1999 VSA National West Coast Volvo Owners Meet
 
Always on the lookout for being able to have fun with the wagon, I signed up for the track day 'with IPD' at the VSA National West Coast Meet.  For $40 we were able to run the track and then get timed for comparison against each other in each class.  Due to family commitments I was unable to go to the other festivities on Saturday and Sunday though.  During tech, the guy put me in the stock 140/240 class.  I asked him if I should be in the modified class because of all the stuff I have done to the car, but he just looked at me like I was a moron, so stock class it was.

There were mostly P1800s, 122s, and 140s at the track since that is what VSA is geared towards.  There were a few PVs, an S80, a couple 70 series, a couple of 700s and a half dozen 240s. There were several P1800 race cars that were going very well.  It is fun to watch 'real' race cars on the track.  One of the 240s was a pro rally car that had a late model PRV 6 cylinder that was turbocharged.  I think he said he had close to 500 hp or something like that.  His lap times backed up that claim.  My best lap time of 1:37:07 got me a first place in stock class.  I believe the rally car got a 1:24 and the next closest time to me was in the 1:38s.  In reality I should have gotten 2nd place in the modified 140/240 class instead of 1st in stock 140/240.  When I get the complete times, I'll try to post them.

IPD had a S40 out to show off.  It is a nice looking little car but looks a lot like all the other modern Hondas/Toyotas/Etc.  Not much distinctive 'Volvoness' to it.

For the track sessions we were grouped by experience and how aggressive the driver wanted to be.  I got into Group 1 (want to go fast group).  Since there were no 'instructors' to ride along, we could have passengers along for a ride.  I took fellow Volvo owners Dave Cottrell and Chris Lindsay for a ride in separate sessions.  They started us out with about 10 seconds between each car and only allowed passing on the front straight.  I had a great time during one of the sessions chasing the Official Volvo Pace Car, a AWD V70 with lots of goodies.  I don't know if it was the R version or not, either way he was pretty fast.  If you can tell if it is an R from the video, let me know.

Go here for video clips. Site may not be available all the time since Geocities limits the file transfer per hour. Good luck.

 


 
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