Well it was a good event- we had 38 drivers show up, which was good because I was getting worried with only 24 preregistered. I guess there really isn't any incentive to preregister, as the prices are the same and we're never near our entry limit.
It was sunny and
hot! Fortunately the humidity was fairly low, and there was a nice breeze some of the time, but not always. It was a blessing having Christine there selling bottled water for cheap, as I think most people needed more liquid than they'd thought to bring. Thanks again Christine!
It was also
dusty like I've never seen at one of our events before. We were getting multiple false starts and finishes on just about every single car (sometimes as many as 5 or 6), which added an extra challenge to Timing & Scoring. I was really happy to see that Cosby Wood and Brian Herring were right on top of it on their shifts in the bus, and there were only a very few reruns during the whole day due to timer problems. Great job guys!
The courses were both fun, and fast- faster than any we've had at BMW Farm before. There was a nice mix of technical features thrown in too, though, and I was quite pleased with the way they turned out.
We didn't have the turnout in the rally tire classes that we'd hoped for to get any kind of meaningful idea of how they affected the course. Only Kevin Allen's Subaru and my Neon were so equipped. We had only 5 drivers between us, so we decided just to run with our Street Tire classes. I didn't notice any unusual wear on the course, in fact most of it seemed to hold up quite well.
I can report that rally tires definitely made a big difference, at least in the Neon. Turn-in and cornering traction were much improved, and where before we would've just spun our wheels trying to accelerate out of a torn-up hairpin, with rally tires we were pulling away with authority. I haven't looked at the times, but I'd guess that they were worth perhaps 2 seconds on a 50+ second course.
We had a handful of mechanical problems, but amazingly none involved Al Taylor!
First to go was Eric Adams' Saab 900 turbo, which simultaneously blew a CV joint and overheated. They had 3 drivers in that car already, but nice guy Joe Dobner offered them his "Old Reliable" K-car for their remaining 16 runs, which it handled with apparent ease. Eric reported, "that thing has better torque than my car!" Then new guy David U and his codrivers started making a habit of debeading the left front tire on their rented Hyundai Sonata. Fortunately host Bret Luter had a tire machine in the barn, 'cuz they needed his services 3 times before they ended their day early. My old Neon got the whammy too- just last night it suddenly developed a mysterious ailment where it would not idle and you had to keep your foot on the gas all the time to keep it running. Of course that calls for the automotive gods to send you a second, complementary problem; in this case it was that the starter quit, so we ended up doing a lot of roll starts by the end of the day.
Although we started on time and the lunch break went smoothly, the event ended up running long for some reason. I think a lot of it was because we had to use longer start intervals because of the dust. We also had a few multi-driver cars (mine included
) that ended up having to make back-to-back runs at the end of a heat to finish up, which slows things down even more. By the time it was all done I guess people were hot and tired, as most people packed up and left, leaving only a few people to handle all the cleanup and packing. But that made the post-event tasks take much longer, and when we finally were ready to do awards (a bit after 5pm I think) there were just a handful of folks left.
All in all a good, but tiring day. I can't wait till next month!
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
). Also, Cosby Wood had a 51.x on STREET TIRES (no where near new) which was only ~ 1 second slower than the FTD for the afternoon. That was IMPRESSIVE which moved him up to the fastest street tire driver for the event, and 3rd overall for the field. This also moved him from third, in his last run, in SO4 to first by .2 seconds (with 3 cones to a non-coned driver!!!).
).
I noticed the following first timers that I know, but there were quite a few more:
)
