Friday, September 26, 2014

Watching the races in style: Sports Car Endurance Racing at COTA

We went to the Circuit of the Americas to watch the endurance racing. The Lone Star Le Mans / Six Hours of the Circuit of the Americas contained many fabulous cars. Since Alan is the proud owner of a Grand Cherokee SRT, it allowed us to be able to purchase SRT hospitality tickets to the races. This turned out to be one excellent way to watch a race!

The SRT brand runs across the Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep family; it's the hot versions of some of their cars. The Dodge Vipers are the racing cars, although the other breeds were represented on the SRT stand at the main square in the circuit.

This is me with one of the Viper SRT cars - I think this is last year's car, on the SRT stand.

Here's the garage, in the pit area. They are removing the bonnets/hoods from the cars. Also in here is the white Viper Exchange car; I think this was technically a separate team but they seem to share the facilities.

We were thoroughly looked after over the two days. The SRT folks had one of those big trucks whose sides expand to create space inside and outside. It was pretty awesome. The hosting staff were super friendly and welcoming. Here's breakfast:

They catered breakfast, lunch and on Saturday, dinner as well, for us. Lunch was served on nice COTA plates, and was good quality tasty food.

We were also given goody bags filled with Lone Star Le Mans merchandise, and later on they gave us some really nice SRT-branded water bottles. I have to say, the ticket price for this was very good value. If we had bought normal tickets, by the time we bought food and drink we'd have spent the same amount, and this way we have a lovely home base to watch the race from, all the water we can drink, free beer, nice restrooms... it's a veritable bastion of civilization!

Another nice perk was getting to have a few minutes with the Viper drivers, who came to the truck on Friday to say a few words.

We were also allowed into the VIP area in the SRT garage; again, we could help ourselves to drinks from the fridge and watch the mechanics do their thing at closer quarters.

And when it came time to watch some track action, we could stand on top of the truck and get this view looking up into Turn 1 (spot the Viper on the track). This was a prime spot from which to cheer on the Vipers, directly opposite their Snake Pit - and it must have worked, since the Vipers came in 1 and 2 in their GTLM class, while the Viper Exchange car won the GTD category. Congratulations, Vipers! Clicky for details

So thanks, SRT people, for providing us with a splendid facility and hospitality within which to enjoy the weekend. It was great!

If you want to see some of the track action, click here for my photo gallery from the weekend.

Bonus picture: here's a lovely orange Viper SRT. This belonged to another crowd who were doing rides around the track. It's the same colour as my Jeep, so of course has to be included here :-)

Monday, September 08, 2014

Just call me Daystar!

My husband is a kind and generous man, and for my birthday recently purchased me a pair of JW Speaker headlights for my Jeep! The stock Jeep lights are legal but somewhat akin to a 40w light bulb; nothing to write home about. The Speaker lights bring a gazillion candlepower of modern LED technology to the party. Let's have a look at some before and after pictures. These are all taken at the same camera settings (1600ISO, 2 seconds, F8) and I've done nothing to them, they're straight out of the camera.


Original lights on the road, low beam.


New lights on the road, low beam.

Obviously the color temperature change is massive. The stock lights are your typical yellow tungsten color, whereas the new ones are daylight-balanced white light. There's nothing much on this bit of road to light up apart from the mailboxes, however just to the left of the lights in the middle, you can see there's a row of columns further down the street. You can't see them at all with the stock lights. That's probably a good hundred feet away if not more.


Original lights on the driveway, low beam.


New lights on the driveway, low beam.

The new lights haven't been aligned yet and they're maybe a little high (I'm going to get them checked later today) but you can see the difference here. The grass is actually green and the light pattern is very distinct.


Original lights on the driveway, high beam.


New lights on the driveway, high beam.

High beam just adds to the illumination. I can't wait to see what I can see on real roads!

PS: They look pretty damn awesome, too :-)