Saturday, February 27, 2010

Wrap up and Rev Up

So somewhere around the middle of the summer my life got busy :). I didn't really maintain this blog for the latter third of the season. Oh well... Blogger claims I don't have followers anyway. So what happened in the second half of the season? Well, right after the last post I ran in an event with the BMW car club, and got a result that seems to be my best of the season... Then things sorta drifted down hill from there. The next SCCA event was Dry and fun and felt good, but my times slipped just a little. I think this is not so much of a difference in my skill as a difference in the courses. The BMW course had LOTS of slaloms and that's probably my best element.

Then there came the second half of the summer... Events went from one every 1-3 weeks to one every month or more. Add in the addition of a new romantic interest starting in July, and I didn't really put time into finding alternate non SCCA events. So the first issue is that my seat time went down. Secondly, I made changes to the car... New Tires. Starting in September I ran Hooseier A6 tires. My Kumho V710's had well over 100 runs on them, plus whatever the previous owner had put on them. I'm sure they were cooked, but probably it would have been better in the short term to go for a new set of V710's, but the general wisdom seems to be that the A6's are the tire to have.

But what's past is past. This season I look forward to

  • A repaired front and rear clam with now pristine body work and faster paint

  • Carefully taping my car to prevent cone marks like I should have done last year.

  • Analyzing my runs with MaxQData's Quantum

  • Getting an Alignment that is more autocross focused.

  • Working out the pressures for my Hoosiers

  • Perhaps a front splitter to add downforce and protection from cones

  • Perhaps the adjustable front sway bar from BlackWatchRacing

  • Definately working hard to make sure I get on the gas early coming out of turns!! (I suspect that I still wait until I'm almost done turning to gas it at least some of the time...)



Oh yeah, and I need to figure out which events to run!

The big question is to NEDIV or not to NEDIV. I'm leaning towards not given the distance, Decal Requirements and my generally busy schedule, but part of me really really wants to too :).

Disclaimer: The calendar below is UNOFFICIAL! I'm using it for myself, but you should rely on the website of the organization running the event for the final word on when/where events will be. As of this posting both the SCCA schedule and the BMWCCA schedule are not final either and might change