better video of the big bend open. https://youtu.be/RqEt9ZomRVc

I looked into doing that one but it got expensive getting the car there plus the navigator, etc but I wanted to do it. cost to me got to the ten to fifteen thousand for one race range and that was beyond my budget

you like Porsche! I get your drift. another fun type of race is out of fort stockton, texas annually. The Big Bend Open race. https://youtu.be/YjnlGgXosN4

mike...I get it, you are a Porsche fan! even tho the back end liked to swap with the front end for years! lol. audi did pretty well for some time more recently. the modern porsches are bigger and wider and as you have pointed out can be pretty wicked. the endurance racesv equire a completely different driving style too. the current classes in most but the dp severely limit engine size...speed fof safety and fuel economy...you can buy a stock c7r with more than is allowed in the classes. probably true for many brands. i really only follow F1 now and not sure how long I will do that as it was just sold lock stock and barrel to a usa media company. wonder if the circus will come to town. i would enjoy driving either of my vettes on the newish Austin track once. thought about the big race for time in texas with the 91 zr1 where they close a state highway about 55 miles long and you run it two ways to see how close you could average to a speed class you entered in...take a navigator with. I would have entered either the 120 or 140 mph class but the total cost got to high with travel, etc. you go higher on the straights, less on some curves and use all the lanes.

Cars and car company preferences are subjective....there are died in the wool Porsche fans, died in the wool Ferrari fans, died in the wool Corvette fans, etc. Nobody ever convinces the other that theirs is better either. About the only Porsche I would have an interest in is the Panamera but way too expensive.

For two years when the C7 vette came out I followed that series each race and Vettes just dominated then the people who run the races start equalaizing so the others can keep up...restricting vettes and unrestricting other brands then there is a new equilibrium. I disliked that because it isn't about the tech but about making sure no one is better so a year ago I kind of lost serious interest in it. They put so many restrictions on Vettes they don't win anymore and at the same time some other brands were thus allowed to have less or their engineering appeared better. It wasn't, it was the race circuit rulers who were changing handicaps. Chicken crap stuff it seemed to me.

So, looking at results is not always meaninful as the context matters. I think the two valve push rod engine is maxed out over all and they should change but they have done a lot with it. Future? DOHC in my view and either naturally aspirated or forced in some way..tba.

I know guys with my 91 ar1 that are running twin turbo 1200 hp cards and tuned c7's that are pushing 1,000. Bet there are porsches, ferraries, et al doing the same...you can do just about anything with power now if you can keep the rubber on the road conceptually.

When I went up Pike's Peak to the 14k summit the day before, it's a toll road by the way, to the summit in the rental Camry..on the way down in low gears, slow they stop every car about half way down and shoot the brakes with a non contact infrared thermometer and if your brakes are too hot you have to sit for 30 minutes until they cool or they won't let you go the next led down and mine were...way hot! There are next to zero road barriers to big drop offs.

I think anyone contemplating efficient use of power, i.e. 1 hp per c.i. or more surveys all the best options and that would include all the people at the leading edge not just Porsche. The absolute leader nowadays in one way is Mercedes in F1 where they have for three years completely mastered the art of regenerative braking and fuel engine with electric engines coordination. Turbos not driven by exhaust but electricity so no lag in performance, etc. The cutting edge is usually not associated with VW companies, more reliability and followers when someone else has perfected it. I think Porsche is doing better with that but I have friends who have German BMW's and I find them to be very unimaginative vehicles. Ford and Gm despite still having some pushrod v8 two valve engines are all in huge ways into v6 dohc tech and that is the future. In a 3.5 l non turbo v6 they can generate 275 hp or more which is enough to power any vehicle they sell outside of race or towing 20,000 pounds vehicles so they are all building knowledge while selling vehicles. If you ever see a Mustang 5.0 l. v8 with a Sahleen supercharger on it you probably don't want to challenge them to a drag race if all you got is 400 hp! The Evinrude etec 175 hp motor going on my wellcraft boat right now has five separate computer taps to diagnose, set it..including for the specific two cycle oil it will use. It's a high tech world in power and all the engineers know what the others are doing...

I think the last ten years Porsche race cars have been superb but then all but Aston Martin and BMW have been too. Ferrari has lots of competiton and the Ford GT40 is one wicked, wicked car on a track.

Nice images. I was in Colorado for a party a couple years ago and went down to Pikes Peak the day before the party and they ran the race up the hill. I drove it in a rental Camry! The next day Sebastian Loeb, world rally champ, drove a 3.5 liter v6 twin turbo pushing right at 900 hp to destroy the old 9'11" record by a minute. Power can be made in anything nowadays. The new ford gt 40 is not a big v8 but a v6. GM is going to have to quit pushing their maxed small block overhead two valve pushrod engine and the rumor is the new 2018 mid engine vette is going back to the fabulous type engine I have in my 1991 zr-1..the lt-5 which is an all aluminum block dohc four valve engine that easily runs 8200 rpms....Lotus designed it and everyone but Corvette engineers didn't like it because they did not make it. All 6951 of them were made by Mercury Marine in Stillwater, Oklahoma because the knew how to make precision aluminum blocks. It is still quick by modern standards but the future is probably forced induction V6's.....

Thank you...in 11 days I kept 590 photos including the homes my family and I as a boy lived in, my grandparents, etc. Grew up in the state.

During a trip of 11 days I crossed the Cascades a couple times and spent time going up Mt. Rainier to Paradise lodge as far as you can with vehicles in summer as well. This is the eastern edge of the rain forest and gorgeous......all shot with my canon eos m3 with 17-85mm good lens. Rangefinder 24 mp camera that can take very clear images. Uses the dslr cmos cropped sensor and leaf shutter. Great for travel. First image is the summit of Mt. Rainier and the second is the glaciers on that summit. The rest are northern Cascades across Stevens Pass then a couple lower mountains into the cascades, the Wenatche range whose lower slopes are fabulous orchards.

We won't discuss me going to the ocean beaches and getting stuck in the sand driving them with the rental suv! A family stopped and helped me dig out. I had followed tracks and got into non packed sand deeper than the 2wd Dodge van could handle and they dug out and pushed until I could back out to the hard sand. A very "sinking" feeling for a while. Nice family!

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You are welcome...it is ranch country, the dry side of the mountains which goes all the way E. to Spokane then Idaho in Washington State. I have more of the Cascades as well. I drove 1500 miles with camera in hand all over the state. Fun trip.

The Yakima River flows past Ellensburg, Washington and is a great trout catch and release fly fishing stream which I did for two days September, 2016 with guide in drift boat. It is also a huge upwelling of volcanic basalt rock which formed the Columbia Plateau eons and eons ago which is all of Eastern Washington. The flows created some very interesting patterns in the rock. The green bushes are native sage brush....and yes, there is a separate plant which makes tumbleweeds which blow down the road! These were all shot with my travel Canon EOS M3 with f 3.5 or 2.8 17-85mm good lens. Can't remember but it and the 24 mp rangefinder camera are capable of very clear images.

Lance

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I agree but when I look on this site I see no gallery. Where is it?

Mike,
I'd love to see the Sebring shots including of the fabulous new Ford GT40's. They are stunning. You should see the engine in my 1991 Vette ZR-1. They only made 6900 of them as they were $72,000 in 1990, way more than the best Caddy. The engine was designed to GM's performance desires by their then owned Lotus Engineering, all aluminum block v8 dohc that officially put out 375 hp and beat the living heck out of Testarosa but was actually 443 hp....mine is tuned a bit more than that. Top speed is still 195mph on mine and it really hauls with torque all the way through all the gears...German six speed tranny was stock. I have a friend who has a 911 tt out in Huntington Beach, Cal and he loves it. I always keep looking for the engine! LOL. They do well racing.

If you look closely below the fence the people are against there is a drop wall about 8' high with two rows of used tires bundled together if someone goes off the track there which you can see some have. How I do not know as all the cars race through the Nascar corner, a couple more and are leaving the last corner headed to the Esses which you can start to see to the right which are gentle s shapes you can accelerate on a straight line through into a slight uphill straight at full power so it is hard to imagine how anyone could dump their car the way those skid marks are. May have been different race circumstances. When you drive the course in your car you see the evidence of all kinds of driving errors in skid marks at every corner! Try not to repeat them is your mantra!

thanks. I wanted to go into the paddock but it was way too far a walk with all the camera stuff so I passed on that and wished I had not!