SGwick

Warning: Long

Well I attended my 1st Korean Track Day at the Korean International Circuit (KIC/F1). I didn't have my Stang :-( but got to watch and spoke with one of the organizers. Compared to our typical track day back in the States, there's a drivers meeting in the morning, they let you know what group you're in, and you're on your own. After each run there's no driver download/meeting, they're not lined up by groups, and depending at what track/group you run there's no EMT staff (KIC had them). The events are advertised through coffee shop websites, although one website is starting to populate all track day events. One nice feature is everyone was issued a transponder, regardless of group, and times were recorded so you could see where you racked up against the rest just for general runs. Then they still had time attack runs separately. Searching for track days/organizers sucked because everything was in Korean so I was using bing/google translators. The scene at track day was definitely not grassroots. Groups of car are serviced/maintained by certain tuner shops, and can be transported to the track as a group. Members track times from different events are recorded on one central website so you can see who ran the fastest, on what track, and if they were using slicks or regular street tires. You'll see from pics they a lot if them looked like dedicated track cars (gutted, functional additions, roll cages). Members seemed to be the well to do crowd but still friendly but tight knit. I was the only one taking pictures at track day walking around the paddock area. Everyone at KIC was assigned a pit area. Overall the Korean track day scene is definitely here and getting more and more organized. Just wish I had my Stang. Hope you like the pics.