A pair of LEAFs at ReFuel 2011 - Laguna Seca (Photo courtesy of Nader Assemi)
LEAF owners take on Laguna
For the third year now Speed Ventures has sponsored an electric vehicle motorsports event at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Speed Ventures offers regular folks the opportunity to drive their street car on racetracks throughout California. One thing that makes ReFuel unique is that the event registration fee was just $10 for alternative fuel vehicles. By way of comparison, the upcoming August dates offered at the same facility for conventional cars start at $340. The event is open to three classes of electric vehicles – motorcycles, production vehicles and prototype or race vehicles. Talk about encouraging the adoption of EVs! Anytime one can get track time virtually free it should not be missed. (We might have to start thinking about doing this next year.)
A couple of daring LEAF owners took their vehicles to the track with hopes of good times and real-world torture testing their rides of choice. Nader Assemi mounted a video camera to give an on-track view of his experience. Some things to note – this is an entirely stock Nissan LEAF – down to the stock tires. Having been around Laguna Seca before, I can attest to the fact that running stock low rolling resistance tires around this track and producing the results that Mr. Assemi did is quite an accomplishment. Here is a link to Mr. Assemi’s web site for more on-track photos. But if the photos aren’t enough for you, here is a 10 minute video of a portion of his track time.