:. Racing .:. 2004/05/30 - RMDIV Divisional
Results: Here
Writeup/Notes:
Ah, the divisional. I started my autocross career at PPIR four years ago with Rolando's Impreza 2.5RS,
so I still think of it with a lot of nostalgia when I'm here. I can even still remember the course that
we ran in his car!
So now, four years, and around 2 years of autocross experience later, there I was again, this time in the Corvette, and hoping to win the SM2 championship. Good news - I did walk away the SM2 divisional champion this year! No matter how easy or hard a class is, the trophy's never in your hand until the final runs are over, so I'm glad I was able to make it happen this year.
I drove down through horrible Memorial Day traffic Friday night to get teched up, grab a spot for the car, and to meet up with all the guys for a Friday night dinner at the Outback. We gathered about 12 of us up and had a great time until around 10:00, upon which we scattered for bed to be up early the next morning.
The day started off sunny and calm, which was nice, since SM2 was in the "course sweeper" first group. As the first race on the Kumhos, I was guessing at tire pressures, and ran 36/32, which seemed to work pretty well - I guess I'll have to tinker with that more later.
It seemed to work well enough. My first run was my quickest of Saturday, which seemed a bit odd. My second run went a lot better overall, but two BIG pushing turns really slowed down what could have been a smokin' time. The third run was, to be blunt, an abortion. It felt decent at the time, but boooooyyy does it look ugly on the video.
Saturday night we entertained an old traditiona and got some Tecate to drink at the hotel while we talked cars and raced benches - good stuff.
Sunday went great - the course just grokked well with me. I got faster each run, finally ending with a 62.3 run that was really nice, even on the video. Definitely still time out there, but at least I'm getting better! My points scores for the weekend were 931 and 937 respectively, which is the highest I think I've gotten in SM2 so far. Part of that has to be the HP/Corvette friendly course, but hopefully that is signifying the mark of an upward trend from my ~900 point days. I also managed to beat Jeff Lundgren, one of my benchmarks, for the first time ever, which feels very good.
Also noteworthy is the fact that I LFB'd every single run, which I've not done before competitively, and the good news is that by the end of Sunday, I was hardly even noticing that I was using my left-foot. Hopefully it's becoming automatic, and I think it will really help smoothness, getting slowed down in time in slow corners, and overall speed. Sure is fun!
The only real downside of the weekend is that my front-end rubbing persists with the new, grippier tires.
We've also got some video from Mike's car - fun to see how different his lines are, and how the different parts of the course are easier/harder with the different cars. Enjoy the driver view from his Sunday run, and the spin ;)
At some point, we've got some bird's eye shots from up on the
NEW MODS:
- New Kumho 285/30-18 and 305/30-18 tires
Media:
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