Nate, Keith, Russ and I were following aging the live timing.
Excellent work
Nate, Keith, Russ and I were following aging the live timing.
Excellent work
I sent good vibes and removed bad luck using hand signals and chants from my office. They were super effective.
Get that weak shit off my track
64.230!
WTFF??
acket.
Originally Posted by Kchrpm
Thanks dudes! And thanks Keith, after last week I'll take whatever I can get!
It was one of the stranger, crazier, more memorable Nationals experiences (I've been every year since 2006):
- The air park was supposed to have completed a repaving project in the area we use for paddock, but completion was delayed so half the paddock was on milled down concrete. Two days before my flight left for Nebraska, I learned that milling concrete produces crystalline silica dust which is very harmful to inhale (it can lead to death with enough exposure). People who were there earlier posted pictures of the crazy white dust in the air - like a color-shifted scene out of Mad Max - so I did hours of research and ordered some N100 certified masks overnight. Which, it turns out, are very hard to breathe in.
- Dorian was going from a tropical storm to a hurricane as T was making final preparations to leave Miami. I was in CA at the time. We had to find enclosed storage for her prized M3, find a way to get her 2nd-story hurricane shutters into hurricane position, and send her Mom on vacation to Europe.
- At the ProSolo in the first 2 days of Nationals week, we discovered that the months-discontinued Yokohama A052 had just become available again, and that certain cars appeared to be faster on them compared to the previous known fastest tires (Bridgestone RE71R, BFG Rival S 1.5, Nexen SUR4G). I've had a set of Yokohamas on my MR2 Turbo for months, but that car is such an outlier in autocross these days, and no longer competitive, that I didn't have any reference to know how good the tire was. It's also a car with limited camber and narrow wheels, and as we analyzed the results data and talked with drivers in paddock at Nationals, we learned that the Yokohamas are 'merely' in the mix with the other tires in this situation. It's only when cars get enough camber and enough wheel width for the tire that the A052 comes alive and is faster than the competition. The problem was, only a handful of sets of A052s were released, meaning only some people had access to them. Very bad timing for the largest participant motorsports event in the US (the world?). We checked TireRack and other sources on site and they were already out. We had a sticker set of Rivals, which we had tuned the car around all summer, and T ran them at the ProSolo Finale Saturday/Sunday. After that, we spent a couple days asking around and driving around paddock looking for Yokohamas for our Thursday/Friday Nationals run days. A lot of people had already sold their tires or rented them out for other cars (word had spread quickly!), or wanted to keep them for the rest of their seasons. Late Wednesday night we found someone who had a set they would sell. They had driven in a class that ran Tue/Wed so they were done with them for now, and they were selling their autox car anyway. So Thursday morning we met at one of the tire vendors on site and had the Yokohamas dismounted from their wheels and mounted on our wheels. Our first run on the tires was to be our first competition runs at the National Championship... anyone browsing this subforum will know different tires can have very different feel, pressure ranges that they work best in, different preferences for setup (camber etc), and different heat ranges they work best in. Indications were strong enough that the tire was definitely faster on the right cars, so even if the balance wasn't great we'd still be better off than with running the BFGs we were used to.
- Going into Nationals we already knew a win would be unlikely. T built the car on a modest budget using the minimum number of parts to make it reasonably fast. The most developed cars have lightweight, freer-flowing exhausts, stiffer bushings in the suspension/subframe, clutch-type differentials, adjustable rear control arms to dial in the rear camber, racing seats and AP Racing brakes to reduce weight, adjustable rear sway bar, double-adjustable dampers, and so on. We just had Megan Racing coilovers (so baller
So with all that going on leading up to my first run at Nationals, I was already tired. To make things even more crazy, the site in Lincoln has a unique property whereby driving in the competition area causes hot tires to pick up what we call OPR (Other People's Rubber), but which may at least partially be the tar sealer that they use between concrete slabs. So if you want to have the best shot each time you go out, after every run you have to jack up the car and use a bladed multitool to scrape the OPR off all the tires. T ran 'open' class (as opposed to the Ladies-only class) so we had 2 drivers in the car in the same heat, which meant we only had about 5-7 minutes in grid between each run the car took, alternating drivers each time. I was on OPR duty in grid - T took care of everything else: changing numbers, checking tire pressures, spraying them down to cool them off, changing rear shock settings since we each preferred a different feel to the car. I was hustling the whole time, right up until the grid worker would tell us it was just about our time to go, and then I'd let the car off the jack and either jump in and put my helmet on as I'm pulling towards the line, or close the hood for T while she was getting in. The entire run group took probably an hour, and between the OPR scraping and the actual, you know, driving as fast as possible part, I'm sure my heart rate was well up for the whole time. Too bad the strap on my Garmin watch broke the week prior.
It was a voyage of discovery driving that car on the Yokos for the first time. Stiffly sprung cars with sufficient camber can be extra sensitive to small changes in setup. First run out, the tires felt pretty bad. The most vague, mushy tire I'd ever driven on. We decided to raise the tire pressure for next runs. It didn't seem to make much difference. I was pretty happy with my driving, but noted that the tire didn't seem to blend inputs well at the back of the car (accelerating and slaloming -- the back end would swing around past each cone). The tire felt grippy but lazy - nowhere near as sharp as the BFGs that had been on the car (and people say the BFGs are vague - I've never thought so personally). I ended Day 1, Thursday on the West Course, in 2nd place, almost a half second behind the leader. I felt ok, though, because I knew I had a good run that was driven to my potential. That's what I aim for, whatever comes my way on the results sheet. Plus, I was so far well within my top 5 goal. I didn't think the Championship was likely going into the event, and at the end of day 1 with a half second gap to the leader Raymond (who has been driving real well all year - a very confident and consistent driver), I still didn't think it was going to happen.
I mulled over how the car was handling and what we could do, given the limited adjustability of the car, to improve it for Friday. I would have normally tried a rear rebound change, but this car I already knew didn't like that change in general - it brought about other handling foibles. The joys of some budget shocks.But it wasn't something we could 'fix' on site with what we had. Since the car wasn't terrible on Thursday (it was good in sweepers), and I knew from past years that the East course area generally tended more towards understeer/stability anyway, I decided to leave it alone and just run it.
Friday's first run was pretty good, I thought, but when I came across the finish line and saw my time flash up on the display, I was disappointed with how off pace it was. The 3rd place guy from Day 1, Kyle, had laid down a run that was 7 tenths faster than what I just did. Given people usually improve after first runs, I knew I'd have to dig deep to find more time. Thing was, this course was not so open like the West course was. I like open courses that let you play with the attitude of the car at the limit, that let you define your own line. The East course was tighter (not slower, just more 'restrictive' in terms of line) and so I felt there was less opportunity for a driver to make up time there. Anyway, the rest of the run heat I was too busy to note what other drivers were running. Which is fine by me - I am generally happy not to know. My second run I did find some time: 6 tenths. But I hit a cone. I wasn't sure where. No time to check which one, being so busy with OPR. The good news was this day was producing more confidence from the tire. It was about 15 degrees cooler this day, so I suspect the rubber that had been previously deposited on the concrete was less melty, so the tires could actually grip into the surface more than gummy-slide across it. The Yokohamas were feeling like an actual tire now.
Somehow before my last run there was less OPR and so I actually had a little time to check live timing and see where I stood. I was a later driver in the run order, so my main competition had already completed their 3rd and final runs. Raymond had improved another couple of tenths, and he and Kyle (who had set fast time on the day to come back somewhat from the Day 1 deficit) were now about 2 tenths apart with Ray in the lead. Kyle never improved on his first run. I was sitting 3rd with a run to go, and I noticed 4th on back were pretty far back, so I was unlikely to lose 3rd place much less finish outside the top 5. I needed about 9 tenths to take the win, since I was sitting on my first run. My second run scratch time was still a couple tenths off of what I would need to win. I was pretty happy with how that 2nd run went, and didn't think there was much of any improvement to be had on it, so my goal for my final run was to back up that time and do it clean. If I did that, I'd be right in the mix for 2nd. As anyone who has done this National event 3-run format knows, when you have two runs that aren't good enough and you have to both find time *and* clean up for your last run, it isn't easy. I didn't plan on trying anything crazy to go for the win. My mentality is usually to finish as high as I can 'safely' achieve. Unlike a friend of mine who is either win or finish 14th from trying so hard he hits cones or spins out.
Motorsport can be crazy sometimes. I would have preferred a simpler week (and more sleep!) leading up to Thursday/Friday, but in the end it makes the victory that much sweeter. It was such a cool moment to pull back into our grid spot and have a cheering crowd awaiting my arrival, including my very happy gf.
I wish they had archives of the audio streams these days. They used to broadcast the event on UStream and it was fun to go back later, find some classes that had great battles or good friends in them, and listen to the announcer.
This totally turned TL;DR.
Last edited by CudaMan; September 9th, 2019 at 08:34 AM.
Yes, kinda long, but anyways...
That was a thoroughly enjoyable read. Congrats again!
TL;DR
Spoiler:
Awesome ! and thanks for telling the story too, it's really nice to hear your attitude to these kind of situations, how you approach it.
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