...Gang aft agley!

The start of this season hasn't gone as I had envisioned it. The vision in my head mid February went something like this:

• Head swap mid-March
• Tuning late march/early April
• Learn the changes to car at Event 1 and in the next Renegade event. 
• Race #2 expect decent result
• more practice events
• Race #3 and onward... full speed ahead, chasing another top-10 & class wins to try try for a second season championship, with Leafy doing his best to make it tough (cue the stirring music, with videos of wobbling cones, and spin outs and times in red LED letters, people cheering, other people shaking their head or pounding the wheel... etc...).

It sounded like a nice plan, but like most plans, the intersection with reality was disruptive. Actual results were more like:

• Mid-march - Mechanic no space to work on car, must wait.
• Late march - Delivered car to mechanic
• Early April - Headwork more involved than expected due to one unreachable bolt, timing chain cover comes off to detach timing chain guide from head.
• Prep for race 1: Drove other folks cars at test and tune (thanks Bill, Thanks Jake!)
• Race 1: Co-driver lends me his car (Honda s2000 in full STR prep) wind up in 4th place, Co-Driver takes 1st with a time that (if STR pax) would be 7th in pax.
• Cancel reg for NCR Porsche, miss Renegade event
• Mid-April Mechanic reports head on, difficulty shimming the valves, some are too tight for shims
• Race 2: Co-driver again lends me his car, take 3rd place, with co-driver again taking 1st.
• Late April - difficulty getting shims.
• Early May - one valve so tight, even 00 shim won't work, contemplate head off and shave valve stem.
• Mid May - Consultation with machinist leads to shaving the shims instead of the valves
• Miss 2nd Renegade event...
• Event #3 - Co-driver at wedding, Drive Matt's ASP prep STI - take second place
• Late May - Car Runs! Get the car back, 
• Tuners, no space for car, must wait.
• Tuners schedule me for tuning in very early June.
• Miss 3rd Renegade event, Cancel Track Club Event... 
• new ECU installed and starting

So, If I'm very lucky I'll get two events worth of practice before the national tour, maybe 20 runs to settle into the new setup, and if any minor delays, only one event... if a major delay... I miss the tour, which counts as events #4 and #5.  Sadly (but lucky for me points-wise) Leafy also has had a slow start to the season and his car will also make it's first appearance in the tour. Where both of us will have to contend with Todd Kean (alien) in the #99 Nissan S240 "Panda" (space ship).

As for season points... well, the good news is Leafy mostly drove cars even less SSM than I did, and I'm well ahead of him. The bad news is Nick, my Co-driver is scaring the crap out of me by posting crazy good times in his car. I certainly expect a little bit of a break when we switch to my car, due to home-car advantage, but I'm thinking once he adjusts, he's going to be pushing me pretty hard (which is good!)... 

Nick's skill only adds to the fun of course. This year SSM seems to also have SML national champ in the Kuehl's SMF CRX... running in SSM for fun... sure it's SMF, but it's possibly the fastest SMF car in the nation, and she's a national champion. Next event, we get to see the long awaited result of Leafy's motor swap. He put a 2.5L engine in his NA Miata and turbo'd it... probably for 400+hp! This year, there is competition!  

On the plus side, I did get to drive some interesting cars. Many thanks to the owners. Here are some pictures of the cars (only the S2000 is a picture of me driving though with Nick passenger):

Updated:

• Tuner refuses car for Tailpipe smoke issue... ARGHHH!
• Drive Derek's S2000 at BMW
• Drive Nick's S2000 at Porsche Club and National Tour
• Still waiting for the music...

Thanks Bill!

Thanks Jake!

 Thanks Nick!

 Thanks Matt!

PS. if you don't get the title of the post, it comes from a rather famous poem called "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns... the full line is:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men 

          Gang aft agley, 

Looking forward to 2017...

ARP head bolts...

JCR Fab Ported Head

Piper Stage 3 Cams

Mechanical work complete - next: Tuning!

Looking Back at 2016

2016 was a pretty good year. It started a bit shaky, first with a spectacular spin into the grass at my first renegade event where I learned that the stuff on the edges of the runway has a lot of gravel and very little stopping friction. Next, in my first SCCA event I didn't drive well and worse yet I blew sound, and was disqualified from my afternoon runs. The result was my worst finish in many (5+) years despite the brand new set of 10.5" wheels. For the next event I did sound testing comparing various exhaust tips and made changes to ensure I was well within sound limits going forward. In SCCA event 2 I got all my runs, but the result was a race that (other than my previous race) would have been my worst showing in 2 or 3 years. It was a very uninspiring start, but the season is long. I tweaked some sway bar settings, did some more events, and got used to the new larger wheel setup, and began to have some success.

By SCCA event 4 I had it sorted, and made a 15th in pax finish (Brian Levesque took my car to 6th in pax that day as well out of 139 drivers). From there, I fiddled just a tad with suspension, Got my first FTD ever at a BMW event, and a 2FTD behind an "EM" lotus 7 with a wing and a v8 engine at an NE-SVT event... and then went off to nationals. There I got a very mediocre result (described in the last post), much of which was due to my inexperience at that level and driving that was worse than my average. The year finished out with my first ever NER top 10 finish, and another 15th in pax at the last points event. The points for SSM class for 2016 had been locked up some time ago due to some folks dropping out of the class and spotty participation by others. Not the way I wanted to win my first regional jacket, but wishes can't always come true.

With the "championship" for the season being substantially participation based, I was very keen to put up a good showing in the Stirling Moss Driver of the Year competition that it qualified me for. In my mind, the season points championship would be a "real" championship if I did well there, and a "fake" participation award if I didn't do well in the Moss. The Moss was more or less the hinge for the meaning of my jacket. The question at hand... can I race with the class champions, or would I just be straggling along in the back of the pack?

The format of the Moss is meant to require drivers to both drive fast, and drive consistently fast. In the morning you get points for speed, and in the afternoon you get points for consistency with respect to your morning time. NER is a Jumbo region, that takes home 6-8 national trophies every year. I did not expect to come out on top, ahead of all of our national champions, but the key idea was to do well, and be significantly nearer the top than the bottom among the 30 regional class winners participating.

After 3 morning runs, rumor had it that I was the 10th fastest pax time of the 30 drivers who had earned the right to participate in the Moss... so by SCCA trophy standards for individual classes, that's the very last trophy spot. I could have been a place or two higher if I hadn't coned on my final run of the morning. It was a good, not totally embarrassing result, but nothing to brag about either. Furthermore if I didn't do well in the afternoon, It wouldn't be hard to slide back into the back half of the pack. I wanted something better than that!

Because of the consistency emphasis of the afternoon, cones are death. You simply have to run clean. I figured at least a few of the 9 folks ahead of me would hit cones, so the best way to move up was to drive hard, but be ultra focused on not hitting cones. Clean runs and an awareness of whether the run was going well or not were the goal. With cold tires for the first run, I knew it was going to be a difficult first run to try to get close to my morning time on warm tires, even though the air temps and pavement temps were up. I knew I would need to push it... I did and I succeed in getting a time 0.4s slower than my morning run. -0.4 was likely to take me further from winning the whole thing, but was clean and probably good enough to keep me moving up a little bit.

On the second run, I did a poor job of the first big sweeping turn and knew I was slow, and that nothing would matter unless I made up the lost time, so my only thought was "Go, GO, GO!!" I drove as hard as I knew how and I might have been close to making up the lost time (thanks to the warmer conditions), but then I had a slight problem with the angle of my approach to the tight pinch on the runway, and had to back off slightly to ensure I didn't hit a cone. The result... another almost identical time, also -0.4s off my morning time. With two 0.4s differentials my chances for a win were thin, and would rely entirely on nailing the final run within 0.1s, and even then it would be an outside chance. On the third run, my tires were fully warm and i was having a good well sorted run through the taxiway, possibly slightly ahead of my target time, but once again, I didn't set up properly for the pinch and had to work quite hard not to hit a cone. I knew I had lost a bucket of time, but that was behind me and I did the only thing there was to do: Focus on getting back ahead of the cones, and finishing strong. The result was another run time -0.4 under my morning time, but clean again.

As I finished, I figured I had likely moved up a place or two, having heard of some folks ahead of hitting cones, but unless something crazy happened, I did not suspect I had a winning result. They keep the results secret till the ceremony at the end, so I packed up and headed over. During the pack up I heard that one of our top drivers had accidentally gone a lot too fast, so that provided me with some further hope, but It's NER... and one person messing up will not get you the championship. Guaranteed there will be several folks who were fast and didn't mess up. It's just too big a region for lucky wins. Within classes lucky stuff can happen, but in cross class competition, only top drivers having a good day win at NER SCCA events. I had a pretty good day, but my driving can still improve.

They announced the top 3, with Bob Davis taking the repeat win and Dave Gott almost making it with a record breaking consistency score. I was not very surprised that I wasn't on the podium, though part of me had dared to hope for 3rd. After the photos and congratulations, I got a look at the result sheet... 4th place! I was only one spot off the podium. In relation to my previous achievements, THAT is a result I can be proud of. I eclipsed several people who normally do much better than me, even though they didn't hit cones. I will have to work very hard to do that again. Fourth of thirty is not a winner, but it's also not a bad showing. Also 22nd of 104 in season pax is fairly decent, Thus I feel that the failure of my competitors to put together a solid season is not necessarily definitional in my 2016 season championship. It's not inconceivable that I might have won anyway (except if PJ had remained to run panda all year... but he's an alien, and panda is a multi national champion car, so this doesn't bother me... Ok it does bother me, but not too much :) ).

So, while there is still sort of an astrisk next to my season points championship for 2016 in my head, I also don't feel like I need to hide the jacket or mumble when it's mentioned either.

What I do need to do is win again! And the expectation is that Leafy is back, with a new motor in his turbo'ed miata... THAT should be interesting, and fun to compete against!

And this year... the car will have more power, but more about that in the next post.

Bye Bye Maybes

In several previous posts I have pondered the state of my build and the state of my driving in relation to the ultimate autocross competition, the SCCA Solo Nationals. Those speculations were a matter of finding someone who HAD been to nationals, supposing that maybe they drove as well locally as at nationals, and maybe they were on good tires, or hadn't just screwed with their setup the night before, and maybe, I could drive in 3 runs as fast as I do in 6 or 8... etc.. maybe, maybe, maybe.

But now, this year I don't need to engage in the maybe's. I finally fulfilled a dream and managed to get me and my car out to Lincoln Nebraska for SCCA Solo Nationals (with the invaluable assistance of my co-driver Bob Lang! Thanks Bob!). So now, rather than say "maybe I would have placed..." I can now say firmly that I *did* place 10th of 17 competitors in SSM and slightly over 50% in the overall PAX rankings. These are now facts, not suppositions.

Obviously, when I dreamed the dream of going to nationals I hoped to say something slightly better than that. The problem is 1305 other competitors also had a dream they were trying to fulfill too... :). But it was a first time, and firsts are always  learning experiences. Things I learned include:

• 1306 is a LOT of competitors, the sheer scale of the event is incredible. Acres of cool cars to see!
• 5 days straight of walking around on concrete in the sun poses a significant hydration challenge, which requires more attention and care than a single day of autocross. 
• Driving while dehydrated is not a good strategy. My driving on the first day was fighting a hang-over-like dehydration headache, and I didn't realize the nature of the problem until just before first runs. I sucked down a full bottle of water after each run and by my third run I started to feel better, but even so, what seemed fast to me simply wasn't fast at all.
• One has to be careful about over-excitement... on my very first run I went off course because I had planned so carefully how to be sure to stay ahead of a turn that I had wonderful amounts of grip (and probably not quite enough speed), and so it seemed natural to use that grip... and I turned harder and cut inside of a cone I didn't need to. I made the course harder for no good reason at all!.
• I REALLY need to solve the fuel starve problem in my car. I fuel starved on my first run on the practice course on Wed, and this then made me second guess turn after turn all weekend long. On the second day I wound up running an at elast 20lbs extra gasoline to avoid fuel starve in the huge long left handed sweepers. So remove that gas, and save 9lbs on an Aluminum tank... an easy -30lbs, and fewer distractions.
• Concrete is grippy, but only a tenth of a G more at most (race capture showed readings in the upper 1.6G ranges a few times), and then only when you can get yourself to trust it that much further.
• Experience matters. Bob got it done better than I did, and brought in a 7th place finish out of 17, which was more or less my best case target for the event.
• There is certainly a capability gap in the current prep level of my car. It's happened before that some of our local Aliens have hopped in my car and shaved 2 seconds off vs my times on a 60 second course. Thus far in my car bob and I have split 2 and 2 for who drives faster, so starting from Bob's time, and giving him .5 for one spot he feels he messed up on his final run the first day, we get about an 8 second gap, shaving 4 seconds for alien level driving, this leaves about 4 seconds, across 2 60 second courses to make up. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that 2 of the top 3 PAX times for the *entire* event were in my class... the third being Billy Davis in CSP... for a second straight year.
• Billy Davis is just amazing... he set top pax for the entire event, with a car that was running on only 3 out of 4 cylinders on the first day... This also suggests that maybe there's  even more than 2 seconds/60 to be gained via driving... but probably I'll never get THAT good.
• OPR (other people's rubber that sticks to your tires) is a huge issue. I WILL have a portable generator to run a multi tool for removing OPR next time I go to nationals. Any other method of removing it is just insanity.

All in all, it was a fabulous experience, and I want to do it again, if for no other reason than to prove I can do better than 10th of 17... I'm pretty sure I can, but you haven't done it until you've done it. The cars that took home trophies were all max built cars with excellent drivers, and 6th was a McLaren MP-12C. In it's present form I suspect my car can catch the McLaren given an "A-list" driver in my car and the same driver in the McLaren, but to trophy would take exceptional skill.

But for now...  I have gained some experience and we can hope to learn from it for next time.

The car pushed a little, which I noticed on the last run of the last event before Nationals as well. Also, Bob noted that it seems like his FP TR6 had more ultimate grip, so I'm probably going to try some minor tweaks to soften the front slightly and add more camber in the rear... Even on concrete there was at least 3/4 of an inch of excess fender clearance, so I needn't worry too much about softening things slightly...