Memphis Motorsport Park is essentially a drag strip. The NMCA Muscle Car Nationals are held there, Car Craft has had big events there, etc. The drag strip has been extended to a closed track so both types of event can be run. Essentially, the drag strip runoff zone has been continued into a big turn, and some zags have been added to the return side. It's a long, skinny place on the map. It is a right hand, or clockwise, course.

The front straight is the entire length of the strip and runoff, easily half a mile. It ends in the Carrousel, a huge, banked, decreasing radius turn like the Cloverleaf From Hell. The Carrousel is very wide and long. The entry radius is probably close to 75 yards, banking is (guesstimated) around 5 degrees. Doesn't sound like much, but it makes a lot of difference.

The Carrousel, or Turn 1, feeds into a sharper right hander, Turn 2. Turn 2 in turn feeds into a *much* sharper left hander, Turn 3. 3 has a very short straight, before a narrow, tight, more-than-90-degree left hander - the beginning of the Ms. They would be esses anywhere else, but this is Memphis. The track narrows considerably down the straight, and the curbs start. These are the gentle FIA curbs, and they're all the way through the Ms.

The Carrousel is really all three turns put together. Most of the people who run there consider these heart of the Memphis track. I agree. Coming into the Carrousel in the Corvette, you're running 135 to 140 mph when you hit the braking markers. Just use the brake pedal as a prop and let the ABS haul the thing down to about 80 mph, while you're downshifting to third, then turn in and drop the hammer. You enter about a foot from the straight's guardrail, which ends at the beginning of the turn, and make a very tight turn high on the corner. I have to look out the passenger window to see the apex cone. As the car accelerates you move near the middle of the turn, still floored, as you head down the embankment for the apex, 3/4 of the way around the turn. The banking changes slightly after you pass the apex. You are now drifting slightly as you enter the "tighter" Turn 2 section at well over 100mph, straightening the turn out as much as possible - good Memphis technique is to get at least a little grass in 2, then turn in to 3, which is nearly 90 degrees and very tight. There is also curb on the inside. You transit from right to left turn, still under full throttle and accelerating, and get the "thump,thump" as both driver's side wheels hop the curb. Also good Memphis etiquette. You then enter the very short straight before the sharp right into the Ms. Most of the Porsches, the Corvette, and the like can take the entire Carrousel at full throttle *and* slow down quick enough for the Ms, lesser cars have to bleed off some speed coming through 3 in order to make the turn.

You go *fast* through the Carrousel, with lots of grass, curb, sturm, and drang, with the oh-shit-lookitthat entrance to the Ms, complete with curb, at the end. You are at full cornering force through a banked turn about a quarter mile long, just in Turn 1.

The Ms are very tight, very narrow, and have curbs on both sides. They look horrible, but there are really only three tight turns, the initial right, and the following left and right. Coming out of the third turn, you straighten the car out, point it at the guard rail on the right, and stand on it. Your line will take you over both right and left hand curbs and you will enter the "back straight" at about a 30 degree angle. You have plenty of room to turn left onto the far side of the straight, aimed for the 90s. The 90s are a pair of zero-radius, bumpy jogs in the track. You nail the brakes at the end of the straight, turn left, then right, onto a longer straight.

When you turn into the first of the 90s, there's a guardrail to the right, about forty feet off the track. The outside of the second 90 has a guardrail at the outside of the turn, right on the track. You are entering the drag strip lineup area, and it's fairly oily and patched. Even though the straight is fairly long, even the red-haze types take it easy through there, because at the end of the straight is Grant's Tomb.

There are three foot concrete walls bordering this section of the track, which gets slicker as you approach Turn 7. There used to be 7 and 8, two 90 degree right handers. Last year they got rid of 8, turning 7 into about 150 degrees, then a broad sweep into the drag strip. There are white staging lines painted on the course, pointing right into the wall where 8 used to be. Very bad to follow the lines. The retaining walls are backed with earthworks. The entrance to the pit lane is here, ending in a concrete wall with tires piled against it. Not good to hit that either, but it's on the inside. The oil slick from the drag racers lets you drift up against the wall as you enter the straight proper, which begins with the concrete starting pad. Bump, bump. The concrete has rubber stripes easily an inch tall, and the rubber is slick and bumpy. It's like being on a dirt oval, almost. You bump and drift out to the far wall under power, sight in on the Carrousel far off in the distance, drop the hammer, and move to the right to point any faster cars by. Most cars attain terminal velocity well before the Carrousel and just sit there wound out until time to brake.

Memphis has only four real braking zones, but they're doozies, requiring you to drop 40 or 50 mph depending on what kind of car you have. The 90s and the Tomb are two of those zones, and a little too much red haze can get you a seriously bent car. Once you've made a few laps to get the feel of the track conditions, the exit of the Tomb can be almost as much fun as the Carrousel, but only if you have enough power to drift the car through the gentle right hander and catapult it out onto the main straight.
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