A lap around Infineon
SONOMA, Calif. - It's one thing to take a pace car ride around an oval, where you kind of already know what to expect from every turn.
But the Infineon Raceway road course? Despite having been here several times and watched it on TV more than that, I can honestly admit I couldn't quite picture where each turn was and how the course went. Even after playing it on video games.
Thanks to pace car driver Brett Bodine, now I know.
I took a ride in the pace car for educational purposes this morning, and I'll try to share a few things I learned without confusing you too much.
First of all, what appears to be the front straightaway on TV is actually not much of a straightaway at all. For some reason, I pictured that they pretty much went straight from the exit of that really tight Turn 12 all the way past the start/finish line. Not true.
I also didn't realize how much the elevation actually changed, even after climbing the hill a few years ago. In the car, when we were going up the hills, I couldn't even see over the top. In other words, if there was a wreck up there or another driver had spun, there would be no way to spot it. Totally blind turns.
But maybe the biggest thing I learned was that after the drivers go up that first huge hill, that's not the highest point on the track. For some reason, I thought it was. But after that tough Turn 2 (where all the drivers will go in the dirt on double-file restarts today), turns 3 and 4 go up even higher. Then there's almost a roller-coaster-like dropoff down to the next turn.
Bodine said that on the next turn, going over the curb and running close to the wall is necessary - and gave a bumpy demonstration of what he was talking about - which was also a surprise. I thought when drivers went over the curb that it was usually a mistake; not in this case, he said.
I figured it would mess up the splitter if they kept going over the curb, but Bodine said that was also untrue.
The hardest part of the course is Turn 10, coming out of the esses. If a driver messes up on the last of the essess, Bodine said they'll get angry at themselves and then risk messing up Turn 10.
Anyway, I don't know if that helped clear anything up for those who haven't been around the track, but there's definitely a lot more to it than it looks on TV.
