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Last breakage that I recall on Saturday was Danny Popp's 5th gen Camaro. We heard it go "BANG" on course after it had blown a CV joint in the rear halfshaft. Without any spares he was out of the event and didn't get to make a lap around the road course on Sunday. That sucks, and I hate seeing a top competitor like this get his weekend ended early. I'm sure we'll see Danny at another USCA/Optima event soon, and it looks like on Facebook that he's testing this Camaro on the BFG Rivals (he was on 305mm Goodyear Supercar tires during the USCA weekend).
There was one more key competitor that broke on Sunday, which I will cover in that series of posts.
Wilwood Disc Brakes Speed Stop
The other Saturday event was the Speed Stop, which has been a tough event for me in the past. I was bound and determined to NOT place poorly in the Speed Stop this time, no matter if I had to take 30 or more runs to do it. I ended up getting 3rd quickest and it only took about 28 laps to pull that off, heh.
The course layout was simple, and it was held in the smaller lot that Goodguys normally uses for their autocross. Again, in my
overall satellite map of the TMS site you can see the area where it was held, and it had about half the space there as the Autocross site. It was still plenty big, and allowed for a pre-grid area, starting box, and a straight long enough to top out 2nd gear for me (around 70 mph). After the straight we had a big braking zone into a tight ~150 degree turn (the one with the 4 cones lined up, above). Not quite a 180, but darn close to that. That corner was still bottom of 2nd gear, luckily, and this led immediately into a tight 3 cone slalom (optional direction to start) then right across the finish lights and into a 40 foot stop box.
Event Results: http://www.optimabatteries.com/en-us...dds-four-more/
Seemed so simple when I walked it, but I fought this course all day long and it took far more runs than the Autocross course to sort of master it. I drove it so many different ways, but it was all about limiting wheelspin, going slow enough in the turn-around, staying on the throttle through the cones, and braking as late as possible - down to
the inch.
That video has 3 of the Speed Stop runs in it, and each run is around 11-12 seconds, so it isn't too long. You can see my frustration there, after I kept running over the same cone in the slalom, lap after lap, and as I found out even
touching a cone was a penalty - you didn't have to knock it down or move it out of the marked box. That is their rules, I just needed to learn them. The USCA had good spotters watching this course, mostly from the Texas Region SCCA.
I knew this SCCA crew well: Wayne Atkins was the starter, Brad Flak was the stop box spotter/flagger, and Brad and Jen Maxcy were running the timers and handing out time slips to competitors. Even though I knew them, they they cut me zero slack. They did give pointers to me and the other entrants about how much room we were giving up in the back of the stop box or how far off of the cones we were. I had Amy and Jason spotting for me on many runs as well.
Stuart from Maxcyspeed came out and gave me some pointers for the shocks, and we made some time up after his damping suggestions. We also tried all manner of tire pressures and the car stopped best with the pressures we had dialed in on the autocross course, with about 31 psi up front 315s and 33 psi in the rear 335s. We changed shock settings for the speed stop and autocross, however, and made more shock changes for the Sunday road course. This event was the last time we ran the Moton Club Sport doubles, and now we have to re-learn the car on the MCS doubles (luckily they are very similar in look, construction and function).
My first speed stop was in the 12.4 second range and I spent the entire day working on my driving, trying different lines, tweaking my braking points, and just flat out beating on the car to get every tenth we could. Hobaugh and Finch were once again leading the charge and I chased them all day. I spent all morning mired in 7th place, then worked my way into 6th, then 5th. After a brief rain shower that took a good long time to dry off of the speed stop course I went back and was "hot lapping" this course with Bret Voelkel, Brian Hobaugh and Danny Popp. Some of the guys were doing big, hairy burn-outs to try to increase starting line traction - there was just very little grip in the starting box.
I didn't bother with burn-outs, but would instead just keep working on my launch, shifts, brake points and cone distances. Marc Sherrin and I kept swapping back 6th place, first in the 11.7 second range than in the 11.6 second range. I was confused about the different classes on Saturday and kept an eye on Todd Earsley's EVO's times all day - and even through his times didn't end up counting against mine we pushed each other. He and I have a friendly rivalry at these events + NASA TT, so when I looked and saw him missing for a long time on the autocross course, I asked Amy where he was. She had someone spotting the Speed Stop and came and told me "Todd just ran an 11.53!" So I ran over to that area and made laps until I had an 11.52, heh.
Towards the end of Saturday afternoon I happened to be making laps when only 2 other cars were there and the camera crew and show host Chad were interviewing me after every couple of passes, since they seemed a bit bored. After a string of runs
touching the same cone in the slalom 4 times in a row I finally got a clean run, and nailed the stop as deep in the stop box as possible. Chad ran up with the the camera crew and stuck a microphone in my face and said, "Wow, you really got it deep in the box!" and I replied, without thinking, "That's what she said". They laughed pretty hard at that but I doubt that will make it onto the show, heh.
This event is hard work, and emphasizes more of the car aspects than driver skill. You still have to really PUSH the car to get your best lap and nail everything to the inch to minimize your time. I watched Hobaugh make a lot of passes and he really beat on his car to get down to that 11.0 second run. Eventually I had a bit of a break through with my driving and got down to an 11.2 second lap, after a string of 11.5s and 11.4s. It all came down to pushing the braking zone as late as possible, getting the brakes WARM, and waiting a foot later on the binders to save a tenth or two - or push you right out of the box and into the Red Flag territory (essentially a DNF).
As you can see, Hobaugh won this event once again - two in a row for Saturday - but Finch was right on his heels at only .01 seconds back! I was 2 tenths back from the two of them, and my 3rd place standing netted me 20 out of a possible 25 points.
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