Daytona to Orlando – 54 miles. Saturday Night Drag Races at Orlando Speed World Dragway
Friday evening, March 16th. Daytona Beach to Orlando, FL. We decide to move on to Orlando so we can participate in the drag racing the following night at the Orlando Speed World Dragway. It’s a short drive to the Orlando area and upon arriving we have dinner at one of my favorite chains, Sweet Tomatoes. We have a difficult time finding a reasonably price hotel near an EV charger, but finally settle on the Winter Park area with an EV charger 2 miles from the motel. Even here, 50 miles from Daytona there are many bikers staying at the motel. After settling in at the motel, I drop the car off at the free EV charger located in a small municipal park and run back to the motel. Next morning, I run back to retrieve the fully charged Tesla.
We spend the afternoon at the Winter Park Art Festival checking out the art stands, grab some food, get haircuts at Kennedy’s All American Barbershop, a very authentic and classical barbershop, which happens to be a chain with locations in 4 states. Meanwhile, we have parked for free at a municipal lot with an EV charger. The Tesla will perform faster if we have a fully charged battery. The manager of the Drag strip track has texted us a photo of a 240V 30Amp outlet, from which we may be able to charge up the Tesla in order to race with a 100% charge on the battery. We drive to home Depot and purchase some heavy duty cable and electrical plugs to make adapter cables so the Tesla will plug in at the drag strip.
The drag strip opens at 9PM, it’s actually the first time the track has opened under new owners and management. This track is a great facility and a over two hundred of cars show up to race and watch. The track manager is excited about the Tesla Model S being among the participants for tonight’s racing. He allows us to store our luggage in his storage area beneath the announcer’s tower. The high voltage outlet unfortunately does not have any power and we have no luck charging the car at the track. At least we’ve been fortunate to reduce our load of the luggage. Juan works the GoPro and I race the car. While waiting my turn to race we mingle with the locals. I do three runs in the car. My first run involves a starting foul. The second run I get a good start and the third run I nail the start with a near perfect response time. Unfortunately, I don’t have any luck getting paired with any real competition and handily win each race. The races finish up a one a.m. and we decide to head home to Miami. We have 230 miles to go and we should be home before sunrise.
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Free Chargepoint charger in a municipal park in Winter Park, less than 2 miles from our motel.
Saturday morning, taking advantage of some high school kids and their offer to wash our car for free. Hey, they even gave us cupcakes while we were waiting. People are so nice in this part of the state!
