After weeks of anticipation, five hours in a plane, and two hours in a manual transmission IS 250, I arrived in Sonoma, California for the Lexus LFA Driver Development Program, the full day training program at the Infineon Raceway meant to bring LFA owners a better understanding of their new purchase.
While I’m here to cover the event for a future Lexus Magazine article, I’m certainly no LFA owner — luckily for us, two actual LFA buyers have already written about their experience over at Club Lexus.
First, here’s a recap from CL member 07grIS350:
For someone who has never been to a race track before, this event was a blast today. While I don’t have any reference/bench mark for this type of events, I have to say Lexus did a fantastic job in organizing it.
– There are 3 LFAs, a black on black/red (Production unit, brand new with 320 miles on the clock), yellow (did not arrive until late morning), and pearl gray.
– We get to take turn driving the black and the gray cars, just to see the differences. The production unit reponses are sharper in comparison to the prototype with over 13K miles on it.
CL member gengar also attended, and had this to say:
Very short verdict: The LFA is the best car I have ever driven. It is so incredibly stable in cornering that it is simply mindboggling…It’s simply an amazing experience, way more special than any of the exotics I’ve driven, and especially at a place like Infineon the car really shines.
To top it off, gengar managed to capture his instructor hotlap with a GoPRO camera:
My turn behind the wheel is less than eight hours away — I’ll be sure to post up some initial impressions tomorrow night, with at least a couple photos of this new black production LFA that’s being used. Wish me luck!
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