Have you ever dreamed of what it would be like to race exotic cars on a private track or to take your own car down the drag strip? The experience is closer than you think! Ontario drivers, you can test your skills at a variety of tracks across the province.
What follows is a quick review of 5 places where you can experience track driving in Ontario from the driver’s seat of a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche Turbo, Corvette Stingray, Nissan GT-R or other race exotic.
1. Toronto Motorsports Park
You can race your own vehicle at Toronto Motorsports Park dragstrip, situated on Kohler Road in Cayuga, Ontario. Learn to test your skills and your car’s performance by taking part in the Take it to the Track program on Friday evenings or the Test & Tune program on weekends.
Don’t show up unprepared, however, because your car is required to go through a technical inspection and you need to be familiar with the basics of drag racing and follow dragway rules and safety regulations.
The motorsports park ensures your readiness with a mandatory meeting for drivers before permitting you on the track. Once you’ve passed inspection, you move on to the staging lanes. From there, you wait for your turn at the starting line where you’ve got 1,320 ft (over 400 m) to see what you and your performance car can do.
2. Ultimate Exotics
At Ultimate Exotics, you can race your choice of exotic supercar on a private track.
Over the years, Ultimate Exotics has built up a proven track record (get it?) of providing high-quality customer service, well-maintained cars, and a true racing experience with professional racing instructors who help you every step of the way.
In partnership with Toronto Motorsports Park, their all-inclusive packages offer classroom training looking at track layout and providing a safety overview, 2 discovery laps of the 1.8 km track, weekend dates, plus an accompanying race instructor for track day events.
3. GTA Exotics
With three separate track locations in Smithville, Bowmanville, and Grand Bend, plus a head office in Oakville, Ontario, GTA Exotics offers a range of experiences from racing your own car on a 1.5 km track to highway test driving to living the unique excitement of an exotic car track day.
All GTA Exotics are automatic and the minimum requirement is to be 17 years of age and over. All GTA Exotics packages come with four discovery laps as a passenger in a pace vehicle for the purposes of instruction.
4. Shannonville Motorsport Park
The track design at Shannonville Motorsport Park is unique in North America. Shannonville, Ontario, is located between Toronto and Ottawa, just north of Prince Edward County, and is convenient to get to.
The track here has a long history of hosting regional races for cars, karts, and motorcycles. Because of its challenging yet safe design, Shannonville Motorsport Park is favored by enhanced driving and racing schools for training their students.
All you have to do to join the fun, train, compete, or test is to book your track time.
5. Calabogie Motorsports Park
Calabogie Motorsports Park boasts the longest track in Canada.
It is 5.05 km (over 3 miles) long and 40 ft (over 12 m) wide. With 20 turns and a 2,000 ft straightaway, this motorsports park track was designed for you to experience high-speed challenges not found on other closed driving courses – and definitely not on public roads – while providing the safest possible conditions.
Difficult to master, the course draws drivers to return again and again to hone their skills.
Located in woodlands west of Ottawa, the track at Calabogie, Ontario, claims to be one of the most aesthetically pleasing in North America because it follows the natural topography of the site. Live your dream!