That sucks Donnie. Hopefully you can move up some spots tomorrow and Jonathan can grab the top spot.
Donnie Barnes wrote:
Nothing like wasting a trip out here on a couple stupid mistakes.
Welcome to my world. I'm still trying to recover from the self-inflicted gunshot wound to my foot.
I had major tires issues during the Pro Finale and wound up running my old 230+ run tires on the front with new tires on the back. The new tires had some sort of issue and began chunking pretty badly along with having virtually no grip. The car was as loose as it has ever been and I was literally hanging on for dear life at the Pro. It was highly entertaining but not particularly fast.
After the Pro, I took the new tires over to the Bridgestone truck and the guys there hadn't seen anything like it. The "new" pair I ran on the back looked like a big rat decided to make a snack out of them and the other "new" pair had similar signs despite having only ~20 street miles on them. I bought this set off the truck at the Huntsville event earlier in the year and they speculated that I must have gotten a bad set or something.
They happened to have 1 set of shaved tires left in my size so I went ahead and bought them for the Championships hoping the car would return to a somewhat normal state. The head honcho wouldn't be there until later in the week so the guys at the truck couldn't do much with the bad set until he inspected them. He wound up giving me a new set yesterday late in the day and I have to thank Donnie for bringing them home for me. Strangely enough, I didn't have room for 6 wheels + tires along with 4 extra new loose tires in the CRX along with my extra junk.
Eric S. and I ran the warmup on the new tires and they seemed to be fine. The car was *much* better and I was feeling decent going into the Championships. At least until the first day.
I had a decent clean first run and then got a little wild during my second run resulting in a big DNF. I tried to back off a little for my third run but I wound up messing up my rhythm and along with running slowly, I managed to pick up a cone in the process. Note to self: Never try to back off-- it just doesn't work.
Eric had a great run the first day and did an awesome job in the car. I keep saying it but that guy has an amazing amount of talent and he is always a factor when he gets behind the wheel. If he stays in the sport and gets in a top car, it's not a matter of if he wins a championship but when. It certainly doesn't hurt that he is a super nice guy and is always willing to help with whatever needs to be done.
I worked the first slalom on the west course in the last heat while CP was running and it nearly did me in. Most of those guys were totally out of control and I wound up madly chasing cones after what seemed like every other car. When a 500+ hp CP car hits a cone, they tend to punt it 30-40 yards at a minimum and I don't think I've run that much since high school gym class. Somewhere during the end of the second runs, my back decided it had enough and it started locking up on me really badly. I had to switch places with the "clipboard guy" and when I came off course, I had to visit the medical personnel as well as fill out an incident report. That was definitely a first and not something I wish to repeat in the future. Hopefully back surgery in December will fix all that stuff and I won't have to worry about it in the future.
When I woke up in the morning, I knew I was in trouble. I immediately started pounding Motrin and I think I was up to 2000mg by the time our heat started. Eric helped me out a ton by getting the car ready so all I had to do was shoehorn myself into the driver's seat and hope I could hang on. Maybe it was the distraction I needed because I wound up driving pretty well even though I felt like I was going to die after my first run. By the third run, I was actually starting to loosen up a bit which was perhaps helped by the adrenaline starting to flow. I felt like I left a couple of tenths on the table with a couple of minor mistakes on my third run but that was about it. I don't think I could have caught the top few times of the day but I was about as close as I could get which I was pretty happy about.
Eric struggled with the east course a little with some early cone trouble and finally got in a clean third run. We knew it was going to be close between the two of us based on our times but we had no idea it would wind up being a 0.008 second difference. That's close! Eric did a great job in his first "big" event and even though he was a little disappointed by dropping a few spots from day one, he was still happy to be in the trophies. He definitely served a wakeup call to the competitors on day one and I imagine there isn't anybody in the class who doesn't know his name by now!
Anyway, it was a good trip overall despite the issues and I look forward to doing it all over again next year!
Good luck to everybody tomorrow and hopefully Spratte, Jonathan and Aaron can bring home a championship!!!
Jim
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
There was a fairly heavy thunderstorm that hit the area but I still don't know how people manage to wreck so badly on the highway. Hopefully nobody was hurt. The only positive for me about the delay was that I didn't have to navigate the twitchy CRX on Azenis with no defrost in the rain for more than 30 minutes.
