beer and racing: October 2008

This past weekend, Bill and I headed up to Virginia International Raceway for the second day of GT Live and the season finale six hour race of the Grand Am Koni Challenge Series. As you may recall, I attended this event in its inaugural year at VIR in 2006 on a cold, rainy day in the foothills of Virginia. This time, the weather was perfect for some fun in the sun at this picturesque motorsports venue that I visit so often.

Sunday's main event on the 3 mile long course was the six hour race between the Koni Challenge GS class cars to decide the season's championship winner. At the same time, there were various GT Live events taking place around the infield on the shorter 1 mile Patriot course at VIR.

We got to see the Formula D Pro AM Drift competition, the US Drift shootout, Tarzan lap sessions and even drive ourselves in the Subaru WRX Track Attack. Throughout the day, I used my media pass access to get photos of all the machines at VIR and as always with GT Live and the tuner scene, there were lots of lovely GT Live umbrella girls and Grand Am Series trophy girls smiling for my camera too. We even got to meet Tarzan Yamada at an autograph session before he took a few lucky winners on hot laps around the Patriot course. This guy knows how to drive a car sideways around a track.

The starts and restarts of the Grand Am race provided the best time to take action photos of the cars racing in the turns while photographing the drift events was a challenge due to all the tire smoke and onlooking crowds at the Patriot course.