They are opening a new 1/8 mile IHRA Dragstrip in Green Cove Springs Florida (just south of Jacksonville). It is right down the street from where I work!
Scott
They are opening a new 1/8 mile IHRA Dragstrip in Green Cove Springs Florida (just south of Jacksonville). It is right down the street from where I work!
Scott
Is that where there is/was a speed shop that specialized in V10 Dodges?
That's correct. That is were Shawn Roe had his shop. It is actually an old TRW testing site. They used to run sprinklers and do some kind of wet testing.
Yeah, Reynolds airpark. The NCCC used to run auto crosses there when I had my Vette, and if you look real close at some old issues of GRM around the time we had our blue Miata and the WRX wagon you'll see some testing tories and covers we shot up there.
Like most giant slabs of concrete, it was originally a WWII era airfield, then an industrial park built up around it once the war was over. At some point GM leased all or part of the inactive runways and put in some of the vehicle dynamics devices (rumble strips, inclines, polished areas, SUPER polished areas with sprinklers. The two skidpads you can see on the satellite view were actually put in by an independent racer who leased part of the property for testing at some point.
When Sean Roe had his shop there he had leased usage of the runway area outside of his shop. This is where we used to test. The rest of the property was under control of... someone else. Airport authority, maybe? You can see a motorbike school there, and lines painted for a truck driving school. The NCCC would rent as big a chunk as they could afford that month and run pretty good courses.
The downside was that the place was tough on paint jobs. Blue Tape or a cousin with a bodyshop was your friend there. Also, management always seemed to be in a state of flux, whether through personnel or the threat of national security tightening down on large rail yards or whatever. It was difficult to schedule an event more than a month out for most of its competition history.
If it had been easier to schedule, there's a better than even chance you'd have seen a Challenge take place there at some point, as there was plenty enough room to do everything we needed to do and then some. Sadly it was not to be.
The last time I was actually there was a few years ago and there were tens of thousands of Hyundais fresh from the port of Jax parked on the runways. Cars just sitting there make a lot less mess than cars going fast, and probably pay a lot more, too. Can't hate a guy for making that decision I suppose.
Nice to see that competition has returned to that facility. It's kind of a cool place, with a weird sense of modern motorsports history to it.
jg
EDIT: SpitSix was right, TRW built the test facility. GM used it frequently, often through Roe's shop. First time I ever saw a CTS-V was there, even though it was just a plain ol CTS with no badges and CCW wheels and a nasty-as engine note and went retarded fast.
jg
Shawn's first shop was right next door to us. We were officed in trailers behind our building (by the way we were in the old VECTOR building). We would harass Shawn if we felt he did not do a good run on his chassis dyno!
In reply to Spitsix:
Vector - as in the weird-ass 1980's super car?
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