Firstly, if you own an ST and are not planning to go, please PM me your VIN so I can sign up again. It was a blast! You really make yourself an opportunity to go.
I was there on the 4th and 5th. There was only one other Fiesta driver there and I don't think he is on here (Brian are you out there?).
The dinner night was a bust. Unless you REALLY like clean garages with a couple of cars, a truck with snow treads for wheels and a sub par tour of the gimmicky office area, I would suggest skipping it. We had to wait to start the tour because there was some type of "filming" for a commercial going on in the office. By the time we got to the office area though it was only like 6 people and 3 dogs taking pictures and looking super frumpy that we were in there. We started in the garage which is large and clean. Spent 5 minutes looking at the vehicles and then had some lasagna and salad and 50 types of beverage (none of which were the same thing). That was 30 minutes total and the "tour" of the front area was 10 minutes total plus the 5 minute late start and we were out the front door in 45 minutes. It takes about 30 minutes to drive from SLC to the location of the dinner :/
Next day was great tho! There were only nine (9) people in our session I don't know if that translated to more driving time or not because we had a bit of a thunderstorm delay right at the end of our lead follow session and before our timed urban x course. The urban x was fun but they only let you drive the fiesta for the "practice" sessions (which were dry) and then focus for the "timed" portion (which ended up being quite wet). Made for some excellently different driving conditions though! The other fiesta driver and I ended up with the best times for the day in the auto x even tho everyone else was should have been much more used to focus than us (I am not counting the extra time they cut off for ebraking in to this "bonus" box after the course is over).
The lead follow was great (just hope that no one is too slow). But I enjoyed the pick your poison - you pick what car you want to drive on the track for 15 minutes or so. The instructors are pretty chill and during the pick your poison, only gave me one tip, told me to give plenty of lead time to the focus in front of me and then advised me to look into doing track events
I was pretty stoked on that but I really have no desire to track the car at this point in its life.
Then you get your awards at their graduation ceremony thing. Probably would have been more into the award but my last name is spelled wrong on it :/ Really not a big deal but someone from OA contacted me two or three times to ensure they had the correct spelling of my name. Whatever.
Finally, it's off to the kart track. One of the instructors came too. He was showing his kid around or something but he was a total maniac on the kart track. That or I just follow the "these are not bumper cars" rule too seriously because he was acting like it was super mario kart and he had just gotten a star power up. Maybe he was just tired of seeing a bunch of slow pussyfoots drive all day long.
In summation, you should go if you havn't already. Oh and don't bother with hotel shit. There are a lot of awesome places in SLC on Airbnb!
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I was there on the 4th and 5th. There was only one other Fiesta driver there and I don't think he is on here (Brian are you out there?).
The dinner night was a bust. Unless you REALLY like clean garages with a couple of cars, a truck with snow treads for wheels and a sub par tour of the gimmicky office area, I would suggest skipping it. We had to wait to start the tour because there was some type of "filming" for a commercial going on in the office. By the time we got to the office area though it was only like 6 people and 3 dogs taking pictures and looking super frumpy that we were in there. We started in the garage which is large and clean. Spent 5 minutes looking at the vehicles and then had some lasagna and salad and 50 types of beverage (none of which were the same thing). That was 30 minutes total and the "tour" of the front area was 10 minutes total plus the 5 minute late start and we were out the front door in 45 minutes. It takes about 30 minutes to drive from SLC to the location of the dinner :/
Next day was great tho! There were only nine (9) people in our session I don't know if that translated to more driving time or not because we had a bit of a thunderstorm delay right at the end of our lead follow session and before our timed urban x course. The urban x was fun but they only let you drive the fiesta for the "practice" sessions (which were dry) and then focus for the "timed" portion (which ended up being quite wet). Made for some excellently different driving conditions though! The other fiesta driver and I ended up with the best times for the day in the auto x even tho everyone else was should have been much more used to focus than us (I am not counting the extra time they cut off for ebraking in to this "bonus" box after the course is over).
The lead follow was great (just hope that no one is too slow). But I enjoyed the pick your poison - you pick what car you want to drive on the track for 15 minutes or so. The instructors are pretty chill and during the pick your poison, only gave me one tip, told me to give plenty of lead time to the focus in front of me and then advised me to look into doing track events
I was pretty stoked on that but I really have no desire to track the car at this point in its life. Then you get your awards at their graduation ceremony thing. Probably would have been more into the award but my last name is spelled wrong on it :/ Really not a big deal but someone from OA contacted me two or three times to ensure they had the correct spelling of my name. Whatever.
Finally, it's off to the kart track. One of the instructors came too. He was showing his kid around or something but he was a total maniac on the kart track. That or I just follow the "these are not bumper cars" rule too seriously because he was acting like it was super mario kart and he had just gotten a star power up. Maybe he was just tired of seeing a bunch of slow pussyfoots drive all day long.
In summation, you should go if you havn't already. Oh and don't bother with hotel shit. There are a lot of awesome places in SLC on Airbnb!
