Texas World Speedway / College Station, TX

If you follow us on facebook, you know we were out of town for a few days last weekend! What were we doing? Well Justin was racing our '08 Shelby GT500 around Texas World Speedway! Last fall, Justin participated in his first road course driving event through The Driver's Edge at MSR Houston. He'd wanted to do this for awhile and for years he had claimed just how great of a driver he was. He was hooked within the first lap! We finished that weekend, and once the 2012 schedule came out, we decided to figure out what else he could attend. Our first event of 2012 was last weekend at TWS. What a fun track!!! The history behind it is fun enough to just be there... but to get to drive on the same course...the same bank... as A.J Foyt, Darrell Waltrip, Richard Petty, Mario Andretti, and other household NASCAR names...... gah, way cool! It was sad to see the stands falling down tho...you can't go up there anymore. :(

So how does The Driver's Edge work? Check out the website if you want to read in depth...But it's a 2 day learning event. There's basically 4 run groups: green, blue, yellow, & red. Green & Blue groups have instructors riding along with you. Beginners start in green and you may or may not spend more than one weekend there. Justin was promoted to blue during his first weekend out at MSR, and got to run in blue group during the afternoon of day 2. I think there's also a "blue solo" group, and that he was just promoted to that! Getting to yellow will be a little more difficult tho. Green, Blue, and Yellow groups cannot take any passengers other than the instructors. Red can tho! And at any of the driver's edge events...it's free to spectate. And for a $25 charity donation, anyone can ride along in a run session with a red group driver or an instructor. Each group gets four 20 minute run sessions per day, and you also get classroom instruction in between. The Driver's Edge has mottos like "Your Performance Car Needs a Performance Driver" and "We Don't Care What You Drive; We Care How Well You Drive It." Everything you learn on the track, you can apply to your day to day driving. You'll see alllllll sorts of cars out there too - trailered Ferraris, BMW's with paper plates, full out race cars with roll cages and entirely gutted interiors, miata's of all different year models... It's like a car show really, but everyone just happens to be driving 'round and 'round really fast instead of worrying about how clean their car is ;)

As soon as we got home from Texas World Speedway, Justin signed up for the next event there in June! Buuuut, our next event is actually in April at MSR Houston. But guess who's driving? ME! I'm kind of skeered... I'm a drag racer. I don't do too well with turns. Hehe!

I didn't get to take very many photos this go 'round, because I headed back to Houston early Saturday morning to shoot a wedding. But I made it back to college station late Saturday night and captured what I could on Sunday. Here's a few!


















Wish me luck in April!!! And if you ever get a chance to do a ride-a-long...do eeeeet! :)


                                                                                                                       

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