AR Auto Service at Oregon Raceway Park
Testing and tuning – for both the car and the driver – is a critical part of any racing or high performance driving program. Extensive testing allows the performance enthusiast to try different setups and discover what works best, and also put precious seat time into their personal logs.
Oregonians are fortunate to have a growing variety of race courses available to them within a reasonable distance. One of the new options for practice and racing is Oregon Raceway Park in Grass Valley, Oregon.
AR Auto Service recently attended a Porsche Club track day for some brush-up and a chance to better learn the intricacies of this highly technical driver’s track. Arriving at the facility around midday on Saturday May, 14th, I was pleasantly surprised to find a bustling paddock filled with entries from Porsche, BMW, and Lotus. AR Auto Service owner Eddie Nakato had already staked out a spot for the AR group where he and Will Stevens, Paul Klas, and Eric Wishan had made camp.
Will, Paul, and Eric generously volunteered their time for the Porsche club as instructors for new drivers. When they weren’t busy with coaching duties, you could find the AR crew rounding the track in one of two Lotus Exige sports cars and a BMW M3 specially prepared for track duty by Eddie and the staff at AR.
Sunburns, shades, and cool drinks were the weapons of choice as Grass Valley provided drivers with the eastern Oregon standard of blue skies and low 70 degree weather. But in the west, dark clouds began looming on the horizon.
By about 3:30 p.m. it was almost as if the only bright and cherry location for miles was the track itself. Ominous clouds had nearly encircled the race course. You could tell something big was on its way. Folks who were previously enjoying an afternoon under shade tents were now closing things up and preparing for torrential rains and the “flood warnings” that were issuing from radios and cell phones.
As the storm rolled in Eddie, Will, Paul, Eric, and the rest of us found ourselves crowded around a folding table under the rear canopy of Eddie’s pickup. We sheepishly waited out the storm inside and awaited news of what might be salvaged of the day.
Later that evening participants were treated to burgers, chicken, and a host of other dishes at Grass Valley’s makeshift town event hall. This more than made up for the at-track barbecue that had to be canceled!
After a restless night at the Tall Winds Motel we awoke to the sounds of more dreary weather but made our way back to Oregon Raceway Park for another day of practice and tuning.
Eddie was scheduled to provide coaching and data acquisition/analysis services for AR Auto customers Jim Rice and Rich Cohn Lee, driving a heavily modified Techno Violet Purple BMW M3 and a Mazda Miata that had been revamped with all of Eddie’s legendary Miata suspension tricks.
The morning session of Sunday’s open lapping event was overcast with a light drizzle, offering drivers a great opportunity to hone their wet weather driving techniques. For racers, it’s far better to experience wet weather in a non-competition environment, so that when race day turns out to be wet they’ve already got the skills they need to win.
As the day wore on the overcast skies broke periodically to bursts of sun, and then the stalwarts who stayed the course were rewarded with a dry afternoon. This allowed some of the higher horsepower vehicles to be let loose on a track that had been freshly cleaned by the pouring rain of the previous day. Eddie got in some great laps in the modified M3 BMW, and the weekend ended up nicely.