Memories of The Thunderdome - Today at Auto Club Speedway, Fontana

[aggie57]

Many years ago the club (the Vic club that is) ran at least a couple of events at Calder Raceway which combined the full road circuit with an almost complete lap of the Thunderdome.  I'm pretty sure the V8's also ran this at least once, it was a real standout event in club history.  Challenging as well as exciting.  The transition from road to banked circuit, well all I can say is it took a big pair to attack that corner and get it right.  Several failed in the attempt   

So here in the US this is in fact a pretty common thing to do.  Many of the banked ovals have road sections which are run in combination just like we did, a key difference being that the road sections are infield rather than external to the oval.  That's what the Daytona 24-hr does of course, the US GP did as well when it was run at Indy.

Today PCA (Porsche Club America) ran its annual "Festival of Speed" at the Auto Club Speedway over at Fontana, which is in Riverside and very close to where the old Riverside circuit was.  It's about an hour from our place here.  They ran parade laps, just like AROCA(Vic) does, and here is the video I took.  Apologies for the poor camera work, it was taken with a hand held iPhone X but the Shelby GT-500 in front is a good amends.

Oh - I love that my Merc (a 2014 C-class) cracked a sad after this mild circuit and disabled all the nannies.  So that's how you switch them off!