Slipstream - August 2011

Commentary From the Left Seat
By Rob L. Turner, author of The Driver, a Marc Lange novel
At Laguna Seca with TRG
In early July, I got an invitation to attend come to Texas and stay at my house during a track weekend
the Rolex Grand Am race at Laguna so we can get some him some seat time. I will persist!! That
Seca as a guest of Kevin Buckler’s, car should be turning laps at Laguna Seca, not sitting in has
The Racer’s Group (TRG). My company garage on weekends!
is looking into some kind of partnership
with TRG and it gave us a taste of what the
team was all about. Two people from our
corporate office in Sunnyvale, CA, drove
down to Seaside to meet me and we piled into my rental
for the short drive to the track. One of the key people from
our marketing group attended, and upon meeting me at my
hotel, informed me she was not a car person. Judging from
her old Toyota Camry, she meant it. Old, faded, with many
dingers and a very trashed out interior, it was a beater, but
hey it has 170K miles on it and is still going. The other
person is from our corporate office in Japan and as soon as
he arrived in the US, he bought a silver 2004 911 GT3, he is
my kind of guy - a total Porsche enthusiast. He plans to take
it back to Japan with him, I only hope he will find a place to
drive it. I spent a lot of the weekends trying to convince him
to join the PCA and do some DE or track events. He would
smile at me and say, no, no, no, he was afraid to take the car
on the track for fear of damaging it. I have invited him to
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