Editor's note: Alison Goodwin is attempting to earn her NASA competition license.  She will be blogging about the experience as she works her way up the HPDE ladder toward her chance to race.

When I first heard of the opportunity to run through the HPDE courses in 2008, I was a ball of pure excitement and anticipation followed by excessive day dreaming!  However, that discussion took place in April, and as months drew closer to the new year, it occurred to me that the very first events of 2008 would be held in rather cold winter climates. 

 As a native Floridian, I began to get nervous – visions filled my head of brutal ice and snow with cars sliding out of control off tracks.  Weather predictions for the southeastern states became a fairly regular website search for me!  When the date of the Carolina Motorsports Park event finally came within the 10-day forecast window, I was ecstatic to see the lows were above 30ºF and the highs were in the 60’s- and all the predictions carried full sunshine!  At that point I decided that driving gloves might be a nice thing to have in the cooler temperatures for an extra layer of warmth. (Not surprisingly, there was only one store in Orlando that carried driving gloves small enough to fit me.  Of course the store was the polar opposite side of the city from where I work, but definitely worth the drive!)  I could finally let go of my fears for bad weather and focus on preparations for the weekend.

Thursday night and Friday morning before the event were filled with packing and final preparations for the 9 hour trip ahead.  We settled on driving two vehicles up to South Carolina- the 2003 Cobra Mustang that I’ll be driving on track and a 1990 Bronco to haul up luggage, track tires, and extra tools and equipment.  Besides providing all the extra storage for the trip, taking the bronco would also allow us to tow back to Florida if anything should happen to the cobra on track (mechanical failure or otherwise).

Saturday morning was brisk, but thankfully quite bearable.  The first classroom instruction helped refresh and refocus on all of the basic principles- such as flag designations and car dynamics- that had been pushed to the back of my memory for the past 9 months.  After the classroom session was our first track time.  I knew I was out of touch with the cobra and that I’m a beginner on a brand new course, but the first session and most of second session I was extremely disappointed with my driving.  James, my instructor, really tried to help me focus on finding permanent markers on track for turning-in and braking points, as well as helping push my speed around corners that I was taking way too slowly.  Riding along as a passenger in James’ car for a few laps was what really helped me see the speed at which the corners could and should be taken, as well as find those markers I was looking for.  My third run was a definite improvement on the first two- I was able to hit my marks more consistently as well as carry a lot more speed through the turns.  Turn 8 of CMP and then the “Kink” were two places I took extreme caution on my first sessions- yet two places that can carry a good amount of speed.  To get over my fear of those areas, I had James walk me through the exact acceleration, braking, and turn-in point for a few laps.  Each time I gained confidence, not only in that the car could handle the extra speed, but that the extra speed improved the flow of the car’s momentum verses the rather jerky and uncertain corners that I had carried on previous laps.  Just within those three sessions, I had added 60mph to my speed through the kink.  That third session finally led to me receiving a few point-by’s rather than just giving them!

Sunday was another chilly, but beautiful day.  My main goal for the day was to integrate shifting into my laps since my Saturday sessions were all done in third gear only.  For some people this is a simple and natural act, but my daily driver is an automatic and I haven’t had much seat time in manual cars.  Although I only was able to practice this for 2 sessions during the day, and I had some definite errors, I was mostly able to add in some basic shift work that really helped improve the feel of the course coming into and out of turns. Each lap I was able to focus on a different turn or set of turns to improve upon.  Going around Turn 8 and through the Kink (my worst area on Saturday) became my favorite part of the course since it seemed to just beg for more speed each lap.

The entire weekend was an amazing experience to be able to mix seat time with classroom time and still get to watch a few races in between!  I was a bit nervous in anticipation of the weekend, but ended up thoroughly enjoying everything.  Now it’s time to try to get more practice with a stick shift in daily driving and look ahead to the next event of Road Atlanta in March!