When we arrived at the track for pre-track inspection we got some compliments on the Q being an nice clean old ride that you rarely see around anymore. Yep we took old "Golden Girl" out for a HOOT day at the track. It turned out to be a FUN day for us. So after a couple of runs the general comment from some experienced racers was; "Well I'll be damned" we had no idea a Big Old Infiniti Q45 could perform on the track. The V8 exhaust rumble brings it plenty of attention as you roar thorough the course.
Yesterday's track was setup for a driver training session. Due to the parking lot size limitation, the SCCA people refer to it as a "short mean track" for little cars. The Mazda Miata and Porsche Boxter clearly dominate the short tight track. I guess to a certain extent, the club location has become "Club Miata" as I counted 9 Miatas at the event.
Adam's best time was a 26.7 second course run. One of the class instructors who is "a professional racer" took the Q for a couple of runs and clocked a 23.6 second time. I think yesterday's best time for the event went to a Miata or Boxter driven by a professional driver in the 19 second range. So the Q will most likely be 4 seconds behind the Miatas and Boxters for that short track. Driving skill showed a good ~3 second difference. I think I have read on this form that a Q will deliver SCCA Club track performance with the BMW 3xx and 5xx series models so it appears to be able to hold its own with any European luxury sport sedan.
My real agenda for yesterday's driver training session was to get Adam (as a new driver) some training on quick direction changes without losing control. I was surprised to see that he ran the course about 10 times and didn't knock over a single cone.
Some pictures from yesterday's event with Adam at the wheel are below.
Some favorite car pictures from the club meet below.
