One Lap of America: Sweet Suites at VIR!

By Jen Dunnaway

Editor

If you're ever traveling overnight to a racetrack that offers "garage suites" like Virginia International Raceway does—you must get one. The suite at VIR has a spacious bay down below and a full studio apartment up top—so it's already pretty close to my idea of a dream home—but what makes it the coolest thing ever is that the hotel balcony overlooks the racetrack's entire front stretch. So you can roll in at any time of the day or night, wrench on your ride until you fall into bed, then wake up the next morning to panoramic views of race cars screaming past your front door and not even have to drive more than a few hundred feet to join the starting grid for your session. Does that beat the hell out of a Motel 6 or what? More after the jump...

For a hundred bucks a night (on top of the cost of the room), I kind of felt the garage should have had compressed air and running water, maybe a parts washer. But the space was well-needed, since we had to swap out a noisy wheel bearing on the STi, as well as tinker with some check-engine codes and throw on some precautionary pads and rotors to last us through the rest of the events on the circuit. Doing all that in a dark hotel parking lot would've been no fun at all.