Day 0:
My brother Robert, the same guy that sent me a link to the LeMons site 8 years ago, sent me this:
http://www.scca.com/events/1985020-2016-targa-southlandThis looks like half track, half road rally, half road trip, and half autocross.
My brother and I signed up for it. They have competition and "experential" classes. From what was explained to us, the experential class gets more seat time for both drivers, so we picked that one.
I think this is going to be fun, although the Duff car is not the most comfortable choice for driving from NC to Kentucky.
Day 1:
First day complete, Raleigh to Charlotte. As much as I thought that cruising the country in the Duff car would suck; it's not that bad of a ride. It's not as nice as going to the track in our giant air-conditioned palace and towing the Duff car, but the road rally through the mountains of North Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky would not be the same in a 35' Winnebago. We ran out of room in the car and had to strap a spare tire to the roof, which greatly amused the crowd here. They greeted us with a grilled brat and a cold beer when we arrived, which was nice. Tomorrow is an autocross at Zmax in the morning and track from 3:00-8:00 at the speedway. We'll be doing the oval with the infield course. After that we'll pack the car and head to AMP for Time Trials, Road Rally, and a car show on Saturday.
Here's the ultra-portable Duff Beer Mobile Oppression Palace "Lite". What really makes this setup work is the air-conditioned tent:
Day 2:
All of us lined up at Zmax after the autocross:
It's brutally hot outside; I'm lounging in the tent now, waiting for my track session. The autocross at Zmax this morning was huge and very fast. They gave us a 2-hour lunch, so I got to go to the Jerky Outlet and stock up.
Everything is like a sampling of a regular event. Robert and I each got two runs at the autocross this morning and will get two 20-minute sessions around the track tonight. This is like the PuPu Platter of motorsports. I beat Robert at the autocross this morning, and he's not happy about it. He didn't notice a decreasing distance slalom and got caught by it.
We've never done the banks at Charlotte before, only the infield, and only in the rain. We had a pace-car led session earlier, so we're ready to hit it at speed now.
This will wrap up at 8:30 tonight and we'll pack the stuff up in the Duff car and head to Atlanta, where we'll start time trials at AMP at 8:00 A.M.
The Duff Beer car on the bank at Charlotte. This is fun:
https://youtu.be/qrYJTIDQsUc2017 Acura NSX production number 0, with glowing carbon-fiber brake disks:
Robert going on track for his first session at Charlotte. Note the section of dryer vent to direct some air at the driver. This was a huge life-saver for the long highway stretches:
Charlotte was a long day and we ended up only getting one track session. A new Shelby GT350 oiled down the track and caught fire. It took them forever to get it cleaned up.
Day 3:
After spending the night at Robert's house in Atlanta, this morning started early with time trials and lapping sessions at AMP. We were using the wrong schedule and missed the drivers meeting, losing us 5 points.
Then we had a road rally through the mountains. It was my first road rally. We quickly got off course and then found another car and just followed them. Luckily they came in 2nd, so we did pretty well. We got enough points to regain our lead in class.
We handed out Duff Beer at the car show, so hopefully we got some votes.
Tonight I decided that another night in a tent was not necessary, so we're at a Marriott in Tennessee. Tomorrow we're up early and off to the National Corvette Museum for more autocross, track-cross, and trophies:
Randy Pobst has been running his Exocet. Here he is lounging on the Duff car at the car show. All the cool kids were hanging out at the Duff car, probably because we are so cool, but maybe because we were handing out Duff Beer. Ballot results have not been posted, but we think that we did well. I spent a lot of time repeatedly voting for us, so hopefully we won:
600 Miles away from the start, we are at the final day at the Corvette Museum. I won the autocross again; I think that Robert's getting used to it. It looks like we are a lock for the Advanced Experiential class, barring some form of stepping on our weiners in the track-cross. Official Road Rally results are not posted yet, but unofficially we did very well.
2017 Acura NSX production number 0, currently loaned out to Road & Track, has been one of the more interesting cars running with us. They give pretty much non-stop ride-alongs in this thing. It's pretty cool-looking and kind of fast too:
Day 4:
Over 1000 miles down, about 400 to go. I'm at my brother's house in Atlanta, recovering in the AC while I wait for the sun to go down for the drive home to Raleigh. Driving the Duff car for a 6-7 hour stretch on a hot sunny day is a special kind of hell, but driving it at night is bearable since I aimed the headlights so I could see stuff in front of me and zip-tied a piece of dryer duct to the door to direct some air towards me.
The Car Show votes have been tallied. We were hoping for victories in "Most With the Least" or "Spirit of Targa", but much to our amazement, and the amazement of the organizers, the Duff car won Best in Show at the car show. Given the awesome rides that were there, it was, to say the least, a shocking victory. The clincher appeared to be that our car has a built-in beer bottle opener on the rear fender, while the new Acura NSX, regrettably, does not. Take some notes here Acura, a truly world class car should open your beer for you. If it doesn't do that, then you're better off with a clapped-out '94 Honda Civic. Some mention was made of bribing voters and going to prisons to get convicted felons to register with the SCCA and cast votes for Duff Beer, but we're a LeMons team, so what were they expecting? That type of politics is just normal for us.
The Corvette Museum Autocross was fun, about half the size of the awesome Zmax course, but a seriously fast course where we could carry a lot of momentum. We finished ahead of several cars, including an S2000, Mustang GT, and a BRZ, so there must have been some real novices out there, because the Duff car is easily the slowest car in this field by a good margin, with the exception of a similarly clapped-out Cavalier with a badly leaking head gasket, but they are in a different class. Even so, they beat us at the autocross, while we edged them out at the track.
Robert finally beat me in the track cross, which I blame on him getting more practice runs than me, because he couldn't just be a better driver. We finished about mid-pack, but we left a lot of time out there. It was basically the east course with a start gate at T1 and a finish gate at the last turn. It was about a mile long and roughly 50-60 seconds. The only bad thing was that the track insisted that we leave 30 seconds between cars, so you had a massive wait between runs. They could have let cars go every 5-10 seconds and been fine, as all corner worker stations were staffed, and we would have gotten a lot more seat time, but the track insisted on 30 seconds. I was still taking a second off/lap on successive laps, so we were still learning it when we had to do our timed laps. I had 5 runs and they went 60-59-58-57-56, while Robert got a couple of extra practice runs and got in to the 54's.
The Car show victory, combined with our pretty good performance in the Road Rally, clinched our class against a 2015 Golf GTI that was driven well and very much faster than us everywhere that driving skill and speed mattered. I felt a little bad for them, getting beaten by a rolling junkpile, but I'll take the win.
Overall I liked this event and will do it again if they do another one. It was the first event of it's kind for the SCCA, and that showed in the scheduling, which was pretty much made up on the fly, but I'm guessing that subsequent events will get better. My biggest gripe was running later than scheduled at Charlotte and then starting earlier than scheduled at AMP the next morning. After a very long day at Charlotte and a long drive to Atlanta, I really wanted more than 4-5 hours of sleep before my long day at AMP and drive to Bowling Green. The biggest surprise was how much fun the Road Rally was. I didn't think that we could have than much fun at the legal speed limit. Next time we may take a car with air conditioning and comfortable seats. Having a caged track car for the track sessions did let us drive at 10/10 at Charlotte, AMP, and NCM, which was a huge plus, but 1400 miles of street driving in the Duff car is really brutal.
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