THSCC Forums

A quick glance at the standings shows...

It looks like DS is a Tarheel affair w/ Jim Feinberg winning, Keith Vail close behind, and David Spratte in 4th. Donna Frank is 2nd in L1, about .025 behind the leader.

Hmm, i hear that it might have been a bit of a frustrating experience. Any other updates?

I thought the event was run pretty well honestly, so well, that I think we could have gotten 8 runs on day 1 qualifying instead of just 6. That was a little dissappointing, but I knew that going in.

Driving the FS Shelby GT was fun. It has great power and turns reasonably well, but is a big hunk of iron. After 6 runs, I got down to a 43.5 raw on the left (RL and coned) but still hadn't really figured out the right side. I finished 4th out of 6 in FS.

In the challenge, things went much better for me. I qualified 46th of 135 (co-driver qualified 45th) I won my first 3 challenge rounds in bizarre fashion. My first matchup, my competititor no showed, so I ended up with a bye. Good thing too, for the car was really pushy on cold tires. My second matchup, once we were staged, I saw that my competitor had rolled out slightly and wasn't stage properly, so I hit a nice leisurely .946 light to ensure I didn't redlight and won that. The third matchup I got a decent light and ran "fair", and got beaten by about 2 car lengths, but the competitor had a .406 redlight, so I took the win.

In the fourth round of my bracket, I went up against Mike King and lost by a few car lengths, which was fine, considering it was just to determine seeding within the Super Challenge. Mike ended up being the #1 seed in the super challenge and I ended up 17th of 32.

My co-driver (Asher Wunderl) finished .011 ahead of me in class competition, sitting on a coned run that cost him 2 seconds, won his first three challenge rounds and lost the seeding matchup as well for the Super Challenge, so he qualified 16th of 32.

In the Super Challenge, when the pairings came out, the first pairing was me vs. co-driver By the rules, in the Doublecross, you can't share a car and be matched up in challenge competition. We could settle it a number of ways: 1) Flip a coin 2) Let one of us go ahead 3) One of us can grab a ride in another car that's still in the challenge. After talking to Asher, he wanted us to settle it on course. I ended up in Carter Thompson's RX-8 (Asher and I became friends running RX-8's in 2006 when he finished 4th and I finished 5th at Nationals). Due to BS being about 2 seconds faster than FS, I ended up with a harder dial in. I ended up hitting two cones on the course (the RX-8 turns just a wee bit better than the Shelby ). I beat Asher back to the line (barely) and he ended up hitting 2 cones as well, so I won the round.

In the round of 16 I went up against Steve Wynveen in a SS Z06 (I was then back in the FS Shelby). I had a good run going until the last couple of turns and then got late and nearly took out 3 cones. Avoiding them killed my time and Steve won easily. I think some Konis would have helped settle Asher's car down a lot, for Youngers car (with adjustable Tokico's) was much more stable under braking than Asher's on stock shocks (the lot was pretty bumpy).

All in all, I was happy with my challenge performance. I'm looking forward to the DC ProSolo now. With 19 in DS, it should be very interesting. - AB

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'14 Toyota Sequoia Platinum 4WD
Super Westerfield Bros - '93 Integra - LeChump Du Jour
STX 93 - Scion FR-S

I know some people complained about cones and/or DNF's not being called in, but I think a lot of that had to due with the lack of experience of some of the people on course. I worked the timer and during our heat, they seemed to be on the ball. We were watching the cars to insure that cones were being called in. - AB

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'14 Toyota Sequoia Platinum 4WD
Super Westerfield Bros - '93 Integra - LeChump Du Jour
STX 93 - Scion FR-S

I'm not sure what the "frustrating experience" was, we thought it was a great event with a fun course that really required you to be on the right line.
My only frustration was being called DNF on my quickest left side run for passing the course exit point by about 10 feet, stopping and backing up to exit. That exit was over a rise in the middle of a sea of cones and was not hard to miss considering the only indicators were the cones marking it were a different color, a number of competitors ran right past it and continued around the course before being red flagged. They had announced a bit earlier when several others backed up that a missed exit was not correctable and would be scored a DNF. Because of the DNF and a cone hit on my first and last left side run I did not have a clean left side. My DNF run was otherwise clean and the raw time would have put me in 7th rather than 9th. I felt like I drove a lot better than I have in some time.
Donna drove well in the qualifying/class competition but was bit by the pax to end up second in L1. She had the fastest right time of any of the ladies. Her times would have put her 6th in AS open.
In the challenge she won her first two races going away, but nicked a cone on both runs, eliminating herself from the challenge. All in all we were both fairly satisfied with how we ran in our second AX ths season. We look forward to the DC Pro.

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SPIN or WIN!
there's no glory for going slow.

I wasn't aware of any rampant frustration among the competitors and I certainly had a great time. The announcers seemed to jump the gun a bit when calling out the winners of the Sunday bracket match ups and then would have to correct themselves for cone calls but that was all I saw. The course workers were mostly on the ball but each station had to cover a rather large area which contributed to some late calls since you had to wait for a car to clear the area before radioing in a call. If another station had to make a call at the same time you had to delay even further to keep from stepping over each other on the radio.

DS was a tough crowd as usual and you never knew who was going to win until the last run was finished on Saturday. GS opened an industrial-sized can on us as the Integra R's spent most stuck between gears and way out of the power band on the rather slowish and narrow course. It was definitely a great course to have lots of torque and/or super short gearing of which the Integra has neither. It was a great weekend to be driving a Crossfire, ES MR2, AS Solstice or anything with 8 cylinders.

On interesting tidbit I learned while working the course and chatting with one of the turbo GS Mini drivers was just how powerful those cars are. Apparently he had his car dyno'd a few weeks ago and it put down ~185Hp at the wheels. It also put down ~220ft-lbs of torque at 3000rpms which is flat-out absurd given the displacement of 1.6L. Crazy and a bit disturbing all rolled into one...

Sunday didn't go too well for me as I managed to finish destroying the rear motor mount in the Integra. It has been a bit suspect since I got the car but on my first launch in the bracket competition, I was greeted with massive wheel hop which finally did the poor thing in. I was getting really bad wheel hop combined with wheel spin resulting in a big push during the rest of the run and I managed to go down in a spectacular ball of flames to a national event rookie driving a <shudder> mildly-prepped STS Saturn who was seeded roughly 90 spots below me. After thinking about it for most of the night, I've officially decided to blame everything on Mr. Spratte.

That loss pushed me to the losers bracket which I almost clawed my way out of until I ran into Aaron's nemesis Steve Wynveen. That race was much closer than it probably should have been considering the way the car was running at the moment so I certainly can't feel disappointed with the way I drove. As a consolation to Art McDonald for not making the event, David and I did manage to personally knock out 5 Triad members between us from the challenge bracket. It was still a very fun weekend and everything should be back in good shape for next weekend.

As a final insult to injury moment on the drive home, I kept feeling like the car was wandering a bit on the highway but passed it off on the effect of running with 3 out of 4 motor mounts and the rather heavy winds blowing about. In a rare moment of clarity about 200 miles away from the event site, it suddenly dawned on me that we never torqued the lugnuts down on the wheels! Doh! We pulled over and I'm guessing 19 of 20 were torqued to ~35ft-lbs while the 20th was in the 15ft-lb range. Yea, that's how we roll...

Although, officially, I'm blaming that one on Mr. Spratte too since, well, my car prep skills are, dare I say it, legendary...

Jim

Glad to hear that it was better than the posting I saw previously!

I think this may be the first time I've ever gotten bad information via the interweb.

- AB

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'14 Toyota Sequoia Platinum 4WD
Super Westerfield Bros - '93 Integra - LeChump Du Jour
STX 93 - Scion FR-S

That actually doesn't surprise me. I drove my Aunt's turbo cooper S and the low end mid-range punch is impressive. It feels like a 6 cylinder.

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Silver Honda
Green Ford
Blue/White Suzuki
Red Triumph
Grey BMW

"Never let life be shaped by fear of its end"

No, you're a towel!

For the record, I took 3 of those.

First driver on a cold morning seems to result in me doing a drift demonstration. And while that isn't fast, in the words of Danny Carroll it "looked cool."

The course walked a lot tighter than it drove. I think the biggest adjustment I made in approach to the course was to give up on downshifting to first and just focusing on the drive and accepting the fact that I wasn't going to be any where near the VTAK but it was better than rowing the gears.

I think back to back weekends in the car are going to help me get calibrated. Oh. And having it not buck like a 25¢ driven, drug store hobby horse ride will be nice too.

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Not spectacular just decent.
I'm not sure what I'm driving.
Maybe an ITR in DS.
Or half-assed STX prepped 330.

Congrats on the great driving Jim. I had a ton of fun and got taken out of the challenge by Jim. I had a lurid slide in that round otherwise I could have gotten made Jim a bit more nervous coming to the finish in the Challenge.

The course did drive faster than I thought it would be but it was still tight. The gearing in my car was perfect but I couldn't capitalize due to my bad driving on the right side. The car was felt perfect all weekend which is a first for me in this car.

Jim was really abusing the Type R to go as fast as he did. All in all a great weekend with a fun battle with both Jim and Danny Carroll. I can't wait for DC Pro now.

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2010 Honda Fit Sport
Couple of bicycles

Congrats to everyone that went! I sure wish we were there! Maybe next time! See you at the end of the month! Best, Todd

I'm glad I could contribute in some small way.

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Art McDonald
Premier Amateur #518
2008 Dishman Cup
Pivot Cone Snob

Rodney is a waxer (but in a good way)

THSCC members rule at the Atlanta Doublecross! :thumbsup:

Naturally since I didn't cone at all during Saturday PM runs, I thought I'd make up for it DURING THE SUNDAY CHALLENGE!

And .025 out of first...man! Cut a little better light, use a little less brake...but hey I'll definately take the Hoosier and the 16 points!

Hey Jim and David...how was your Arby's dinner? That location's food didn't seem as good as usual to me...maybe I was just reeeaaallly tired!

Had fun in the Soli though and looking forward to DC too. Chuck honey you're a great co-driver.

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GO FOR IT! BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.