Buying used Challenge car - where to use it in NC?

[John Phillips]

Hi everyone, I've been gone from the FFR fold a few years working on a different Mark Smith project...which just went to Texas with it's new owner last week. I am anxious ti get back to track driving. I was active in HPDE and beginning to TT with NASA, with my previous Factory Five Roadster street cars up until a few years ago. I'm buying an existing beautiful functional legal FFR Challenge car from my local buddy, Richard Bailey. Goal: Keep playing on track with the added safety and simplicity of a Spec FFR. I live in Florida, so plan to hit events at PBIR, Homestead and Sebring whenever possible. I'm not a licensed competition driver with any of the race organizations. I'm retiring in a couple of months and will be spending several months each year near Waynesville, NC, just west of Asheville.

Question: are there places near Waynesville NC I could reasonably tow the FFR (or drive it on the road...I'm trying to license it for occasional street use) for track time? OR Autocross? or any other ideas? Trying to plan the best use of this great car with the expanded time I'll have to play with it. I hope to become more familiar with the Challenge community now, and am sorry I got disconnected from the FFR community for so long! Thanks for your input.

John Phillips

[Gordon Levy]

Kershaw in SC or VIR

[John Phillips]

Thanks Gordon!

[mhoward1]

Nice thing about nc is we are loaded with tracks. As Gordon mentioned we have CMP and VIR. If you time it right you have Lowes Motorspeedway inner course, Hilton Head Club course. You can stop by roebling road,AMP, and Road Atlanta

[John Phillips]

Marty, I hope to get to meet you up there and see how you do it! I'm reading up on some past posts, and notice you've been thinking of going to an earlier iteration of Spec engine for reliability purposes. I hadn't thought about that angle on this car I'm messing with, but I believe my goals are a little more modest, so maybe reliability of the engine won't raise it's head! HAve you made any decisions on the engine change? See you on NC, I hope. John Phillips

[mhoward1]

Would love to meet up sometime.

As far as the challenge cars go, they were about it reliable and easy to run as you can get. The make good HPDE cars as well as competition vehicles. You will have fun.

[EBarnes]

Hi John, I realize this is 6 months old...

I have a challenge car, got a few HPDEs in 3 years ago, then a job change. I live south of Atlanta and am looking forward to getting back on track! Where are you with your driving? Do you have a car and will you be in the area at NASA events?

I myself am looking to move somewhere close to Asheville in a couple years... but perhaps east. I want to be accessible to VIR as well as RA - iconic tracks.

Eric

[R Thomas]

When I retired I started looking at the roadsters and then Challenge Cars was getting excited about it and then realized that the class had very little to no participation. Also from my analysis the class tailed off markedly when the new package came along. My wife and I also have plans to relocate to the smoke mountains in a few years at which point I'll be building a car. Not quite sure which one we will see as the time comes. VIR, Kershaw, and Road Atlanta are all relatively close and if I do go the challenge car route Mid-Ohio would bring some great lakes people and they seem to have a solid group of challenge racers.