Location: Seneca Army Depot- Romulus, NY
Results: 4/7 (in ESP open- not Ladies), Clint was 1/7
Best beer of the weekend: Non-Stop Hop Onslaught: Good Nature Brewing
And now, back to my irregularly scheduled, six week old Championship tour updates! We left off with a dead car at Lincoln, and a last minute fix, just in time for this event! Huge props to Clint for spending all of two weeks digging through the car to find that it needed new fuel injectors and a fuel pressure relief valve, rather than a full motor rebuild! What a relief!
My journey to The Finger Lakes Champ Tour began on Thursday afternoon in St Louis, with a bus, to a train, to a plane to Detroit, where Clint picked me up from the airport to begin our real adventure! We decided to get on the road at 11pm after picking up the trailer from his house, rather than getting 3-4 hours of sleep before embarking. We continued on through Ontario Canada (our first international travel together), and passed through Niagara Falls just in time to see the sunrise together! Another two hours into New York from there, and we found ourselves setting up at the site by 9am.
After negotiating for a brief nap on an air mattress in the trailer, We started this weekend out on the test and tune course. After suspecting the motor needed to be rebuilt two weekends ago at Lincoln, we were super nervous to see if it would hold. Clint had spent two solid weeks of diagnosing and digging around to identify the potential culprit as faulty fuel injectors, rather than damaged ringlands.
Clint took it on its first run... The car worked!!! It was a very tight course, and on asphalt nonetheless (typically asphalt is more "slippery" than concrete), so it was difficult to get a great feel for it. But we verified the car was ready for the event, and I focused on looking ahead using the techniques taught to me in my Phase 2 Evolution Driving School a few weeks prior. (I'll post about that soon!)
I was also determined to get back on my launch control game, after dropping the clutch and nearly blowing the transfer case on my last attempt at Lincoln. I again (like at the Test and Tune event earlier this year), found that giving the pedal a quick stab, before planting it on the floor settled it at the 3500 rpm launch control setting. Once assuring it caught that (I've had problems with it bumping all the way up to 5500 RPMs!, I just needed to be very actively aware of slipping the clutch slowly once it starts to catch. This increases clutch wear quite a bit, but it's a racecar, after all! Clint will probably want to try a different clutch before this one needs to be replaced anyway. LOL!
Settling in before my runs on day 1, I decided I needed to change my outlook to settle my nerves. Number one priority should be to have fun! And conveniently, fast is fun. It's just another autocross, after all! Except... with one big difference from local events. You only get 3 runs each, on two different courses, on two different days, and your fastest time from each day is added together to determine final standings. So the fastest of your 3 runs on day 1 (including 2-second cone penalties), added to the fastest of your 3 runs on day 2 on a different course (also with those cone penalties, if applicable), equals your total time for the event.
We finished our night off with a MUCH needed dinner at a wonderful little lakeside restaurant. From there, it was straight to the campsite, where we set up our tent, showered, and crashed HARD after over 40 hours without any meaningful sleep. That was the best night of sleep either of us had ever had in a tent, lol. In fact, we slept through two alarms the next morning! Thankfully, the third one got us up so we could head to the site for some last minute course walks before the event got started. I've assigned myself more course walks as a general goal for the year. You can never be too familiar with a course, especially when you only get 3 runs!When it came time to drive, I kept a clean run with a good line on my first run. And in fact, I was 0.2 seconds ahead of Clint for a brief while! However, when I returned to our grid spot, we were told that the car read at 100.5dB on the sound meter during my run. That's 0.5dB over the 100.0dB limit, and we had to make a modification to alleviate some of that. Clint had a little exhaust baffle that he bolted into the end of the exhaust pipe (which is cut off and turned down just behind the driver's seat- the shortest it's allowed to be per the class rules). Hopefully that fixes the issue, or I wouldn't be allowed to make any more runs for the event. My second run I focused on looking ahead and using less brakes. It felt great and I kept it clean, but apparently I also used less gas, and it ended up being 1 second slower. So for my last run, I decided to just go for it! I drove HARD. Reminded myself to be confident, but not cocky. I was using the brakes harder and later, I used more gas, I modulated where I needed to throttle back a bit, and I kept the car wide while carrying good speed. In trying to get a better feel for braking zones, Clint had suggested turning in earlier and cutting distance if I found myself going too slow too soon, so I can get back on the gas sooner. Well, I did just that in one place on that last run- but, as expected, I turned in too early and ran right over a cone. If not for that cone penalty, I would have been 0.5 seconds ahead of Clint!
Overall, I was feeling good! I finished day one off just 0.25 seconds behind 2nd, and 1 second behind Clint. It was an interesting site and fun course, making great use of the strange layout.
On day two, we ran the same course backwards. It was still just as fun and maybe just a hair faster! With all that the car was capable of on day one, my main goal for day to was to push the car harder on all 3 runs in braking and acceleration, but still drive wide, and conservatively on the first run to assure I get a clean run in the books.
My first run, driven conservatively, was 0.2 seconds ahead of clint's first, with a really clean line. Unfortunately, I later found out that I barely nudged a cone and got a penalty in the first, giant slalom. Oh, and also that I blew off a hunk of the exhaust pipe at the starting line, and the rear differential was cutting power intermittently throughout the run (aka... the car became front wheel drive, rather than all wheel drive). Upon further inspection, we found that the exhaust ripped out the wires for the rear differential as it blew off the car, which proceeded to melt together and short out.
We took a 15 minute mechanical delay before our next run and frantically worked at rewiring the melty mess, and re-securing the exhaust. It was to no avail. I channeled my inner front wheel drive skills and took my last two runs, pretending like I was just driving my Mazdaspeed3 on Hoosiers. I did manage to make a 0.6 second improvement from my first run (since it had that +2 second cone penalty), but that wasn't quite enough to defend my 2nd place position. My third run was wild and I ended up driving "off-course" (I cut a corner short because I just wasn't looking ahead), so that wasn't any help. Clint didn't bother taking his last run, since he laid down a competitive time on his first run while we still had all wheel drive, and likely wouldn't have improved on it with the car in front wheel drive mode.
At the end of the day, Clint managed to keep his lead and took 1st in our class, and 21st overall! Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to make up enough time to keep my trophy position, and was pushed back to forth in our class (of seven). I would've snagged second with that first run, had I not hit the cone. I'm really disappointed by that, but I feel like I drove well, and would've easily had 2nd, if only the car had stayed together. Plus, if I would've just stopped hitting a cone on each of my best runs, I was running faster times than Clint, both days (aka, I had a faster "scratch time")! That's a huge improvement for me, regardless!
Next event's goal: Don't hit cones (especially ones that I don't need to be near anyway)!!! Remember how quickly the car turns in- especially at slower speeds, and stay aware of the cones around me while I'm looking ahead. This last tip for not hitting cones is key, since this has been a recurring problem for me.
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