As June rolled around plans to re-start racing were afoot, but soon so was a second surge in COVID-19, and a lot of uncertainty. For most of June and early July I basically ignored my build. My life has me with just 1 degree of separation from some 95 and 100 year old people, and in contact with others that have reason to believe COVID-19 would be particularly hard for. So even if some folks were racing, I couldn't in good conscience go hang out with 50+ other people.
By August things seemed to have remained stable at a low level in Massachusetts with just a few hundred cases state wide for a while. Additionally several races had been held by several clubs without any of them making the national news cycle as super-spreader events. Thus I began to have some hope that racing could be done safely. I started to work towards getting things put back together. Back in April, I had had a mix-up with ordering heater hoses, and that had to be resolved, which since it involves a lotus parts order took several weeks. Also I had to figure out how to get the harmonic balancer installed. This was complicated somewhat by the extra gear pasted on the front of it to drive the new oil pump.
The fitment was just a little too tight for me to feel comfortable pushing it on by hand, even though that was supposedly how it was supposed to go. For whatever reason it felt sticky and I *just know* that if I pushed it I'd probably give it uneven pressure and cause it to dig in and gall things up. It was one of those cases where I had that all too familiar feeling that I was about to ignore my instincts and then immediately regret it (much like that feeling when the torque wrench isn't beeping, but the nut feels like its going to strip... and you trust the wrench only to later realize it was set to ft. lbs not Nm... yeah...). So I took a deep breath and... stopped before I screwed it up.
Of course, the crank has a M12 1.25 mm fine threaded bolt, which is a size that exists in exactly NONE of the harmonic balancer installation tool kits out there. In the end I made my own ordering threaded rod, nuts, washers and a bearing from McMaster Car
Clearly not a solution for tight spaces, but when the engine is dangling from a crane, it works just fine. With this and a just a fine skimmer of light oil, it went right on with no fuss. Then I discovered the bolt that had been sent with it was 8.8... and factory torque says 120Nm... nope. So order a better bolt from Belmetric.
And somewhere along the line the aluminum underdrive pulley for the alternator had gotten dinged, and had to be replaced... but the alternator nut and hex drive shaft proved a challenge. I wound up ordering a Schwaben 22mm offset open end wrench allegedly specifically designed for alternator nuts. Simple, right? A wrench is a wrench, right? But when it arrived it didn't actually fit! It was 22mm per my calipers, the nut was 22mm per the same calipers, but the corners in the wrench were slightly too rounded... Really Schwaben? you only had one job to do here... only one thing to get right that actually mattered.... (No link for you!) So since I'd been going through a parade of deliveries, loosing 1-4 days each time I took a file to it and "Made it fit damnit!"... and that worked just fine as, if only as a 6 point rather than 12 point.
So at that point my heater hose finally arrived, and suddenly there was nothing blocking any re-assembly of the front of the car, and also I installed the new Stack Oil pressure gauge, and unblocked the re-assembly of the interior... The number of pieces of my car in the garage was now back ahead of the number in my basement!
Visible Progress! In the forward direction no less!... but then... I found a reason to take the intake manifold off the engine... That's the subject of the next post...
Once again, I've been slacking on the blogging, but as you will see on the standings page, the season has been progressing, and I've got a co-driver who's giving me some solid competition. The first few events were Freezing, Soaked and Soaked, so I pretty much lacked anything inspiring to blog about anyway. I went to the new Jersy Pro Solo, and had not really found my stride after missing most of 2017 in my car and getting almost nothing but rain events in the early season. I just wasn't getting slip angle like I should, and I was quite dirty, hitting cones or red-lighting on many of my runs as well. As will happen at the national level, if you aren't in top form you're at the bottom of the standings...
Some how I didn't feel eager to write about that either...
However, the weather improved, and satisfactory driving has finally come to pass. I've now managed to regain my prior level of driving from 2016, and in event #5, I finally found a new high point. One of the tough things about evaluating one's performance in autocross is that all measures are relative and the reference point is constantly in motion. To make a sane evaluation one has to make some assumptions. My first assumption is that the top drivers in our region are not getting slower. Given our region's consistent 6-7 national champions the last 3 years this seems reasonable.
While I'm comfortable saying that the top of the heap is still at a high altitude, there are some other things that clearly have changed. Firstly our region has had a buble of talented drivers mature in the last 2 years. I'd not want to argue that any of them have really pushed the top of the pax standings up yet in the way that Billy Davis did in 2015 and 2017, but they have definitely crowded the top. In 2016 I had 3 events where I was 1.5s off top pax, which resulted in 15th, 10th and 15th in overall pax. This year at the last 2 events, 1.5s from top pax is worth 20th and 19th... So making the top 10 or top 20 is significantly harder than it was 2 years ago.
Secondly, pax for the SSM class has been hit harder than any others besides AM, BM and CSP. BM/CSP and SSM are all almost a full percentage point harder than 2016 relative to the other classes. This translates into about .44 seconds tougher pax on a 60 second (raw) course. I've made a spread sheet here that shows that while all pax factors (other than AM) went down, the average pax factor went down much slower for SSM. This probably has something to do with the last 3 champions Thorne, Glagola and Wilcox all hanging out in the top of pax at far too many national events...
With that in mind, the 20th in pax result that had me 1.5 seconds off of top pax in event 5 Looks a lot like what used to get a top 10 in 2016. And my 2.3 seconds off of top pax in event 6 looks a lot like a top 20 in 2016 even though it now shows as 30th. Kudos to my co-driver Daryl, who kept the car in the top 20 at event 6 with his 19th in pax. For 2 events running my car has been 2nd fastest car with doors. Here's a video of my 2nd fastest run from event 5, which is probably faster everywhere except the start where I forget to shift like an idiot... Sadly I didn't remember to turn on the camera for the fastest run.
Additionally, I've also done some more maintenance/improvement on the car. Another factor in my bad results at the New Jersey Pro solo was epic levels of wheel hop on my launches on day 2 when the rubber was creating a lot more traction. A lot of exhaust bounce had also been noted at Devens, and the result was too much for my front motor mount to take.
The alignment was checked and it was almost 6mm toe in, probably due to bushing migration. Soft bushings, lots of toe-in and enormous race tires are a recipe for massive wheel hop. There was only one conclusion, tired old plastic/rubber A-arm bushings had to go. I replaced them with Monoball metal/teflon spherical bearings from Inokinetic. Since this seemed like an interesting job, I also made a DIY video for it:
The results? FABULOUS. Both me and my co-driver Daryl noticed improvement in the predictability of the back end when rotating it around a corner, and improvement in braking. The first was expected and the second was a nice surprise. My rear suspension had probably become so floppy that the ABS probably triggered earlier. I also suspect this slop negated all rear braking once it triggered by wagging the A-arms back and forth with the ABS pulses. The start for this course did not lend itself to hard launches, and due to the late date of it's discovery I had to continue with the above mount after Ryan welded the split for me. Next event we will be doing full launches if the course allows it and then I expect to find that the wheel hop has also improved.
So yeah I got tired of blogging about how my car wasn't working... probably you got tired of hearing about it. Then when I finally got it working in September I spent all available weekend time driving it rather than blogging about it. I had a little bit of pent up racing to let out! Then I took on a new client and have had 1.25 people's worth of work to do...
So what's the story? Well, After waiting forever and then some for a valve tool to arrive at the shop that did the install of the head that was supposed to make it easier for him to check on the valve seals, I lost patience and took the car to MC racing, and they hooked up a compression tester and a leak tester, and whoosh... air in one piston and out the other... Clearly the head gasket was not sealing properly. Perfect proof that it is so very good that Nick my tuner at Ace Performance refused to tune with the car as I delivered it the first time. Kudos to them!
With this new information I contacted the original shop and they started pointing out that I supplied the head gasket etc... basically preparing excuses to not make it right. That sucked but there is of course enough gray area for them to avoid the work if they so chose. Fighting over it was clearly not a productive route to go, so I took it back to MC racing and for 2/3 the cost of the previous shop they took it apart, machined it, provided a head gasket and re-assembled it in working order. There's still a slight bit of smokiness, but nothing like before, and unlike before, when things warm up the smoke goes away. I suspect some things are not quite perfect due to the previous install, but now it's close enough that the thermal expansion completes the seal as the engine warms up. I'll be analyzing oil and keeping an eye on it going forward. If I ever go to high compression pistons, it won't be on this block/head combo.
Speaking of oil, I've moved to red-line 40wt race oil now that the car is a full time trailer queen and never does more than idle around before it's fully warm. In theory this allows a slight hp gain and better flow when warm, at the cost of a little more flow resistance (and thus wear) during startup. It's also the case that with a trailer queen, it is a lot harder to just bop on over to get an oil change, so I'll be moving to changing my own oil and brake fluid. To make that easier, and to help combat the flow resistance at low temp, I went to a Canton Racing spin on oil filter which gives me about 3 times as much flow as the stock filter and 8 micron filtration.
I know what you are probably thinking... the man dumps umpteen zillion dollars into head work, ecu and tuning and he's blogging about his oil filter?? Point taken... I'll get to the good stuff now.
So with it back together and (mostly) not smoking, tuning was possible, and the results are very pleasing indeed!
I never had a chance to get a baseline, so the above plot shows the results vs a stock plot I grabbed from the web and scaled to match. These numbers are a couple HP better than any other normally aspirated plot/numbers I've been able to find for cars running stock compression. And these are with the super trap on! Based on a single test run, there's perhaps another 2 hp in it if the super trap is removed. I only have good things to say about Nick's tuning, and Baer who runs Ace Performance was straightforward and easy to work with. I'm very happy to be promoting them on my wing plates!
The Emtron Ecu installed by Ace Performance has all kinds of super nifty logging and capability. No end of parameters to ponder! Below you can see the data, possibly even from the above photo. The slalom in the photo would correspond to somewhere around the 6000 second mark below, but I cant' be sure if it's exactly that run or not.
And I also got a beta version of CAN bus support for the stock dash, which so far seems to work great! Nick/Ace/Emtron will be coming out with new info on their products soon and when I'm allowed to share some stuff I've seen previews of, I'll post it here. Until then, we'll all just have to visit the garage, glance out the window at the snow and sigh... And comb through data logs :)
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:
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...
I've had almost no time to maintain this blog lately. 50 hours has become
my easy week, with multiple recent 70 hour weeks. However, I have
manged (just barely) to sustain racing as well. The good news is that
things have been improving nicely through the season. Highlights since
the last blog entry...
TLDR;
Won Jeff Gordon Trophy, got top 10 at NER, FTD @ BMW, went to a pro solo, Did well at other events, video of top ten run here.
SCCA 6/19 (Points Event #4)
This event was a redux of the first event's co-drive with Brian Levesque. Every thing about this event was fabulous. The course was fun and fast, Brian's advice was helpful and the car was working well. Brian drove the car to 6th in PAX finally providing evidence that the car is solidly capable of a top 10 finish. (Ben took it to a 9th previously, but 9th and 10th are the bottom edge, and one can never know if it was a fluke or not, perhaps something only Ben can achieve...). Both Ben and Brian are fabulous drivers, but at 6th however, at least half the "regulars" in the top 10 had to have screwed up for it to be a fluke. I also had a very good result, with my best SCCA finish to date. 1.5 Seconds off of top PAX for 15th in overall PAX.
NE-SVT 7/16
Another excellent event, I managed to eventually find the 2nd fastest time of the day. The only car I couldn't catch was an E-modified Lotus 7 with a v6 engine... So I was the fastest production car of the day, but not quite able to truely say "FTD". Still, a crazy fun event. I got a second place prize shirt that says "Autocross, where the difference between winning and loosing can be 0.001."
SCCA 7/17 (Points Event #5, Racing against Leukemia)
This was a day of mixed results. My Co driver was Jeff Seeger who had driven last year, but this was his first time on the new wider tires. My results for the main competition were rather blah, a second or so off of the previous SCCA event, which punted me from 15th to 50th in PAX!! Holy stiff competition Batman! But that's just life in NER :). As nice as the previous course was, the course at this event unfortunately had one spot that really hit a weak spot in my setup. The big turn into the bus-stop 200 degree left-hander had it's braking zone on a series of bumpy cracks, and this set off my ABS on all but 2 runs. One of my worse runs was when it unexpectedly didn't ABS and I wound up stopping way too early and having to let off and re-brake (which then of course did proceed to activate the ABS and take me long anyway...).
As it turned out I was one of the top 4 fund raisers for the Race Against Leukemia again (other folks need to up their game!), so I got to race for the Jeff Gordon challenge for a second year in a row. This time I got to race first against Bob Lang, who was driving a B Modified formula car. So once again formula car vs Lotus (PAX/RTP time scoring). My run started with a big ABS and overshoot at the troublesome spot and an additional mistake on the main run way, probably with a cone or two. I knew I probably blew it, but I just kept going, stayed on course, and finished strong anyway. Always finish the race. As I began to pack up my stuff disconsolately I was amazed to learn that Bob had gone off course! ... ALWAYS finish the race. Never give up.
Next up was someone in an Street class car who's name I have unfortunately lost track of, but my vague memory is that he and his previous opponent were good fund raisers, but fairly new to the sport. None the less, I resolved that I was NOT going to screw up this run... And I did finally put down a fairly decent run, which was faster than my fastest run of the day in class competition. The result: I won! So for a year I get to keep this huge trophy on my mantle!
Wilmington Summer Pro Solo
I had originally hoped to get my car down to this event, but transport options turned out to be unavailable. So, I wound up getting my first taste of Pro Solo competition in Sam's STS Honda CRX. It was a lot of fun, but Given that it was FWD (not RWD), street tire (not Hoosier), on concrete (not asphalt), with no abs (vs abs in my car)... I had a bit of trouble getting a handle on it, so the big accomplishments were to A) actually get my butt out to a pro solo, and B) not screw up any of the starts ( I had 3 starts in the .5xx 6 starts in the .6xx range and no red lights). We won't talk about my times... You can go look those up if you feel a strong need to be underwhelmed :)
BMW club 8/6
Having just spent a bunch of time fudging around on a totally foreign setup I figured it would be a good idea to get re-acquainted with my car. The day was fabulous, and I discovered that I really really like Hoosiers better than street tires... so much so that I scored my first ever FTD (fastest time of the day). This was the real deal. I actually went faster than everyone else, within competition runs, and no * or "but" about it.
SCCA 8/7 (points Event #6)
I went into this one with a new motto of "no slow runs." This is an exhortation to myself to not allow my self an early safety run, or "motor course walk" but to go full tilt from the start. I did my best to put up a decent time in the first 3 and wound up 2.8 off of top PAX at the half way mark. On my first run of the afternoon I found 1.5 seconds which would have been enough to replicate my 15th place finish from 6/19, except somewhere I apparently acquired a mystery cone. I never found out where, but the next run was only 1.0 second pick up, and top PAX moved by .9 sec, so I wound up 2.7 sec back from top PAX, and 24th place. This was, however, good enough to win the class.
Renegade 8/13
Had a very good day, and came very very close (again) to beating Sam Creasy on PAX, but coned it away. Sam has been hard to beat because he reliably puts up consistently decent runs. I clearly can run faster, but I have trouble doing so consistently. This time my fastest run was 69.3 seconds and my second fastest was 68.1 + 1 cone... for a net time of 70.1. Again I fell victim to a mystery cone that I probably just barely based. Without that cone, I would have been almost a second ahead of Sam and would have had a second "true" FTD ... and Renegade is a much harder club than BMW. But a cone there was. FTD there was not. Such is autocross. Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades.
SCCA 8/28 (Points Event #7)
Absolutely picture perfect day for Autox. Mid 80's not too humid, tires worked well and not too hot. Also was on sticker A7's which Alan was helping me scrub in. First run was trash, the release compound was not fully scrubbed off. Second run, I *was* looking ahead, but I picked up the wrong cone, and my line was all wrong resulting in massive Conage. Third run I was thinking about not making the same mistake, and made another mistake on the element before, not paying attention to the present, I tried to drive the taxiway exit in a similar fashion to the last 3 taxiway exits in that direction... but brake late and sweep was not the recipe for this one and I spun. 11 cones in the morning. Stupid mental mistakes.
In the afternoon I finally settled in, had a mediocre first run, and then a really good second run. The third run I actually lost grip in the rear in front of the tower and drove really well thereafter. I made up the lost time and was slightly ahead of the previous run, but got slightly late in the finish, and then the car pushed under acceleration. I was headed straight for the outside row of cones in the finish, and that could damage the car if I center-punched them all. So I tried to lift just a bit to get my nose inside the cone wall, and I did, but unfortunately that was also enough to spin the car. But standing on my 2nd afternoon run I won the class by 0.1 seconds and got my first top 10 finish at NER. Granted it was on a day with 132 registrants, and panda was breaking. My comments about 9th/10th being a possible fluke apply here too, but I did beat every raw time Panda did put up before it broke, so it's still a pretty good day.
Here are videos of Alan an my best runs:
Going into this event, I had a virtual lock on SSM class because none of the other competitors put in a consistent effort this year. This leaves me extremely likely to get a jacket that says NER class champion, but with the first half of the year having been a string of 2nd places, I've been feeling like it's the jacket I didn't want... one for attendance only. With that in mind, I've been pretty intent on showing some sort of improvement in my PAX rankings. In 2014 when I missed the season championship by 0.051 seconds, the competition for season PAX was not nearly as strong as this year. If I equal or exceed my 19th place finish from that year, I will feel like I have earned the jacket anyway. This result, a 96.82 (out of 100 possible) in PAX points definitely helps with that. I should now move up from 24th to something like 20th. One more really good day so I can shed my 92.80 and gain another 3-4 points will probably do the trick. Definitely looking forward to Leafy's return next year.
Such a winter... 3-4 ft snow in the yard at max. Many all time snowfall records broken, season record in jeopardy. Even more amazing, it went from almost zero to nearly a season record in under a month. Not much was happening in early winter, so I didn't bother trying to manufacture a post. Then later, I was preoccupied with climbing on my roof to hack off the ice that was almost a foot thick in places...
With winter wrapping up and warm weather on the horizon, of course the car is somewhat disassembled... So I don't have time to write anything interesting now either, but I can offer you some pictures of lotus guts...
So obviously, the clutch is getting replaced.... other mods TBD, time/$ permitting...
Last Sunday was the season finale event for the New England Region of the SCCA. This event is essentially 3 events in one. In the morning, we get 3 runs, these 3 runs count as the 9th and final event of the year. This decides the class championships for the year. The champions and the top 10 in season PAX then get to compete for the Stirling Moss championship. The winner of the Stirling Moss championship gets the their name engraved on the 1959 Nürburgring trophy that Sir Stirling Moss donated to the New England Region chapter. Making it onto that trophy is the top honor in the region, and a sort of local racing immortality. The New England Region is very lucky to have this way of honoring it's top drivers. Those who don't qualify get to participate in the other afternoon event a 3 run non-points fun event.
For the second year in a row, I started the finale with a theoretical chance at getting my name on the trophy. Last year I was slower than my nearest competitor, Jonathan Leith (aka. Leafy), but had ridden a wave of points from early in the season before his car was fully working. I lost, and in many ways, it is a good thing I did. Had I won, I might well have become complacent.
This year I got off to an abysmal start, loosing 3 out of the first 4 events. Much like the end of last year, Leafy was driving faster than me. This year it was me staging the comeback. I worked hard on my driving, focusing on seat time and attending the Evo School in July. I beat Leafy in events 5 and 6, lost by 0.330 in event 7 and won event 8. This is about 1000 times more fun than riding a lead gained by virtue of your competitor not having a working car.
Unfortunately, my early season win, and the win in event 5 had come on days when national champion or soon-to-be national champion drivers had entered the class, and so I did not get first place on those days. Although our head to head record was tied Leafy had a points lead of 4 points, and the ability to win tie breaks by virtue of more first place finishes. I needed to gain 5 points, which can only happen with me in first, and him in 3rd or less, or me in 2nd and him in 5th or less. As the event neared, only Leafy and myself were signed up. A 2 driver class would leave me with no chance of winning at all.
With that in mind, I invited Ryan Field to drive in my car, so that there would be at least one other driver with a decent chance of beating Leafy. Ryan is actually a faster driver than I am by a good margin, so beating him was pretty unlikely, but a small chance is better than no chance. Soon after Ryan registered, Derick Sivret, also a very fast driver registered in Leafy's car. This would be a sensible points move by Leafy, now I have to beat 2 top flight drivers to win.
As a concequence, I entered the finale again with a faint hope of winning. The points situation was just too far against me. The season had been virtually lost early on and I was proud to have made it this close to begin with. My main reasonable goal was to beat Leafy, and at least be able to say I won 5/9 events vs him.
My first run was a flop. I didn't take quite the right line, and then spun when I tried to correct with a quick tap of the brake, but I got underway quickly and worked the rest of the course as a practice run. I wasn't worried, because I knew exactly how to fix what I did wrong. I didn't really pay attention to the other drivers, and on my second run I laid down a nice 50.649. Now that I had a real time I checked the other drivers times, I found that Ryan had coned every run, and I heard by word of mouth that Derek had only one clear run that was a 50.4xx, Leafy had no raw times better than 51 seconds! I was in 3rd, and only needed to gain around 2 tenths to win first place and the season trophy. It was the dream scenario! Holy crap.
Driving up to the line for the final run I recalled last year when I was trying to make up almost 3 seconds to beat Derek in a similar points situation. 3 seconds was hopeless, I drove hard but lost it near the end of the run. I knew I had to NOT over-drive this run and spin. That would be a horrible way to finish. But I also had to go faster. I was really nervous. Choking and going really slow would suck too. So I took a deep breath, and focused on getting the cameras working. At the line I decided to focus on improving my line near the tower to improve my entry to the taxiway. That should get me the 1/4 second or so I needed if I just ran the rest like I did before.
I improved my line and got a much nicer entry to the taxiway as planned. The taxiway and the first half of the runway went well, much as they had on the previous runs. All I had left was the big cut back across the taxiway and then the offsets to the finish. Perhaps it was because I saw so many novices screw up the cutback in the morning, and perhaps it was because some part of me recalled the end of the race in the previous season where I almost spun on the last bit turn. For whatever reason, I over broke just a little for the cutback. But this sort of mistake is not a tragedy. It's much, much better than braking too late and I belayed the excess traction conferred by the slower speed into a good exit from the element and made a great run to the finish where I hit the rev limiter. To the best of my knowledge it was a clean run...
The time...
50.457
Wow! It was CLOSE! When I got back to the paddock it was a dive for the phones, to check sololive.ner.org. And the result...
Derek's time turned out to be....
50.406
I was 0.051 seconds short of winning the season championship and gaining entry to the Moss competition.
Yet I was not unhappy. Here I was, nearly surviving the onslaught of two very fast drivers, and beating Leafy a second in both of the last 2 events. It's true, I don't get the jacket that says class winner on it, but a jacket is just a jacket. 0.051 sec is a tiny differential, and that's all that stands between me and being a class champion. My driving has improved drastically this year. Basically I'm there... the difference is tiny.
Next season should be very interesting... Hopefully both Leafy and I will up our game, and some of the national champions who visit the class will start coming up short.
And finally, congratulations to Dave White who won the Sterling Moss Trophy this year. Dave is a National Champion in Street Modified, and one of our fastest drivers. Now he has his slice of local immortality too. Here's a picture of him holding up the trophy...
So yeah I got tired of blogging about how my car wasn't working... probably you got tired of hearing about it. Then when I finally got it working in September I spent all available weekend time driving it rather than blogging about it. I had a little bit of pent up racing to let out! Then I took on a new client and have had 1.25 people's worth of work to do...
