My Top 9 Turns at American Race Tracks

The last time we chatted, I shared my list of favorite American race tracks and asked for yours.

Now, we’re going to zoom in more closely and talk about our favorite turns at American race tracks. Again, the requirement is that you must have either witnessed in person cars (or motorcycles) racing through the turn, or have driven the turn yourself.

Here’s my list:

1. Turn One at Indianapolis
   Spectacular as a spectator, especially at the start of the 500 when the 33 cars go charging into their first turn, but downright daunting as a driver, even though the speeds I’ve driven there are less than half as fast as the Indy racers race. You’re cruising down the front straight at, say, 110 miles per hour (I’ve driven the track in an Oldsmobile pace car – even have footage from an Indy Olds dealers commercial to prove it – and have ridden with Carroll Shelby in a Viper) and suddenly you have to make a surprisingly sharp left-hand turn and, if you carry any speed, that outside wall seems to just jump up at you out of nowhere).




2. Turn Four at Daytona
   Driving the high banks is an amazing experience, and then you sweep down off Turn Four toward the start/finish line, where your reward is getting to start yet another lap.




3. Pit out at Michigan
   Making the transition from pit road to the banked oval to start a lap – even when we were just doing routine car testing for AutoWeek magazine, was always exciting, because no matter how mundane the car you were driving might be, you could imagine yourself strapped inside a Cup car or Indy racer.




4. Between Turns One and Two at Bristol
   Rusty Wallace compared racing around Bristol’s half-mile oval to trying to fly a jet fighter inside a high school gymnasium. My favorite place to watch that attempt is from up between the first and second turns, where you get an amazing view of just how difficult that can be for the drivers as they battle around the bowl.




5. The Corkscrew and beyond at Laguna Seca
   The Corkscrew turn is famous – and fun – but what I find most challenging is downhill right-hand Turn 10 that follows the Corkscrew and Rainey Curve. After those two, you think you’d get a chance to catch your breath, but instead you’re carrying a lot of brake-burning, gravity-fed momentum into yet another downhill turn.




6. Road America
   Had I written this a couple of years ago, I’d have said the Moraine Sweep that takes you into Turn 5. But I’ve recently done more laps at this long and fabled heart-of-America road circuit and my favorite section now – provided, of course, that you survive “The Kink,” is the run through the Kettle Bottoms, Canada Corner, Thunder Valley and the Bill Mitchell Bend that spits you out into position to turn onto the front straight.




7. The Keyhole through the Madness at Mid-Ohio
   You really didn’t realize the Keyhole was off-camber until you were in it, which only made it that much more exciting. Make it through and it’s a downhill rush into China Beach and the aptly name Madness corner.




8. Speaking of off-camber, there was (and maybe still is) a wonderful off-camber turn at Grattan; I’m not sure it has a name or number, but I’ll never forget that right-hand hairpin at the rally school in Florida where I worked on hand-brake turns.




9. Ad while it’s not really a race track, I also have to include the so-called Toilet Bowl at the “Lutzring,” the Nurburgring-inspired, road racing-style handling circuit that Bob Lutz had installed at General Motors’ proving ground in Milford, Michigan.The Toilet Bowl is a big, banked surface that, well, looks like the inside of a toilet bowl and where you climb the wall and then plunge down and through the rest of the circuit.

O.K., those are my favorite turns on American tracks. What are yours?

-Larry

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Photo Credit: Al Green