At this time last week I was pulling into a parking spot at Limerock Park in Salisbury, Connecticut. For those of you that don’t know this is quite a famous race track. As many of you do know, I have an obsession for cars and speed. Through sheer persistence, networking and internet browsing I found Torsten Gross and the Just Hands Foundation.
I jumped in the car Monday afternoon and made the 7 hour drive to Massachusetts where I stayed for the night. The excitement was immense and I could barely sleep. I was up before the alarm and before I knew it I was signing in and wheeling up to the drivers’ chalet. The atmosphere was super chill and also super intimidating all at the same time with real race cars and racer car drivers pulling up right behind me. To make a long story short, I met some of the instructors, ate some food and headed down to meet up with the man himself, Torsten Gross. I still don’t know too much about Torsten except for the fact that the man can drive!!!
Within a few minutes we had our mini drivers’ meeting where he basically decided if he wanted to get in the car with me or not…Remember this is a Porsche Cayman on a racetrack! I think on the straights I was hitting 115 km/h or 185 km/h into a sweeping right hander called “big bend”. This is not something to be taken lightly or joke about. This man put his life in my hands and I knew that this was an amazing opportunity that was presented to me but I also knew the risks associated with being on a race track. You could see the tire marks and indents in the wall where people had pushed a little too hard and found the limits of their race car or abilities.
Torsten took me out for a couple of laps to learn the track. We then transferred back into our chairs and then I got in the driver seat. O Yea…Torsten is a C6 quadriplegic who races a 981 Porsche Cayman. Check him out here: https://torstengross.com/. The hand controls I was using in the cayman were completely new to me. I thought there would be somewhat of a learning curve but I picked it up pretty quickly which really helped because there was so much going on in the car and on the track that I couldn’t worry about knowing how to brake or accelerate, it needed to be second nature. There is so much that I want to tell you about the track, the instruction and the experience but we would be here forever. I think that this should be a video, so if you want to hear more about the experience let me know in the comments.
Basically, I was on track for about 2.5 hours in total. There were harnesses that were extremely tight, helmets and a lot of speed. The funny thing is that I was such a novice driver that I couldn’t extract close to what that Porsche had in it. Torsten is a great instructor and pretty intense, but I think he knew I could handle it. He gave me free reign to drive as I pleased because he knew I respected the car but at the same time he knew that his life was in my hands and that this was no joking matter. With much faster race cars flying around me, better drivers with slower race cars and Torsten in my ear (literally because we were mic’d up, SO LEGIT!) I was on cloud 9. After a couple hours on track. I was mentally, physically and emotionally drained.
For years I shied away from racing as it was too expensive, I didn’t have a proper race car(so I thought) and Oh yea, I’m disabled. I know that when there is a wheel, there is a way but honestly after breaking my back I couldn’t see my way or how I’d get there until I connected with Rob Parsons. He is a fellow Canadian who drifts a car. From that moment of seeing him slide that car I knew it was possible but knew I had a mountain to climb. Fast forward 8 years, I have built my own race car. I have taken it to the drag strip and two road course tracks here in Ontario, I have raced a Porshce Cayman at Limerock on track and I have never been more excited about where my future is going. All that I know is that it’s going to be fast.