For the second weekend in a row the Forged Performance Motorsports Team made the short 45 minute trip to Braselton, GA for the final Chin Motorsports event at Road Atlanta for 2011. This marks the final track day that we will be attending in 2011 and we can’t think of a better place to cap off the year than Road Atlanta. We checked in Saturday morning and the team immediately begin unloading and setting up our paddock area. As the cars made their way to tech inspection, I had a chance to setup my gear and prepped for a couple days of media coverage. Along with our shop cars we had two Nissan 370Z’s, a street driven GT-R, and Roy’s always impressive Lexus LF-A. This outstanding collection of hardware attracted crowds all weekend long.
Throughout the day, the Forged Performance cars performed marvelously, which gave me many opportunities to capture some great shots and video clips. As the day came to a close we were informed that Chris Harris, a “bloke” from the UK that writes and tests “motorcars” for the British magazine EVO would be the guest speaker at that evenings dinner party.
Chris is a well known international race car driver and journalist with loads of experience on dozens of European circuits and has the dream job of testing some of the best supercars in the world and getting paid to write about it.
We assembled our team and made our way over to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner, drinks and a Q&A session with Chris. After everyone was done eating Chris made his way to the front of the room and introduced himself with a little background on his career as a driver and journalist. He told us that we was very impressed with Road Atlanta and marveled at the danger and hazards that the drivers must contend with. The Q&A session got very interesting with some intense questions about the differences in tracks from the UK to the States, how manufacturers do business, Top Gear UK, and most notably, some of the debauchery Chris was involved in while testing a Bugatti Veyron for 24 hours. Details? We were sworn to secrecy.
Sunday we continued to enjoy dry and cool track conditions. Perfect for very fast lap times. At 10am Sharif announced that he was taking Chris Harris out for a ride a long in the Lexus LFA. Chris and Sharif agree on many things, including that the Lexus LFA is the best OEM driving experience of any production car in existence.
Hearing this I grabbed my camera and headed out to set up to get video of the exotic supercar getting hammered around Road Atlanta. Keep an eye out for that video! As the final 2011 Road Atlanta event for Forged Performance came to a close this Thanksgiving Weekend we always reflect on how fortunate we are to have such great customers and friends to share these experiences with.
You can see additional photos on the Forged Performance Flickr Page