Wow, what an AWESOME event!!!! Can't wait for next hear. First, let me thank Gascant and Keijidosha for shuttling me to and from the Salinas airport. After getting home from Montana at about 3:30pm, I was airborne in a rented Cessna 182RG by about 6pm, and flew with my 12 year son from San Diego MYF airport to Fullerton to pick up JeremyW.
We landed at Salinas about 9:30pm, and Gascant picked us up. He had been waiting at the airport for an hour, thinking we might get there at 8pm (as I had previously told him). The hotel was only a few miles away (completely sold out), and after checking in, we walked over to Applebees for some late night food.
We met up in the lobby at 7:30am, and all arrived at the Refuel 2012 event just in time to check in. There was an hour-ish long driver meeting (longer for newbie racers, that I didn't sit through). Then, lined up for our first hot laps. There was a few problems with slower drivers, so after a post brief, there was some attempt to make things flow better for round two, and it did. With JeremyW as my co-pilot, I banged out a 2:14 lap time on a COMPLETELY stock 2012 LEAF, besting more than one Tesla.
One BMW ActiveE that was following me had to drop back when his battery overheated. He got some great video of my bumper that he has promised to send me (he is also a Tesla employee). We all got to use the DC charger / generator that Craig, the Nissan engineer, brought up from Phoenix. It was slightly derated from the 48kW that the LEAF can handle, but we did charge faster than any ANY OTHER EV, including the boatload of Tesla Model S's present (I have tons of great pics of prototype and other versions of the S").
I test drove the Coda, which has got to be the world's most vanilla car. Good acceleration. Boring design. Anyhow, by 5pm, I was back at SNS airport, and we flew over to Harris Ranch (home of the first Tesla "supercharger") and I had a great steak dinner. Added 15 gallons of 100 Low Lead to the flying machine, and had a full moon, clear night back to FUL. My final leg to MYF was IFR, so I shot the ILS 28 Right and taxied to the hangar.
My red LEAF was past VLB, so I'm just finishing up an hour of charging before driving 11 miles home. Sure would like a DC charger!!!