turnfast.com is a site dedicated to being a how-to guide for amateur racing and high-performance driving enthusiasts. It introduces the reader to how driving and racing clubs operate, and offers in-depth instruction on driving technique and car modifications for improved performance.
the work
TurnFast is my own site, created to document what I have learned about race driving on road courses. I joined a driving club in 1997 to take my everyday street car out on a race track just to find out what it was like. I couldn’t afford a race car or the time to join a race series, but I still wanted to get out on tracks and see what I could learn about race driving.
Like I do with all new things, I read several books, talked with many people, and got out there and tried it. What I noticed is that while there is a lot of material written to guide a person into racing, there was nothing aimed at the type of non-racing performance driving I was doing. From the driving standpoint itself, it’s all the same, but what about car modifications, safety gear, and the club events themselves? When I started, I just had to dive in. I thought there needed to be a web site which explained these events, laid out what people could realistically expect to learn, what they needed to do to their car, and how they can tune their street cars for better, and safer, performance.
TurnFast became that site. It consolidates what I have learned, and is written primarily for the casual enthusiast. As a person becomes more dedicated, and willing to spend more time and money, then the professional racing reference material becomes more appropriate. Of course, you can guess that my car was gradually stripped and modifed. If I didn’t have to work for a living, you’d find me on the track every week.
my role
I created the first version of this site in 1999 and wrote all the articles during 1999 and 2000. Some of them might be a little dated, but mostly this material doesn’t change much. Especially when the emphasis is not the latest and greatest parts. The current version was a quick redesign in 2008 primarily to bring the codebase up to date, and give it a more modern appearance.
It’s not my greatest design work, but this exercise is very typical of how I approach learning new things. I absorb everything I can from the full spectrum on the topic, then I adapt the practical bits to the purpose at hand. In this case, I took material intended for full-time racers with big budgets for cars, and distilled into a reference and advice for the person with limited resources. Whether we’re talking about racing, engineering, or business processes, this is what I do. It’s why I’ve done so many things in my career. I want to learn, and I want to make the company I’m working for do better and be more competitive.
I haven’t had the time for racing lately, but someday I expect to be at it again, and pick up where I left off with TurnFast.
