We’ll have more on this later (including video), but I wanted to give just a few first impressions of Thunderbolt at New Jersey Motorsports Park.

I drove the track for the first time today, in the Protege. It’s a 2.25-mile course. NJMP’s people say it has 14 corners, but a couple of those are slight corners that really become just slight swerves. In reality, it’s more like 11 or 12 corners.

The course is very fast–so fast that I saw 104 at the end of the main straight, the highest speed I’ve ever seen on track in the Protege. At Watkins Glen I see 101 on a good day, and at NHMS I can’t even break 90. There isn’t much elevation change, but what change there is is great fun. Corner two is a high-speed uphill right with a blind track-out point. Think the uphill at Lime Rock, but shorter and faster.

The later part of the course, before the esses that lead on to the main straight, is a complex of interesting turns that are very tough for the Protege because it’s not stiffly sprung. A sweeping right becomes a tighter right that can be double-apexed. This follows immediately into a long slow left-hander called “the octopus”. Getting the car settled going in is critical, and compromising the end to set up the esses–a la corner 2 at Watkins Glen–is even more important.

A more detailed track report and quite a bit of video are coming. All in all, Thunderbolt is a fantastic course and would probably be even more fun in a car that had 250hp instead of my Protege’s paltry 130.