Had a great time. Here are some observations.
Many of the instructors were from PCDS West (BMW-speak for the school at Thermal, Calif.), but few if any from Spartanburg.
The cars were different. At Thermal, as best I recall, there were no competition or xDrive M3's or M4's. At Indy yesterday they all where M3Cx's and M4Cx's.
My group (one of three, each with 6-8 attendees) did skid-pad first. It is a wet skid-pad at Indy, in contrast to the special surface dry skid-pad at Thermal. This was done in M5's with DSC and AWD off.
We were told to leave DSC on in all other events or risk being 86'ed. My instructor turned it off when he drove us during closing hot laps. We did all the other events with AWD (4WD) on but were given the option of using automatic (Drive) or manual (Sequential) mode.
We did autocross in M2's, but a shorter version than I have at many other events, and as I seem to recall at Thermal. I attended with my nephew, who had never done auto-cross but who has a lot of other track experience. He would have been fastest with a 14.36 time but missed the stop box and somebody with a clean 14.48 time (as I recall) got the pat on the back for that. [Indy does not award metals, unlike Thermal and Spartanburg; I won a gold one at Thermal last August.]
Indy is a big track, just under 2.5 miles the way it was laid out for us. The other events were split-track ones before lunch in M3Cx's and M4Cx's, and after lunch we did full track laps in the same cars.
On the full track my nephew and I were the first out, meaning we were first in lead-follow behind an instructor. We both got up to 148 mph as we learned the track. Big mistake.
Then we rotated and were behind another driver following the instructor, etc. I later got up to 152 mph and my nephew hit 154, but we were both limited by the drivers ahead of us.
The lesson learned, don't be first up. Everybody in my group hit at least 148 and one person in another group claimed to have reached 157 (maybe these cars had the M Driver's Package with the speed governors set above 155 mph, maybe not).
In sum, it was great and I have now driven Indy. Maybe the Nurburgring next (I was scheduled to do so in a Lambo in 2018 but the God's conspired to prevent that).
Actually, next may be the Stunt Driving class at Thermal in a Mini. I just learned about those recently, but the wife is making noises about having me committed.
