Cars, Photography

Porsche Racing in Utah

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to be able to watch Porsche Club Racing at our local motor racing venue – Utah Motorsports Campus.  UMC, as it is known, is located south of Interstate 80 between Grantsville, Utah and Tooele, Utah.

The view to the southeast from the east end of the UMC main straight grandstand. Those mountains, the Oquirrhs, rise at the far west end of the greater Salt Lake Valley.

Porsche Club racing is organized by the Porsche Club of America (PCA), and is a serious amateur/semi-pro racing series that happens on tracks all across the United States and Canada.  The Porsche Club racing program officially began in 1991, but its roots go clear back to 1975 when Alan Friedman joined the PCA and soon after began developing an amateur racing program in which clean competition, sportsmanship and mutual respect for the drivers and cars formed the bedrock principles of the PCA Club Racing Series. This year there are 32 races in the schedule.  The cars run from full-blown 911 race cars to highly modified street cars, bone stock road cars, and even some classics like the 1970s Turbo Carrera, 944s, or the old 914s.

These cars are completing the last phase of their advanced high speed driving/track instruction. The woman driving that green Boxster Speedster has come all the way from South Carolina. (I saw her car close-up in the staging area – SC plate.)

Our local Porsche Club of America chapter sponsored the races as part of a weekend event in which we total amateurs can take our cars on the track to learn high-performance driving skills.  Bringing your car on a racetrack is not something to take lightly.  Any accidents would not be covered by your normal auto policy, and mechanical problems may not be covered under warranty. Wear and tear on the brakes and tires alone can get quite expensive.

I took this immediately after the “pace car” had just exited the track, signaling the official start of racing.

I have only been on a racetrack once when I had purchased my 2013 Dodge Challenger SRT.  That purchase came with a track day from Chrysler Corporation.  They provided the vehicles and the track instruction.  The learning opportunity at the Las Vegas Raceway was incredible!  But today, I was just at the track to watch, learn, and enjoy.

This is another shot from just a few seconds later.  This is the last time you’ll see the cars so bunched up together.

The first thing I did after arriving was to get some lunch and then explore the track/grandstand areas to find a great spot to watch and get good photographs.  This was a really premium event with some wonderful food vendors – not just your typical stadium hot dogs.  I found a tasty lunch at a Spanish (not Mexican, but Spanish like from Spain) vendor.  My meal was a bit of roast beef in a creamy sauce (much like Greek gyro sauce) with grilled onions and peppers over french fries.  It was really quite good.

Here is a photo of the early race leaders accelerating down the front straight.  By the end of that straight the top cars will be hitting over 140 mph (225 kph).

And to make the lunch even better, I met a really nice guy that had come down from Boise, Idaho (400 miles away – 644 kilometers).  He was here for the intermediate skilled track instruction in his Porsche 718 Boxster GTS.  Boxsters are the convertible version of the mid-engine Cayman, like my car.  After lunch, I went with him to check out his car.  As I mentioned above, track racing can be an expensive endeavor.  He had come down from Idaho on nearly new Michelin Pilot Sport A4s – pretty expensive tires (right now over $1500 US from TireRack.com).  They were barely good enough to get him home after a day and a half of track instruction, but he would need new rubber soon after.

Anyway, I finally found a cool spot in a grandstand at the northeast corner of the 3 mile UMC track.  And to make it even better, the Utah Motorsports folks let me drive right up behind the grandstand to park.  I was like only 1 of about 3 people in that grandstand that afternoon.

That’s my Cayman GTS in what might just be the world’s best parking spot.  😊

Here are some more pictures of the racing that I shot from this location. One thing that surprised me the most was how loud these race cars were. In the grandstand, I was at least 200 feet from the track, and even here, the noise from the cars (especially the newer 911s) when they accelerated out of that turn was barely tolerable.

This is a close-up of the early race leaders coming into the “S” curve in front of the grandstand.
These are some modified Boxsters with their special racing hardtops.  These cars are a few years older, with considerably less stock power than the newer 718 Boxster/Cayman GTS, or GT4.

As a bit of trivia for the real sports car fans out there, the new Cayman GT4 RS has the same engine as a Porsche 911 GT3 RS, mounted in a mid-engine configuration.  Those cars are screamers! The 4.0 liter flat 6 engine produces 493 hp (horsepower) and revs to 9000 rpm! This all happens in a car that weighs 3119.5 pounds (1415 kg). That’s only 6.33 pounds/horsepower! My GTS, which is a QUICK car, only has 8.48 pounds/horsepower.

Notice this silver Boxster in front.

The above silver Boxster is running the famous Porsche Martini Racing colors.  Martini racing were the owners of the Porsche 917 that set the track records at LeMans in France.  In fact, Porsche has by far the most wins at the 24 hours of LeMans over any other manufacturer with 19 outright victories and over 100 class victories.  The next closest manufacturer is Audi with 13 outright wins, then Ferrari with 10 overall wins.

This is a specially prepared 911 Cup GT3 RS.  It is a specially built race car, not necessarily street legal in all states.
Take notice of this special 911 GT3 RS.  He is leading at this point in the race by several seconds.
For the vintage car buffs, here is an older 911 Turbo about to get lapped by a newer Cayman GT4.
Here is another newer 911 GT3 RS, literally screaming by the grandstand at the last apex of the “S” curve.
And here is #71, the race winner coming into the last corner before he hits the front straight for the checkered flag.

This was such a super fun day.  The weather was threatening all afternoon, but the clouds never produced any rain over the track.  I really hope you enjoy this post as much as I did watching these Club Races.

Thanks for following my blog, and I so appreciate all of you!