Turns out, the Mclaren factory and design center is about 1H out of London and 30mn from Heathrow airport, so this time I had planned to stop there as soon as I landed. Putting aside that United managed to take off 3H late (mechanical issue and no spare plane), I got there 45m for my appointment (nice private tour while the place was mostly shut down during the august holidays which is also the time they use to retool the factory. As a result I didn't get to see the factory, but got a nice tour of their office and private collection of special cars. Thank you to Naveen from Mclaren SF for organizing the tour and Jeff for being my gracious host.
Due to a united plane failure, I arrived a bit late in LHR and 45mn late for my appointment (and do not take cabs from LHR, they are a complete scam, I did because I was late, but it was 80 pounds for a 30mn ride, uber was half that). They nicely waited for me and gave me a tour of the center:
nice welcome gift :)
Artura, the new electric hybrid, I'll take that over a prius :)
We then went through the history of Bruce Mclaren and the company's racing history:
aero was trial and error without wind tunnels back then
James Hunt's car
a nice trio of Mclaren F1s, production car, race car, and mule/test car that ended up racing too
gold for heat reflection
the very first production Mclaren P1
a full scale senna built out of legos, impressive
it weighs a lot more than the original :)
And after about 1h30, the visit was over, thanks a lot to Mclaren for hosting me for the visit:
Buttonwillow was my first time going to a track in Socal, it was a slightly longer flight than going to Thunderhill, but not a whole lot. I ended up flying to L62, which was the closest airport I could find, and was so unused that it was actually used for RC flying. I found out later that the track actually allows you to land on their drag strip, which saves the drive, good to know.
The sky was very smoky, made for some nice views and sunrise, but not great visibility:
Here's what the track looks like, including an extension that is being built:
Landing at L62 interesting, there was no traffic there, but RC planes
Patrick nicely gave me a ride to the track and we got there just before 9, when it opened:
not my ride
that was my ride :)
Took me a while to learn BW, and got below 2:00 equivalent as the configuration of the day was a bit longer than normal. I'm not sure if I truly love the track, but I took a few sessions to learn it and get better at it.
Joon was nice enough to hook me up and I signed up for the Mclaren AutoX in Salinas. It had been almost 15 years since I last autocrossed, and never autocrossed any of my more recent fast cars.
So I started by going to Salinas Airport, that was fun:
I then did a few runs, and got my times down
this was the best time of the day
I got 2 better times even, but they didn't count because I touched some cones
My best unofficial time was only 0.5s slower than their chief instructor and my tires were way past their prime, so I was pretty happy with that :)
I got a price, woohoo :)
After the autoX, I went to Carmel to enjoy the nice downtown, sea view, and cars:
lots of nice houses
police nicely closed Ocean Av after a while, sigh...
I went to see a few nice stores to kill some time
After a few hours, it was time to go to the Mclaren reception (thanks again Joon)
and I ran into Dan, awesome!
I had never been to Monterey/Carmel during car week. That wasn't exactly the perfect day to go, but it sure was fun. Glad that I was able to make it.
