A moparts member came up to me and said..."Doesn't drag racing seem boring after all this?"
YES.
What a kick in the pants this was. I can't recall the total amount of laps that I made, but I'll take a guess: 5 in one run, 5 or 6 in another, 4 parade laps at 60 mph with the wife, 5 laps with "Dave" the instructor driving the car and 8 laps as a passenger in Daves car.
I thought that I was a decent driver, capable of squeezing a lot from a car.
I did okay. Dave did much better.
My biggest flaw is entering turns too early on an early apex line. This caused me to have a limited exit speed, hurting lap times. My max speed in turn 2 was 66-67 mph. Dave had it at 80-81. The Challenger has a guage feature to allow a large digital speedometer display which helped there. Turns 3 and 4 were difficult to get right too. Several sources agree that turn 9 is the most difficult for newbies to get right and I was certainly in that group. Instincts tell you to turn in early to get to the inside of the radius and hang on, but that limits exit speed. When Dave rode along, as I tried to turn into turn 9, he pushed the steering wheel back to make me turn in later. The later apex allowed me to exit faster without edging off to the left so far. My fastest speed in the straights were 110, Dave hit 122.
Back at home I have watched several YouTube videos and found Daves advice to be consistent with others online. I took the Challenger because I had hoped the wife would also drive. She wasn't feeling well and decided to spectate instead. She was feeling better later and went for a few medium speed laps with Dave at the wheel.
I want to take the Charger sometime, but this surely is not a poor mans hobby. There is no way I could afford to do this as much as I'd like !
I live near Thunderhill and Infineon raceways, so I might consider looking at their track day rates. I highly recommend this to anyone that has considered it.