have wanted to go faster.”
“Well, no, not in the first session of the day,” he admitted. “You have to get the tires up to temperature, see, and with the cold track surface, that happens slowly. Even later in the day, you should give them at least half a lap before you start to push it.”
“So, next session, you want to follow me? That way you can see what I’m doing wrong, and let me know,” I suggested.
“Yeah, we can do that,” he said. “But- um, after this next session, you’re on your own. I don’t want to be rude, and I know I offered to give you some, well, guidance, but I’m going to need to get in my own track time, too,” he said, a bit apologetically.
Honestly, I was coming to dislike him less and less. He was trying, in his condescending way, to help me out. He truly believed he was being a good guy.
“Alright,” I said, standing up. “I’ll see you at the track entrance in what, thirty minutes or so?”
“See you then,” he agreed.
Back at the garage, the guys looked at the tires again, but they were perfectly fine so all they did was lift the car and throw the warmers on.
I grabbed a Coke from the cooler and took a seat. “You guys doing O.K.?” I asked. “Not getting too bored?”
“Nah, it’s not so bad,” Manny said, leaning back in one of the oversized camp chairs they’d brought.
“We’ll probably come out and watch you next session,” Joachim said.
We relaxed like that for a few minutes, then I realized that I had a question I needed to ask one of the club reps, or a coach or somebody. “Hey, I’ll be right back,” I said, getting up.
I managed to find the instructor that had driven with me that morning, which was a stroke of luck.
“Hey, Pete, I have a question,” I said. “What are the rules about passing in the fast group? Since I was in the new driver orientation this morning I missed that.”
“Well, if somebody catches up to you, it’s polite but not mandatory to signal and pull over to the right, off the racing line to let the other guy by. You don’t have to, but it’s, like I said, polite. If you’re in the middle of a turn, pull over after the turn,” he explained. “If you catch up to somebody else, you can either wait for them to yield the racing line, or if it’s a straight, pass them off the line.”
“How about in a turn?” I asked. “Is it acceptable to pass on the outside?”
“Only if you can do it and keep a six foot minimum gap,” he said. “Minimum.”
“So, I don’t have to wait for the other driver to pull over if I’m willing to pass off the line, is that what I’m getting from you?” I asked for clarification.
“Yeah, that’s it, but don’t be a dick- sorry, I mean, don’t be a jerk about it,” he said. “You get too many complaints and you will be black-flagged.”
“So, no block passes?” I asked with a smirk.
“If it was up to me, the fast group would be just that- fast, and that’s that, but most of these guys, they’d have a heart attack if you got anywhere near their bodywork,” Pete said with a smile to match my own.
“But tell you what- during the lunch break and after the last session, we have a limited number of spots for timed attacks. One lap warm-up, then the second lap timed. I’ll make sure your name gets on the list,” he said.
“That would be awesome,” I said, and we bumped fists in understanding. “In a way, I kind of wish I had a more ordinary car. That way nobody would be able to point and say, ‘well, sure, look at the car she’s driving,’ know what I mean?”
Looking as if it was something he might regret, Pete said, “Later in the day, if you still want, you can take my Boxster out for a session. It’s won its class a few times, so it’s legit, but down about five hundred horsepower to your Spyder.”
“That would be awesome,” I said. “And I’l tell you what- I wreck it, I buy you a new one.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll have it ready for the three o’clock session.”
“Will the tires be hot?”
“Um, no,” he replied. “I didn’t think I’d be driving it today.”
“Then how about at two you bring it over to my garage and I’ll have my guys throw warmers on,” I said.
“You have guys? Like, team mechanics?” he asked, floored.
“Just two today, and they’re out of uniform, but yeah. Garage two oh seven,” I said.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Pete shook his head. “I think I’m gonna need to spread the word to the other instructors and the marshals,” he said. “Let everybody know you’re a ringer.”
“Just to be fair, I’ll buy you a fresh set of tires for letting me take your car out,” I offered. “After I do my best to roast the tires that are on there now.”
“Remember- you break it, you buy it,” Pete said, smiling.
“Don’t worry- I’m good for it,” I assured him.
Rob rolled up a couple of minutes early and found me waiting in my car by the entry to the hot pit lane. I waved that I saw him and pulled into the line of cars queueing up to start our session, with him right behind. We weren’t in front, which suited me well.
When the last of the intermediate group pulled off the marshal started letting us on two by two. When Rob and I were waved on, I accelerated well, but not too fast, and soon we caught up to the car ahead of us, some sort of 911. Truth is, without seeing the badging I couldn’t tell one variant from another.
Exiting five, I saw my chance and passed on the left over six, Rob right behind. I wasn’t really putting my foot down, but I was gradually picking up speed. We passed another car around the outside on eight, and then one more in the front straight. By this point we were hitting a respectable speed, but I kept increasing the pace little by little. I got a bit of a gap on Rob through turn one, but I think he’d backed off a bit because he wasn’t confident of my ability to hit it that hard. He was right back on me through turn two, which really does seem to go on forever.
I stayed farther right later than he had into three, late apexing for better drive up the hill, and that opened a fairly sizable gap. I took five a little bit easy to allow him to get back on, but then flew into eight at speed. There was a slow car in eight, so I just went around outside him, out in the marbles. My car was stuck to the track like glue, so I didn’t care, but Rob opted to not pass.
I eased up a bit to allow him to catch up on the straight, then dove into a completely empty one with conviction. I again allowed Rob to catch up in two, repeating my late apex attack on three, which he followed that time. I was happy to see that he could learn new tricks, so I kept the speed up through four and five. Six was scary because it’s over a blind rise and the combination of not seeing and the car unweighting was problematic for a lot of drivers. I was confident in my line and in the car’s aero package, so I kept it flat over six and through seven again opening a gap. The gap widened through eight, which again, was a very scary turn for most. Of course, turn nine with the big, green concrete wall in the runoff area was intimidating, but I’d seen Rob’s line through there and knew he was good, so I had no qualms about slamming through the dip at the apex and rocketing out onto the straight.
Once again, I waited for him to catch up, then hammered into one, using the Spyder’s all wheel drive to pull the front through the turn and out the other side.
There was a white car hugging the inside on two, so I just went around. I didn’t bother to wait for any polite turn signal- I just motored past. Rob, though, didn’t, so I kept the white car in my mirrors and relaxed until Rob got past into six. Once he was on my tail again, I swept into eight at full gallop, again opening a gap. The tires on the Spyder were good, but ultimately they were still only street sport tires and not race rubber, so as much as the heart was willing, the flesh was weak and the grip just wasn’t there for full-on warp speed.
Into nine and onto the straight, I let Rob catch up again, then repeated the whole thing. To his credit, his speed following me was better than just about anybody else on the track, so I had to give him that.
When the checkered flag came out I drove back to his pit set-up, where he pulled his car under the canopy. There was a 911 in the other half, and another guy sitting in one of the chairs, his feet up on the cooler.
When Rob took off his helmet, he glared at me. “You played me for a fool,” he said, angry.
“I never lied to you,” I said. “You let your assumptions get the best of you.”
“You told me you’d never done any track days!”
“I told you I’d never done any Porsche Club track days,” I corrected. “I’ve driven plenty on the track.”
“Yeah, that became pretty fucking obvious,” Rob said, still hot.
“Rob, man, relax,” the other guy said. “It’s no biggie, alright?”
Rob let out a breath and let his shoulders relax. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said, shoving the other guy’s feet off the cooler so he could get a drink. “Leah, want anything?” he asked, calming down and back to being polite.
I took the offered bottle of water and sat down one of the other folding chairs. “What I want,” I said, “Is for everybody in the club to stop thinking of me as some sort of spoiled rich bitch who has a car way beyond her,” I said, being honest. “I’m going out next session and not holding back. I want everybody here today to understand that yes, it is a blonde twenty-something girl driving that two million dollar car around at speeds that would make most guys wet themselves.”
The other guy laughed. “A proud member of the She-Ra Man-Haters club, I see,” he said.
“I don’t hate men,” I replied with a shrug. “But I do hate sexist men. Well, I hate the game, but not necessarily the player, I guess,” I corrected. “Like Rob here- he’s a good enough guy, but he’s been really condescending ever since I joined the Porsche club. I mean, I like him well enough, I just wanted to rub his nose in it a bit.”
“You know I can hear you,” Rob said, deadpan.
“And I want you to,” I replied. “Like I said, I like you. I think you’re a decent guy, but you have this one flaw that bothers me. Other than that, you’re good.”
“Thanks, I guess,” he said, taking a drink from his water bottle. “So that’s why you had your car painted pink? To make a point?”
“It’s actually vinyl,” I said. “But yeah.”
Rob and his friend had nothing to say to that, so we all just sat there and worked on our hydration for a bit.
“That line you took through three,” Rob finally said. “That actually is much better.”
“Staying right late like that sets you up for better drive up the hill, but the real key is that the track has better camber there than inside, but you can’t really see it,” I explained.
“Staying right on three?” the other guys asked, puzzled.
“Yeah, Leah was taking a different line than I’d ever seen in three, and it works really well,” Rob said. “Stay way right until you can see all the way up the hill, then hit it hard and motor up into four.”
“Seriously? Three?”
“It works, trust me,” Rob said. “She takes a weird line into eight, too. She stays way over to the left out of seven then enters eight kinda wide, but absolutely flies through eight like, well, freaking fast. She pulls a giant gap on me through there every time.”
“What about nine?” the friend asked.
“I take the same line as Rob there,” I said. “Just faster.”
“Ooh, ouch,” the friend said.
“I just spent two thirds of that lap having my ego served on a platter,” Rob admitted. “I guess there’s a reason they call them ‘supercars’.”
“Hey now- don’t go backsliding,” I said, pointing my water bottle at Rob. “It isn’t because of the car. I’m going to take out one of the instructors’ Boxster at three, and we’ll see what I can do with one third the horsepower.”
“The rear wheel drive is going to be a change,” Rob said.
“My race car is rear wheel drive,” I said with a shrug. “To be honest, I don’t really think I’m using the all wheel drive of the Spyder to best effect.”
“Your race car,” the friend said.
“Yeah, I have a race car,” I said.
“Well, no fucking wonder she ripped your doors off, bro,” he said to Rob.
Rob sighed, and said, “Just imagine how much easier it would have been if you’d just gone and introduced yourself, ‘Hey, I’m Leah, I’m a race car driver,’ at club meetings. It would have saved all this effort.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I replied. “Every single guy with any track experience would have been thinking, ‘Yeah, probably not all that fast,’ every time they gave it any thought. And I’m actually not a pro. I just like driving fast.”
“In a two million dollar car,” the friend said.
“In any car,” I countered. “Heck, I’d probably be one of the faster drivers in here today in my wife’s little automatic Z4.”
“That’s your wife, the one with the black hair, right?” Rob asked.
“Yeah, she’s not really a performance driver, so I bought her a little convertible because it’s cute,” I said.
“Now who’s being sexist?” Rob’s friend asked.
I had to admit he had me there, so all I could do was laugh. “Touché,” I said.
“Anyway, I have to go have the guys throw the warmers on the tires,” I said, standing up. “See you out there next session.”
“What guys? Rob asked.
“My team mechanics,” I replied.
“Hey, wait, I thought you said you weren’t a pro,” Rob protested.
“I’m not, in the sense that I don’t get paid to drive. In fact, I pay stupid amounts of money to go fast,” I said.
After I dropped the car off in the garage, I went to find the head marshal. When I finally did find him, I said straight up, “Hey, I’m driving the pink car. Have there been any complaints about any of my passes this morning?”
“The 918?” he asked for clarification, as if there was more than one car out there in any color like that.
“Yeah, that’s the one,” I confirmed.
“Pete told us that you’re a pro driver, but he said he made it clear that rubbin’ is not O.K. here today.”
“Yeah, I got that,” I agreed. “But I passed quite a few cars last session without waiting for them to yield. Anybody complain?”
“If they have, I haven’t heard it. I saw you pass a guy around the outside in two- that’s pretty ballsy, but you passed clean, so there was no reason to flag you. Keep it clean like that and you’re good,” he assured me, so I gave him a thumbs-up and returned to the garage.
The eleven o’clock session was nearing and I wanted to be first on the track again, so I lined up in the hot pit lane early. Unfortunately there were two cars ahead of me in line, but that was O.K. Once I got past them I’d have an open track for a while.
I was out in front of the group by turn six, and had the track to myself for a few laps before I caught up to the stragglers.
I almost collected one guy going into turn one when he got hard on the brakes before turning in. I wasn’t expecting anybody in the fast group to tiptoe through that turn like that, so him stomping on the binders took me by surprise. I swerved to the right to avoid him, then just cut in late and stayed left and passed him around the outside in the early part of two. After that, I had a lot of traffic to deal with and not everybody was quick to pull over to let me past.
Keeping the whole ‘polite passing’ thing in mind, I passed when I could, as decisively as I could, but always maintaining a respectable gap between our respective bodywork.
At first it was just frustrating, but then as I settled in it became its own game. A handful of laps later and I was back into the open, but I could see a few of the faster cars in the group quite some distance up the track.
Now that I had a rabbit to chase it was time to put my head down and focus on squeezing what I could out of that magnificent machine. I’d been developing a good feel for what lines worked with the Spyder (as opposed to my GT3) and wanted to fine tune them a bit for the time attack later on. This was the perfect chance to get some really solid work done, and I took it.
I had just caught a red 911 with a big spoiler when the checkered flag came out, indicating that it was time to bring it in. Of course I had to finish the lap I was on, so there was no reason to slow down until after turn nine, was there?
A track marshal waved me over when I pulled off the track into the pit area.
“You’re Leah Farmer, right? You’re third up in the time attack, so be ready in the hot pit lane right at noon,” he said when I took off my helmet so we could talk.
“Sounds good,” I replied, giving him a wave. I had forty minutes to get the car on the warmers, drink some water and maybe use the restroom before it was time to make some real noise.