Spokes Event #2

Well, first loss of the season had to come eventually. Total domination wouldn't have been as much fun though, and Todd's catching up will mean we'll be pushing each other harder, which should pay off with dividends in the Big Races, versus the non-Spokes competition.

It looks like in comparing to one of the pacesetters, I may have had a slightly off race driving-wise, going from -3.65% off his PAX time to -4.64%. It's possible that the car may do worse on longer, more open courses.

This will likely mean I'm going to HAVE to come up with some scratch for Camber plates ASAP. This course had more slaloms, and the first one was a double with an offset in the middle of it, so I think the camber would help there. With the Wife's birthday coming up, and a friend coming to town the week before the National Tour, it doesn't look promising. Next after camber plates would be the downpipe and tune, which should help with the longer courses by adding power and turbo spool up.

The ugly truth...

Warning. For those that cannot stomach cone abuse, skip the first video. I'd like to say that no cones were harmed in the filming of this video, but I'd be lying if I did...

Much better, but not enough to catch Todd

Statistics allude to good things coming ?

I'm in the process of converting these statisics to percentage of certain pacesetters times, so as to compare my results to those that will likely be in my class at the big races. So far it's looking pretty good, but I'll be close.

This was done to help me decide if I probably need to invest in the camber plates, and downpipe and tune. And it looks like I probably should as soon as possible, and it may actually allow me to be competitive for a National tour trophy if I don't choke...

My time the last two races has been at 103% to 104% of my pacesetters time.

The STX competitors I'm comparing myself to have been very close to that range or worse, all in trophy positions, so if this extremely small amount of data can be attributed to anything then I might do well. Unfortunately, almost every one I race with are engineers of some sort with solid grasps on statistics, and tend to remind me of the many outside factors that can come into play, ruining my little ray of sunshine here.. ;-)

I probably need to get to 102% to 103% of pacesetters time to be solidly in the trophy's at a tour, So that's the goal. Mark Sipe, an RX8 driver is at that pace, and is registered for the event. I'm going to have to pick up some time in the next couple local events to get close to him.

On a 30 second course, that's going to mean picking up a half second to only be a second behind the pacesetter. Tall order.

SASCA Event #2

Finally, a dry race course.

Ended up with a good result but no gaudy 2nd place in PAX. Most of the National Contenders were there this time and I got man-handled, especially by the STR guys, and ended up 9th in PAX.

Good things... I ended up only 0.5 secs in PAX time off the top time of the day, my best result so far, and 1.3 seconds in Raw time behind my coach and pacesetter, J. Hale.

STX wasn't very well attended and I was in front of the mis-classed 2009 WRX by 3+ seconds.

Pax is getting brutal, with the top 12 on the same second at this event. Extremely happy to be there myself with this list of competitors.

Haven't got the hang of the GoPro yet.

Well, to say that the Lemons race didn't go well would be an understatement

We had fueling issues the entire two days that didn't allow us to run more than 2 laps without fuel cut-out over 3000 rpm, and TWS is a fast 3rd and 4th gear track with several places that allow for triple digit speeds.

We replaced pretty much every sensor in the car at some point and all the injectors with some known good ones. TPS, MAF, Camshaft PS, Fuel pump, etc. and couldn't ever get the car to run right.

Billy is thinking at this point that there are possibly too many systems missing from the car for the stock ECU to function properly at this point and it's limiting revs possibly for some reason.

A bummer because even with the cutout, Billy ran a 2:14 lap and the Fast lap was a 2:02. I think with it running decent and warm tires, we could have got down to 2:05 or so.

I've got a bunch of Auto X to do over the next couple months, but, hopefully they'll let me join them again at some point later in the year. I enjoyed hangin' out with them and BS-ing car talk, learning from their impressive amount of knowledge, and they never gave up on the car.

This Vid is actually of me in the WRX during the track day on Friday. I'm coming down off the oval into turn 1 at around 125mph, and hit 100+ in several places at this track. A fast track for my first track experience.

Sasca event 1, Spokes event 1

So far so good...

Three events run in STX and three wins !

Like the last event of 2011, I ended up 2nd in PAX at this one as well, this time out of 120 entrants. I'm just ahead of two of the engineers from Cobb tuning, who are very talented and successful Solo competitors, so I'm obviously pretty psyched about that.

Then at the 1st SPOKES event of the year, we had a lot of rain, so I'm taking these results with a grain of salt, as I was in an AWD car in the rain.

4th in PAX, and getting pretty close to my mentor in all of this, John Hale, STU and Subaru guru.