continued from above
While I was standing outside the car trying to think, the AWD turbo Eclipse that was in our class was idling 15 feet away. With the wind blowing towards me, it was choking me with clouds of oil smoke. This car was a big hot mess, leaking oil from everywhere, covered in duct tape, and always trailing blue smoke. It actually
won the ESP class at the ProSolo, launching incredibly well and eeking out the win over Mark Madarash. At the Solo Nationals, the two drivers only managed 13th and 27th spots. After its second runs on the West Course, it
caught on fire.
I was looking right at this smoking mess, using my mind powers to try and
will it to turn off, when I noticed some dancing lights under the car. The driver was leaning on the left side door, about to get burned. It took me a second but I realized it was on fire, so I yelled "Hey, your car is on fire!" He looked at me funny.... "Yes! YOUR. CAR. IS. ON. FIRE! WE NEED SOME FIRE BOTTLES HERE, RIGHT NOW!" Flames are now licking up the door and it's really blazing. Two people showed up with extinguishers within 10 seconds and used them both to put the flames out, which kept re-catching. I crawled under while they were hitting it with extinguisher and noticed fuel pouring out of the tank onto the exhaust. "Shut the car off!" It finally went out, but it was dumping fuel on the grid, so we pushed it back 40 feet, away from the other cars. Then they ran over my foot and set the parking brake -
"Get it off my foot! Get it off my foot!" Once my foot was free I limped back to my car and got belted up - because grid worker was ready for me to drive. Oh boy...
(continued from above)
Click above to see the video from Terry's third and final run on the West Course (60.146+1).
Well my hero run was anything but that. It looked okay until I got to the section called "Flop, turn and river", where I got behind and pushed wide. Then I murdered the "wallom" section called "Five cone draw", double-turning into each offset. I could also smell tire smoke and something burning, which meant the rear tire rub was back. This really drove me nuts and I let it throw me off in the last slalom, "Six the easy way". Hey, I don't make these names up, just referencing the map. The run was junk and I knew it, even before I heard the time. The run was a solid 4 tenths slower and I hit a cone in the final slalom.
My runs on West course felt like my worst driving in a single day at Nationals in quite a while. I just could not seem to put a complete run together on what I felt was the
simpler of the two courses. Mark got a tiny bit quicker on his third run, but the big mover was Tim Bergstrom, who dropped almost a full second on his last run and bumped me down to 5th place for the day. Now I desperately hoped the East course was going to help with my placing. It looked like a gigantic cluster-f*ck of a course, hard to see with weird cone markings, and I noticed corner workers picking up lots of cones all day. For whatever reason I seem to do better when the courses are uglier, so who knows?
After my runs I went into "helper" mode and got the car re-gridded for Amy's ESP-L runs in 5th heat. We hung out in the idling Dodge with the A/C blasting on Max because it was creeping up to 100°F outside and we were feeling the heat. With both of us working in a very long first heat, thrashing to get the car ready in the second heat, and running in the third heat with Amy assisting - we had forgotten to eat and had not been drinking enough water. After the heat and humidity of the long afternoon, we both felt like crap and were moving into the early stages of heat exhaustion. The tire rub issue? I was so over-heated I didn't even remember to fix this, other than a brief mention to Amy after my last run. We both sat in the truck for a solid hour trying to cool off, then Amy had to run...
Tuesday ESP-L Competition - West Course
Right before Amy got in the car to make her run, the skies opened up and it rained hard for about three minutes, it even dumped some hail. Only one driver made a full run in the hail and rain mess - Brianne Corn, the defending B Mod champion driving in an open car. The other driver's behind her got flagged off and had re-runs, because the hail was setting off the timers. Just look at this mess!
"Oh HAIL no!" ...Brianne Corn driving in adverse conditions
I am writing a letter about that because she was getting pelted by hail in an open car. I get that we "run in all weather" like rain, but they will stop the course when during lightning, high winds, or weather so bad that it stops the timers. I think hail should be an instant "lets hold off for a minute" break in an autocross. That's not asking too much, is it?
So Amy was feeling the pressure when the fifth heat finally rolled around and she was once again the very last car in the grid (just like at the Spring Nationals here in Lincoln).
Not many competitors in ESP-Ladies - you're looking at the entire class.
Amy has had very little seat time in this new set-up - Remember, we made major changes to the car just one week earlier and she was unable to join us during the private test we held. I made 38 runs at the Mineral Wells test and one more at the Nationals practice. She made three runs at the Nationals practice and was almost 3/4 of a second off my pace.
Click above to see the video from Amy's first run on the West Course (60.301).
Amy's first run looked pretty good. She came out of the box swinging and was six tenths off of my best time for the West course. Her second run was a hair slower with an almost identical time to her first run (60.301 then 60.381). She was overshooting some braking zones and she knew it, so on her third run she tried to dial those back a bit and nail a quicker time.
Click above to see the video from Amy's third run on the West Course (60.044).
Her third run (60.044) looked pretty darn good and she dropped three tenths, finishing up only three tenths off of my best time. This was probably one of her best drives all year. She was disappointed that it wasn't in the 59 second range, but a 60.044 run was quite respectable even in the ESP open class (would have been in the trophies for day one). Especially so considering the higher ambient temperature in the fifth heat compared to when ESP open ran (third heat) and her almost complete lack of experience with this new suspension set-up.
It was a long day. The East course had been wrapped up for a while before Amy's first run on the West course began, which the video camera shows was at 5:27 pm. It was 5:54 pm on her second run, 6:22 pm when she made her third, and 6:45 pm before they were released from grid. To say that West course was running late was an understatement! We were taking our first walk of the East course after sunset - what a long ass day.
Changes After Day One
One delay that kept us from walking the East course before dark was about 30 minutes we spent back at our paddock spot doing some repairs. Amy and I had both noticed the smell of tire rub on our Day One runs. I took a peek after one of my runs and yep, the tire was rubbing in the rear once more. We brought the 18x12" wheels inboard quite a bit after the switch to the Whiteline Watts link and re-routed rear sway bar.
As you can see in the pictures above, the Hoosiers were rubbing through the rubberized insulation/liner at the rear and were getting into the painted part of the chassis as well. Even saw some rubber deposited on the FRPP upper shock mounts. This wasn't a problem with the same spacer/wheel set-up at our Mineral Wells test a week earlier, but the added grip of the fresh Hoosier A6s and the grippier concrete of Lincoln over the asphalt at Mineral Wells must have been enough to allow a tad more axle displacement under load. The West course featured a LOT of looooong sweepers, too. The tires themselves only showed some wear at the extended "rim protector" part of the bead - it was barely scuffed.
continued below
Threaded Mode
