Cadillac at Circuit of the Americas

(This is a long post. If you just want to watch some racetrack action, scroll to the bottom for video)



One day in August this year, I received a piece of mail. It looked a little different to the average car-related sales flyer. This was elegant, glossy and appeared to be an invitation from Cadillac to join them at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA), to drive their hot V-series cars. Fully catered, hands-on driving and at no cost to myself.


My first reaction was, "Wow, this looks amazing!", followed closely by "Is this for real?". Well apparently it was. Fast forward to December and I'm waking up early, unable to sleep, and found myself pitched up at the COTA gates at 06:45, waiting to get in.


We were an interesting assortment of vehicles; from tricked-out trucks to Porsche 911s and my Jeep; doing follow-the-leader behind the staff Escalade, who led us into the far end of the main paddock, where we parked up near the Media Center. There was a line of cars waiting for us, getting their engines warmed up.

A line of cars, all purring away.

Inside the Media Center, we signed in, and were shown into one very large room which was laid out with a very nice breakfast to one side, and a stage in the middle. One of each type of car was parked either side, looking all shiny. Lots of tables and chairs awaited us; lots of people gathered inside. An interesting crowd. Many folks were obviously into their racing, and lots of folks seemed to know each other. I'm really wondering now how I got so lucky to be invited; I'm one of about five women amongst the hundred or so people here, and definitely not in the racing crowd. Still, no point worrying about that! I'm glad to be here.

Breakfast!

Many more chairs and tables are out of shot; they all were filled soon enough.

After a welcome and safety brief, they split us into three groups. Our group was assigned to a batch of mostly CTS-Vs, and I happened to get into one of the two ATS-V cars in the pack. We conga-lined out of the paddock area, back out the main gate and up to one of the parking lots behind the long straight. This was good, since it gave me a chance to get a feel for the ATS-V under normal driving conditions. Now, let's have a look at this car. The smaller of the two V-series cars, this is fully track capable and has a 3.6L twin turbo engine, making 464 hp and producing 445 lb.-ft. of torque.

An ATS-V, showing off its bonnet vents.

I could feel already that this car wanted to Go. That said, it was perfectly docile to drive around at normal speeds. It felt very poised and solid, easy to steer and was very pleasant. This one (like all the cars here today) had an automatic transmission; a quick-shifting eight speed that felt very responsive. I was glad of this; much as I love driving stick shift, it was one less thing to worry about in an unfamiliar environment.

We arrived at a small drag racing strip, where they split us into two lanes and we paired up for some races. It was only a hundred yards or so. Hammer down, followed by a quick stop in the box. Since this was my first time putting any hammers down in this type of environment, I was resoundly beaten by the other ATS-V. Never mind!

We lined up for part 2; a slalom around five or six cones. They told us to use only the throttle, not the brakes. The car handled beautifully around the cones; it is quite nimble. Then we each had another go. For this time around, the staff introduced us to the different modes in the cars. We'd been operating in Tour mode. Now they put us into Track mode, which tells the car to give us everything it's got (while still maintaining traction control and all the other good things that keep us safe). My second drag race was faster but I still got beaten. It felt much more sprightly though, and my stop was better. These cars have big Brembo discs and they do appear to work pretty well. And the difference in mode made itself felt in the slalom too, it felt even more nimble and quick around each cone.
A nice introduction to the car.

ATS-V cockpit. The CTS-V is similar, although a few switches move to the center console in that car.

Both models of car here today have this nifty head-up display. I've highlighted it here inside a brighter circle; you can see the mph and rev counter right in front of you, which is great.

Head-up display, highlighted in the circle. It floats just below your main line of sight.

We drove back into the track, and they led us to the support paddock in the middle of the track for some Autocross action. We swapped cars with another group; they drove ours away and we had a brace of ATS-Vs to play with.

If you've never seen autocross, it's where you have to drive around a very small course made of tape and cones, with narrow track width and lots of corners, some of them very sharp. There was a start gate and a finish box, and a timer. There were fewer cars here so we paired up. A fellow named Rob drove our car first, while I rode in the passenger seat. He absolutely caned it; really throwing it around the corners and squirting it down the short straights. Lots of revs and squealy, chirpy tyre noises. G-forces throwing you left and right. He did the course in 27 seconds.

I owe him a debt of thanks, because I'm pretty sure that if he hadn't shown me what the car could do, I wouldn't have been nearly as aggressive when it came to be my turn. Now, this was fun! I drove that course absolutely secure in the knowledge that the car could take anything I did with it. So I did my best to emulate Rob, having never driven like that in my life. My first lap, I did something over 30 seconds. Some of it sideways, and certainly at strange angles. Second lap, 30.6s. Messed up a corner or two, but sailed around some others. Third lap I really went for it and managed 29.6s. I was happy with that!

All this showed me that the ATS-V is certainly a highly capable machine; even thrown around as it was, it didn't miss a beat and felt controlled all the way.

Looking down the start of the Autocross track. The finish is out of frame to the right.

Back to the main paddock, where... drumroll please... it was Track Time! Yes, we were about to get a taste of driving around the world-class track that is the Circuit of the Americas. I think it's fair to say I'd been looking forward to this, no doubt along with everyone else. First up were some laps in the ATS-V.

They took us out in little packs of cars; one instructor with three students in trail. They had a neat system where the instructor has a radio, and the sound comes through on our car stereos. This was cool since he could talk to us all the way around the circuit.

We also had a video log. Each car had the (optional) Cadillac Performance Data Recorder. This is a cool thing; the car has a camera in front and a brace of sensors, which records a video with a data overlay onto an SD memory card which slots into the glove box. The lanyards we'd been given earlier had SD cases attached to them; once we'd done driving on the track, we took the SD card out and kept it.

The ATS-V

I was first in line behind the pace car to begin with. We pulled slowly out into the pit lane and headed towards Turn 1. As we exited the pit lane, I realized the instructor really wasn't hanging around, and I'd better keep up! They wanted us to keep 3-4 car lengths between each of us, which turned out to be easier to achieve in some places than others. Up to Turn 1, around that hairpin at the top, bring it left again down into Turn 2 and gather speed into the S's. He kept it slower to begin with (although it seemed pretty quick to me) and since we were able to keep together as a group, he increased the pace. Zoom up Turn 9, accelerate past Turn 10, stand on the brakes for the hairpin at Turn 11 and a smooth turn in to the straight. He had me pull over to let the other cars move up, then I joined on to the back of the pack. Pedal to the metal to catch up again. Now we're moving! 118mph as I caught up to the group.

I did not make an awesome job of rounding Turn 12, and was given some advice about that. We made it around the tricky complex through the grandstand area, then into that long sweeping right hander around the base of the Tower, before making a left, then another left, which put us back onto the start/finish straight. Everything so far had been a total sensory overload. I was registering the apex cones, and the braking zones. Not sure I ever spotted the turn-in markers. All senses were totally on the job at hand; getting the car around the track smoothly and rapidly and not falling back from the guy in front. However, this bit of track did involve a straight line for a few seconds, and I allowed it to hit me that here I was, driving at 114 mph down the friggin' Circuit of the Americas! It felt amazing.

And then we were off for our second lap. This involved more of the same, except a bit faster (125mph down the straight!). Another lead change put me into Car 2 position, and I made a better turn around 12. Then it was back into the pits.

Stepping out of the car, I was shaking from the adrenaline. We'd only been out on track for eight minutes but that was seriously intense. A cool down was required. They guided us inside, where we could grab a very welcome drink, and then give our SD cards to some folks who were clipping little segments from the video for us to be able to post on social media. This was a neat operation. They pushed the video clips across to iPads, where we could take care of logging in to our various networks.

They transformed some pit garages into a Cadillac comfort zone.

We then had a classroom session, where we learnt some things about track work and how to corner properly. After this, we were able to have a brief Q&A with Johnny O'Connell, one of the works Cadillac racing drivers. He seemed like a very pleasant guy, and he's been doing well - he won the Pirelli World Challenge series this year in his ATS-V.R.

Johnny O'Connell with his ATS-V.R

After a little while, it became time for our group to venture back out onto the track, this time in the mighty CTS-V. This is a monster car, with a supercharged 6.2 litre V8 engine, and an 8-speed auto transmission. It makes 640hp, 630 ft/lb of torque, some really excellent noises, and is capable of 200mph. A big, powerful car, which I'd never driven before in my life, and I was about to thrash it around a racetrack. Hm!

The CTS-V. Doesn't it look pretty? I just love those Cadillac vertical lights, they give the cars a huge presence.

I was at the back of the pack this time. We set off up the pit lane again, and I suddenly realized the rest of the pack was disappearing up the hill somewhat more rapidly this time. Oh yes, this car accelerates alright! Catching up at Turn 1, we swooped down the hill and set off around the track at a noticeably faster pace than earlier. This car felt much heavier in general; it has massive amounts of power but felt a little less nimble around the corners (or maybe it was just my dodgy cornering). I found myself falling behind the others a bit more than I should have done; when we got to the hairpin and did the driver order change, I had to really floor it to catch up. However this gave me the opportunity to experience doing 139mph down the main straight! Holy cow, this thing moves. It felt like there was plenty more to come too, but we were running out of straight line road.

I definitely didn't do as well at some of the corners this time around. I don't know if it was because I hadn't driven the CTS-V earlier in the day and wasn't as familiar with it; I mean it really did feel like a lot of car to hustle around, but more likely I just have a lot to learn. I regret that I don't have the driving experience to fully appreciate what is obviously an extremely potent car, but hopefully the lessons I've learned here will help if I get to do this kind of thing again sometime in the future. That said, it was still an absolute blast and a great experience to drive. We did three laps altogether and it was awesome.

Cooling down again after this session, some more time spent with the media card people and in the classroom again, learning about the different systems on the V-series cars. A last thank you and farewell from the Cadillac folks and we were done.


Now, here's a video of some racetrack action! A lap in the ATS-V, followed by one in the CTS-V. Spoiler: The CTS-V is at least 14 seconds quicker :-)

My thanks go right back to Cadillac for such a fabulous morning. Y'all have some excellent cars; I hope I get to drive them again.

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 :-)

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 :-)

Taking my Jeep Off Road

I recently joined Austin Jeep People, and through them found San Antonio-based Jeep Republic. JRep held a beginner off-road day at Hidden Falls, and I figured it was way past time for me to actually see what my Jeep could do. This is a bit embarrassing, but after almost eight years of Jeep ownership, it's taken me this long to get it off road!

So Alan and I headed out and met with some other AJP folks, and our group was joined by a whole bunch of JRep Jeeps. They brought some experienced offroaders to act as trail guides. Their Jeeps were somewhat taller and more modified than my stock JKU :-)

First order of business was to air down - this means deflating your tyres so there's a bigger contact patch between the tyre and the ground, which means more grip. Curtis lent me his deflator tool which made the job easy, and suggested I take my stock tyres from my normal 35psi down to 20psi. Folks with bigger, knobbly tyres might go down to 12psi.

Second order of business is to disconnect the sway bar, which allows the axle to tilt more than usual underneath the Jeep body. This means you can drive on uneven ground with less fear of rolling over. An 18mm socket and wrench/spanner will do the job, but a lot of folks put quick-release disconnects on which lets you pull a pin to release them instead. Rubicon owners can just push a button; their disconnect is electronic!

Then it's time to hit the trails. Driving with my Jeep in this configuration was an experience. Obviously, it feels very different. I was told to use 4-Low; this is 4-wheel drive low gear. I normally drive about in 2-wheel drive, and also have a 4-high option. 4-Low is very low gearing; I was doing 15mph in third and would normally be doing 30 at least. So we're not racing off.

We first went up a hill in our big group of about 30 Jeeps. There's a steep, rocky part which was Interesting. It looked very steep to my uninitiated eyes! Someone told me that a Jeep is like a mountain goat, and to be honest they weren't wrong. Once I figured out how much gas to give it, we crawled up that hill no trouble at all. There was another obstacle further on; a large rock ledge down the hill. I didn't have the ground clearance to go down there - now I see why people lift their Jeeps. However, all the main obstacles have alternative routes, so I went down the trail next to it, and met with the other Jeeps on top of the ridge.

We had all parked nose-in, before someone suggested we all turn around for photos. So we did! Cue 30 Jeeps all turning round and parking nose-out, which looked awesome once we were all back in place. General milling about and checking out everyone's Jeeps ensued for a while, before Veronica (the organiser) split us all into four groups. Alan and I were in the stock Jeep group, along with at least six other Wranglers and two Liberties. Justin led our group in his much-modified white Liberty.

The park roads are fairly wide but as soon as you get into the trails, it gets very narrow. And there are scrapy, scratchy trees! I didn't expect it to be quite so narrow.... let us just say that my Jeep has acquired some battle scars... (I've since become good friends with a bottle of rubbing compound which has got rid of some scarring). Now I know why people take their doors off! And why the Rubicon usually has non-painted fenders...

I suspect there's all the mud you could wish for after a big rain, here, but this day was hot and dry, and only a little bit of mud remained. Enough to get our wheels mucky. Did I mention it was hot? You definitely want to cram as much water into your Jeep as possible; you're going to need it. It was 100F+ all day.

We crept through the trails, encountering deep ruts and tree stumps and rocks. Tree stumps have to be gone around, or driven over, depending on how tall they are. Ruts can be straddled, or just driven into. Sometimes you have no choice but to drive into them and then you get to see how to drive at all kinds of funny angles.

I got stuck at one point, on a downhill step, on a rock. Luckily I apparently have skid plates underneath, so no damage was done other than to the protector plate; and that's its job. Justin was able to root around underneath and clear some rocks, so after a bit of back-and-forth with my Jeep under his instruction, I was able to extricate myself from the ledge.

We eventually made it back to the center of the park, for a breather and rest stop. By this time it was well through the afternoon. The group went off to do another trail, but Alan and I chose to head home - we had animals to look after who were also out in the hot sun. And I have to be honest, I was pretty tired after all the driving about - constantly looking at unfamiliar terrain for several hours; trying to pick out a decent driving line. I went to sleep that night still able to feel the rocking motion!

Big thanks to Jeep Republic for organising the day, and to Austin Jeep People for generally being awesome.
Check out the video below to watch Jeeps in action.

Formula 1 at the Circuit of the Americas

When someone builds a world-class racing track near your house, and uses it to host one of the premier racing events on the planet, it would be churlish to ignore this, right? So while it's been a few years since we really followed F1 racing, we bought tickets and set about anticipating this racing weekend.

Red Bull F1 Car at Turn 2

Of course we were there to see the Formula 1 racing, which is cool in itself, and those cars ran each of the three days, with practise on Friday, more practise on Saturday morning, Qualifying on Saturday afternoon and the race on Sunday.

There were other cars present however, which is just as well or things would have been very quiet at times. We had the Ferrari Challenge, in which a brace of Ferraris raced each other. There was the Pirelli GT3 series, featuring 30 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars. And there was the Historic Grand Prix, featuring GP cars from 1966 to 1983 when they ran 3-litre engines. This was very cool to see; there were a lot of different designs of car and many of them were familiar to me from watching F1 as a kid.

They say that on Friday there were 65,000 people in attendance, about 85,000 on Saturday and 117,426 on Sunday. That's a lot of people, and this is a brand new race track with brand new infrastructure, a lot of which hadn't quite been finished yet. Overall, I think the Circuit of the Americas has a lot to be proud of, but here's an in-depth look at the venue from this weekend.

Transport

We live about 25 minutes south of the racetrack, which is about three miles from Austin Bergstrom airport, across the SH130 toll road. We had to drive another ten minutes north on SH130 to get to the parking at Travis County Expo Centre. All the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) traffic was being routed there, and people ferried to the circuit on a huge fleet of buses. Unless, of course, you wanted to pay $200 for a parking pass, to bring your car to the circuit. We heard they had hired 530 buses for the event! On Friday, there were coaches from every corner of Texas and beyond, while over the weekend they had a vast array of school buses, including a number from Bastrop and Dallas. The buses were loaded in a quick and efficient manner, and we hardly had to wait at all. All you could see on SH130 was a constant stream of buses; a lot of them were coming from the other pickup point downtown, too.

Batches of buses waiting for passengers

Even on Sunday leaving the circuit after the race, the service was good. They would load ten buses at once, then that batch would drive off and the next batch move into place. Very good service. However, I think we got off lightly - we were amongst the first wave of people to leave the track. This report from the Austin Statesman says that some folks lined up for an hour to get on the buses. The organizers had obviously anticipated this and had constructed an entertainment stage near the buses for bands to play while people waited!

A stream of folks coming through the gate

Once at the bus drop-off, it was actually a mile walk - maybe more - to the circuit entrance. This was a bit unexpected! There was a wide gravel pedestrian path up to the main gates. This was bordered by unfinished landscaping - a lot of earth banks were covered in mesh netting that of course were getting ripped up by people taking short cuts. There were also golf carts running up and down - very slowly, since they were trying to avoid the people. They could really do with a separate fenced-off cart track here.

While I'm thinking about landscaping, it's a good job we had such beautiful weather over the weekend. A lot of the venue remains as bare earth, although grass is trying to grow in some areas. Time and seasons will fix their landscaping issues, but it would have been an utter quagmire if it had rained. I realise COTA had to prioritize what they were able to get finished in time for this weekend; I'm sure the track will be lovely in due course.

On reaching the main gate, you go through a line of ticket and bag checkers, this is all very quick and painless. They scan your ticket's bar code on the way in - if you leave the track, you have to get it scanned again if you want re-entry. There's a bunch of welcoming staff inside the gates, handing out maps and information. All the staff were very friendly and cheerful; they seemed happy to be there.

Food

The biggest gripe we had over the weekend was the food situation. The prices were very steep, for one thing. A 20oz bottle of water was $4, a litre for $7, a beer for $8 or $9. Not sure who sets the prices for these things, but Damn. This is Texas, where outdoor events usually have water freely available, or if you have to buy it then it's $1-$2 a bottle. Beers are usually $5-6. We are not used to this level of mark-up!

Being vegan, our food choices were limited. We found some very tasty tofu tacos at Chi'Lantro food truck, but they were pretty small at $9 for two tacos. There were veggie burritos at one place for $12 which we devoured in three bites - not good value for money! Similar burritos might have been had from the Gyro place around the corner ($9), but the queue was a thousand miles long and we are not that patient. There were two Asian stands who had veggie Bahn Mi, but we never managed to get any, since one never seemed to be open, and the other had run out. The best deal for us were the Boomerang handheld pies; they had spinach and mushroom on Saturday and Thai veggie on Sunday. They were still $8 a pop but it's quick to serve pies, so the line was never long. You couldn't get much in the way of coffee though; only two places sold it and one of those seemed impromptu - good for that vendor in filling a need.

The venue seemed to be plagued with food problems in one way or another. I believe they had connectivity problems on Friday and Saturday; it wasn't until Sunday that I saw anyone taking credit cards. The Statesman link above tells of some folks running out of beer! We couldn't get bottled water first thing on Sunday from some vendors, who hadn't been restocked. There just weren't enough food vendors at some points round the track - lines from 11am to 2pm were insane, even on Friday. The catering was managed by Sodexo, a company who specialises in large event management, so I don't know if it was them or the venue or a combination of little problems, but they have some things to sort out for the next race. Austin is swarming with food trucks - they should get a few more in and dot them around the whole venue.

Heikki Kovalainen at Turn 2

Food wasn't the only expensive stuff available for purchase - I couldn't believe the price of the F1 team merchandise! $55 for a baseball hat, $50-80 for a T-shirt, up to $250 for a 'proper' team shirt with all the logos on etc. And there were a lot of people wearing these things, probably 20-30% of the crowd. The COTA merchandise was much more reasonable; $30-35 for a T-shirt. The lines for their stands were very long though; I shall pay a visit to their online shop imminently and avoid the wait.

However, at the other end of the eating process, I must commend COTA on their restroom arrangements! They must have hired every porta-potty in Texas. They were everywhere; all around the track, and thousands of them. They had them at each end of the bus drop-off and pickup points. They had lots of paper stocks, and hand-washing gel outside. I never had to wait to use one. They got that one Right.

Photography

First off, I must express my delight at the policy COTA chose to use over the weekend, of allowing any and all stills camera gear inside the circuit, including long lenses. (Video is disallowed). They originally wanted to ban lenses longer than 10" in length, but a public outcry convinced them to change their minds. This was a Godsend! While my 400mm is actually smaller than 10", I spotted a good number of people sporting fixed 400-500mm lenses, and each of us needed equipment of that focal length in order to get even slightly close to the cars.

Here's a map of the track showing the numbered turns (credit: COTA) with the sun positions during the day marked on by me. You can see that being on the south side looking north is favorable for photography, which is handy, since that's where the good corners are.

A racing venue such as this is always going to present certain realities that make photography challenging, for the most part. The tall fences are there in front of you for a good reason; F1 and other motorsports have seen their fair share of wheels and other parts detaching themselves from cars. You don't want to be whacked in the head by a flying tyre.

COTA uses a double fence. The main debris-deflector fence is pretty heavy duty; made of many pillars and strong mesh wire, with many horizontal support wires. If you could get up to this fence, you could shoot through it with a long lens - the depth of field will render the fence invisible. This is what a lot of the credentialed photographers were doing. However there is an outer fence, with a roadway in between. This outer fence is shorter and less sturdy but the 20-foot gap in between means you can't get close enough to really lose the fences if they are in your shot. And they're in your shot for most of the way around.

A historic F1 racer going around turn 7, behind the fence. You can lose the fence with a slow shutter speed (1/100s) but you lose a lot of shots to motion blur - these cars are fast!.

Bumping it up to 1/160 gives you more keepers, and more fence. Tall cars like this one run the risk of horizontal wires showing up, too.

Here's a Ferrari Challenger going around turn 18, where it's (a) backlit and (b) almost impossible to avoid the fence posts.

There are a few places you can go to get unobstructed shots. Turn 2 and 3 aren't bad; if you can get up onto the wheelchair ramp on the turn 2 stand, that gives a nice view down onto the track. The pedestrian bridge gives a good almost-overhead view but of course they want to keep traffic on here moving; it is a human swarm during the day, so you can't really stop on here.

A McLaren around turn 2, where you can look down on the cars if you're lucky. I love the McLaren paint scheme; that chrome looks liquid.

The pit straight and garage area are almost inaccessible (unless you have a LOT of money for a pit pass!) so forget trying to get any shots here. The best you can do is go to turn 1, up on top of the hill, where you can get a long view down the hill, but it's not great photographically unless you have 600mm or more, although you'll be dealing with heat haze at that length. It is one heck of a hill for the racers though; a good steep climb up to the corner.

Looking down at the start/finish straight from Turn 1

This is as close as you can get to the garages from a viewpoint overlooking the pit wall. Too many fences for any good shots into the track, however.

Cars climbing the hill up to Turn 1, shot from turn 18

Cars streaming downhill from Turn 1

Turns 6 and 7 offer one of the best spots. Here, the track rises a little in front of you, then dips down slightly, but the ground crowd-side continues rising. You can get the cars coming towards you here, before getting them 3/4 to sideways on as they go around the corner.

A Force India F1 car at Turn 7. I like the Force India colours.

Porsche GT3 cars coming around turn 6

GT3s overtaking each other at turn 7

A Ferrari at turn 6

There's similar potential at turn 10, although it's not as good. You can catch some coming out of turns 8 and 9 but they're a little far away.

Historic F1 cars coming out of turn 8

I was fascinated with this 6-wheeled Tyrrell

Ferraris coming out of turn 10 down to the hairpin

Lastly, the hairpin (turn 11) offers a mostly-unobstructed view; again you can see them head on, and then get their tails as they charge off down the straight. This is the busiest spot for General Admission folks such as ourselves; there is a large grassy bank here which gets completely filled with people and chairs. It's pretty cool to see so many folks wearing their team colours, and waving their countries' flags. If you watched the F1 race coverage at all, you might have seen a Scotland flag waving here; we were standing behind that for the first few laps.

A wide shot, showing how many folks are here, and how far you are from the cars!

There is potential to catch people stomping on their brakes at the hairpin.

Looking down at the turn 15 grandstand, from the hairpin. It's a long way off!

Historic F1 cars approaching the hairpin

Looking down the long straight, which has a surprising amount of elevation change.

The long straight from turn 11 to turn 12 does not offer many vantage points, most of the trackside is taken up with RV parking. You can get close near turn 12 and try to catch cars as they pass you at around 200mph. This is as good as I got, at 1/400s!

We moved down to the grassy area between turns 12 and 15 for most of the race. Here, you can see the cars coming at you from the straight; decelerating into the series of tight bends in front of the turn 15 grandstand. Unfortunately this area is very flat, and obstructed by various signs, TV cameras, cherry picker crane etc. There's a lot of people crammed in here and it is hard to see the cars. However Alan was happy since he got to see the overtaking manoeuvre that won Lewis Hamilton the race. (I was in the loo, dammit! Sod's law, hard at work.) This was also a strategic manoeuvre on our part, since that corner is nearest the exit gate, which explains why we managed to beat the hordes to the buses ;-)

I think this Ferrari was around turn 14, from the gap in between the grandstands.

Of course, the photos would be better if you can get above the fences onto the bleacher seating or the grandstands. You'd better be made of money though. We paid $130 (plus tax etc) for General Admission tickets; the cheapest option. This isn't really a bad price for three days of racing entertainment. They only sell tickets as 3-day passes, so whether you just come on race day or for the whole weekend, it's the same price. The next level is the bleacher seating, which goes for $250-$400, I think it depends on where you sit. If you're between turns 2 and 10, you'll have the sun behind you. You want this. After the bleachers, you need a grandstand seat. And for this, you need to buy a Personal Seat Licence which is valid for ten years ($2000-$40,000 - seriously), and then your tickets (~$750) on top of that! So we figured we'd pass on that...

Alan did investigate the Paddock Pass tickets, for a laugh. A mere $5000/person gets you into the paddock, with a free programme and set of earplugs. OK, then, moving on... Again, I am not sure if it is COTA, F1 or Bernie Ecclestone himself that sets the prices of these things. I suppose it's no surprise that the upper echelon tickets are marketed towards corporate buyers.

The one other location that would make decent photos is from the top of the observation tower. They were charging $35/person to go up the 251ft tall tower in the centre of the circuit. I don't know how long you are allowed to stay up there, but it's a very strikingly-designed piece of architecture, and the pictures I have seen from up there look great. Another $70 for the pair of us to go up there wasn't really going to happen, however. Where do you draw the line on spending money?

The tower dominates the track, as seen here from the hairpin (turn 11).

A close up of the viewing gallery at the top.

COTA is hosting some other world series races in early 2013 whose tickets are easily half the price of the F1 tickets - Moto GP and Australian V8 Supercars, to name but two. I also notice that the track is being split for the V8s; they're using the smaller club circuit. Both events have a lot more GA admissions; I don't know if they are removing some of the scaffolding/bleacher seating for these events, in which case a lot of the photography could be improved, if we don't have big stands in the way. Time will tell, I guess.

Turbine engine blowers clean the track after each race

Aircraft

This wouldn't be an aviation blog without a few aircraft, would it? And there were plenty in the skies over COTA. Dominating the airspace were the helicopters, mostly bringing people in from nearby airports and from temporary heliports downtown. They mostly stayed to the south of the track and as such were far away and backlit; not very photogenic, but sometimes one strayed close enough for a decent shot, especially at the hairpin end.

$550/person gets you a ride in here

The one helicopter that we did see a whole lot of was the camera ship for the F1 races. This pilot was very skilled. All those long, swooping shots that you see on TV, chasing cars down the long straights, they all come from this guy. He is doing lots of long, swoopy flying to get you those shots; it's impressive stuff.

Spot the camera on the nose, and what I assume is a transmitter on the skid.

Looking inside, you can see the cameraman is intent on his large screen in front of him.

Meanwhile, other aircraft were out to play... here's the Environmental Protection Agency doing air quality checks. They flew a pattern across the whole track area avery day.

The EPA on the prowl

A close up showing the sensors in the bottom of the fuselage

The local police helicopter, possibly providing extra camera coverage.

Last but certainly not least, we enjoyed a flyby before the F1 race, consisting of an F-16, P-38 and two P-51s. I believe they all came up from San Antonio; certainly the P-38 'Glacier Girl' is based there but I am not quite sure which P-51s we have here. I suspect the F-16 was from the Air National Guard at Lackland.

And there you have it! Many kudos to COTA; it was a fun and impressive weekend. Roll on the next race.