Vorshlag 2011 Mustang 5.0 GT - track/autocross/street Project

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We saw Todd Earsley again from MyShopAssist, which is the customer service work software we use here at Vorshlag. Todd entered his NASA TT prepped EVO, which he added an interior to for these events. He also brought out his dog Violet, the sweetest puppy you'll ever meet. She quickly became the event mascot. Mike from Dusold Designs in Lewisville was entered as well, and his twin turbo 7.0L LSx making 1000 whp was a LOT of fun to watch - and he's been kicking butt in the Goodguys events, too.


Left: Todd and Violet are regulars on the NASA Texas TT circuit. Right: Marc Sherrin is a NASA Texas TT1 racer and a real character!

There were also lots of famous folks from the Pro Class of Goodguys and Optima Street Car events. Kyle and Stacy Tucker from Detroit Speed and Engineering had their transporter full of cars and they both entered. Infamous autocrosser and road racer Danny Popp entered in a wild 5th gen Camaro prepped by Lingenfelter. Bret Voelkel from RideTech was there in his Camaro, and autocrosser Cheryl Herrick from JetHot had a Nova that was absolutely beautiful inside and out. Ryan Mathews, a former NASCAR truck series driver, was entered in a race prepped 5th gen Camaro from DSE that had big aero, no interior and a full cage. Last but not least, 2013 Optima Challenge winner Brian Hobaugh was there in a really beautiful and monstrous 2nd gen Camaro built by Maier Racing - who builds epic autocross cars from Detroit iron.



There were so many AMAZING cars! Detroit Speed had several that most people would give a right arm for. So did Ride Tech, and many other Pro Touring shops from around the nation. It helped to have the Goodguys event the weekend before, so many of these shops that normally wouldn't have made the trek to Texas brought big transporters full of cars and ran Goodguys, flew home for a week, then came back for the USCA 3 day event.



Dallas area's Aaron Kaufman from Gas Monkey Garage was entered in his 1963 Falcon (which he is taking to Pike's Peak this year), but he only ran on Sunday in the road course event. From what I heard there might be a conflict with his Discovery channel TV contract, so he and his car probably won't be shown on the episode that was filmed at this event. Too bad, the car looked great - but Brandon got a lot of good pics of his car.



We spoke again at this event with Aaron and a couple of the guys from the GMG shop - all super nice folks. Marc even tried to get Aaron to co-drive with his team in a ChumpCar race at Daytona in May, in his "Poorvette" C4 Corvette that we caged. That car is a riot!

Detroit Speed Road Rally

The only "competition" on the Friday of this 3 day weekend was the Detroit Speed sponsored Road Rally, which was to be a 90 mile street drive "poker run" event, used to prove the street worthiness of the entrants. To show that you made all 90 miles of the drive each car was given a playing card at each of 5 checkpoint stops, and our hand was turned in at the end for some extra door prizes (based on your poker hand). We had a driver's meeting around noon and Jimi and Dennis of the USCA introduced us to the series, outlined that day's events, and handed everyone their Rally notes and maps.



This was the only portion where all entrants that completed every stage (5) of this competition could get the full 25 points towards their overall score - the other 4 competitions were to be weighted scores based on finishing order, with the winner getting 25, 2nd got 22, 3rd got 20, then 18, 16, 15, 14, etc. So all we had to do was make each checkpoint and finish, but not everyone did. A few folks skipped this event due to work obligations on Friday (and got 0 points), and someone missed one checkpoint and only got 20 points, but everyone else got the full 25. It was more of a "Pass/Fail" sort of deal.



I wasn't worried about the street drive in our car, as we've been driving it on the street for years, it is street legal and everything worked. The weather on Friday was exceptionally nice, sunny and warm. By 1:30 pm we were told to stage outside of the garages and given a heads up that we would be making some laps of the 1.5 mile, 24° banked oval, driving in single file, to start the rally. This wasn't originally in the plan but we were glad it was added. We drove at "mostly highway speeds" and had a good time chasing Marc Sherrin's C6 Z06 Corvette in front of us.

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Left: Jimi Day of the USCA ran things smoothly behind the scenes. Right: Show host Chad Reynolds of BangShift.com was always making us laugh

We were told to take two laps then to line up and everyone would stop at the Start/Finish line for pictures, then proceed out of the infield via the south tunnel and then follow the route on the rally instructions and map we were given. We tried to get our Vorshlag folks to all stick together but we lost most of our group by the first stop light. It wasn't a hard route to follow, and with nearly 40 cars all stickered up in Optima graphics it made it easy to see someone from this event no matter where you ended up. I was lucky enough to have a navigator (Amy) riding shotgun, but of course, like the stereotypical married couple, we had to argue over the instructions the ENTIRE time!



The first couple of miles of the route were on highway 114 right outside of the Speedway, but the route quickly diverted to secondary roads and even some residential streets. We got to see some beautiful homes in the city of Trophy Club, went through a school zone (the school kids went bonkers seeing all of the classic muscle cars go by!) into Grapevine, skirting around Grapevine lake. We drove through Flower Mound, Lewisville, and into my hometown of Plano. All of these secondary roads are concrete with expansion strips, and going slow you could feel every one in our Mustang with stif 800# springs. As the temperatures crept up into the 84°F high for the day, we rolled the windows up, turned the air con on, had the Satellite radio playing and the nav screen showing us the upcoming turns.

Amy and I have thousands of miles experience doing "TSD" rallyes, so the route instructions would have sufficed, but they gave us all detailed colored maps with the checkpoints clearly marked. They even had marks for what we quickly noticed were Optima film crews along the route, so we'd smile and wave for the dozen or so locations where we saw folks with tripod mounted cameras situated in medians and on road sides (some competitors said they never noticed them!). Having a navigator definitely helped, and we picked up more than a few strays - solo drivers trying to drive on unfamiliar roads while looking at a printed map - along this series of city roads that we had mostly driven on in the past.



We drove way across the Dallas metroplex and all the way east to Plano, then headed north to Frisco. Mike Dusold from Lewisville had made this route for the USCA folks and he did a fine job of keeping all of the competitors on real streets with the normal street car challenges and bumps. With the shocks turned down on our Mustang it really wasn't that bad. One of the 5 checkpoints was at Pole Position Raceway, an amazing indoor kart track facility in Frisco. I hadn't driven at this Pole Position yet and I knew I had to give these karts a spin!



About half of the competitors were too hungry to stop for karting and instead stopped for lunch along the route, or wanted to get to the Holley Welcome Party dinner at the race hotel's final checkpoint. But at least 20 of the entrants stopped in for some karting fun. These were decently quick electric karts (45 mph) on a slick concrete surface in a climate controlled building, which was nice because it was a bit warm outside that day. Mike had arranged for a killer deal - half price races at $10 each - and I ended up buying 4 races. Each race is about 12 minutes long and they can have as many as 20 karts on track at once. I got into a decent kart my first two races and had the fastest lap times in each race. My next two races I ended up in two stinkers, with no front tires left and no top speed, and was 1-2 seconds slower on my best laps and got 4th and 5th fastest laps, ugh. So even the rental indoor electric karts can be as inconsistent as those of the gas powered variety, heh! Still, it was a lot of fun.

Amy had a spring pollen/sinus induced headache and sat out the karting, which she normally enjoys. She instead went to get some much needed food for about 7 of the competitors that were there - a real life saver. We scarfed down Whataburgers and fries between races and by 4:30pm we had burned enough of the day at the kart facility and got back on the road, as we still had two more checkpoints to meet before dinner. By now we had three playing cards and a pair of fours, so my "poker run" hand was looking more like a foot. Marc Sherrin was already giddy with his budding hand of 3 eights, but we had no idea what the prizes would be for the poker hand at the end (not part of the points competition, of course).


Left: The cars in the road rally stopped traffic everywhere. Right: First street drive with the new ABS computer - lots of lights, as expected

In the next leg we noticed a ~2 mile section of road on the route that was under serious construction and made a slight detour, not saving any distance just avoiding a traffic clusterfox, which worked beautifully. Thank you, Ford Sync Nav system! This construction detour we made (and were followed by a few others in the road rally) lopped off some time, as we made the next checkpoint ahead of people that left the kart track 20 minutes before us. The final stretch was a route along an old highway that was little more than a 2 lane road with a bunch of stoplights, which ran parallel to I-35. We could have taken the Interstate, and that was tempting, but we were worried about straying too far off the route and any consequences we might see. Unfortunately there were none, and we found out later than many competitors got to the party hours ahead of us by just using highway and tollway routes instead of the surface streets that made up the rally route, going directly from one marked checkpoint to the next. Oh well, live and learn... we waved at all the camera guys along the actual route, at least.

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Holley Welcome Dinner

We finally arrived at the final checkpoint around 6 pm and the brakes were howling on our Mustang. So much stop and go traffic on XP20 Carbotech track worthy brake pads and the noise and dust that ensues. One thing we noticed immediately after starting this road rally was that the front rotors were WARPED. These had been on the car since just after Nationals at Miller, lots and lots and lots of race weekends, and they were worn thin. It takes a lot to warp Centric Premium 14" front rotors, but the surfaces were covered in micro-cracks - an indicator that they were too thin. I called ahead (via the Sync systems in-car bluetooth!) to our shop and had Kyle snag a pair of fresh Centric front rotors that we keep in stock, for a Saturday morning swap.



Jimi Day handing competitors their final card at the Marriott hotel checkpoint, right before dinner was served

Our warped front rotors paled in comparison to one competitor (who shall remain nameless) who lost an alternator on the road rally and had to stop and get 4 car batteries, which he swapped out when each one would die. Towards the end of the 91 miles of heavy traffic driving he noticed high coolant temps. They had to change a head gasket that night, and coupled with a complicated alternator swap they finished work on the car at 5:30 am Saturday morning! Long night, but he made it to all 5 checkpoints and raced Saturday and Sunday and drove it home, too.



The USCA folks had us all park for pictures and video at the Marriott race hotel, where the Holley Welcome Dinner was held. My final playing card given to us at this stop made for a terrible poker hand, but Marc ended up with FIVE EIGHTS! He was showing everyone his cards, and they explained that ten decks were used at the 5 stops, so the five of a kind was possible, however unlikely. He figured he had the poker run cinched up, until Danny Popp whipped out five KINGS! What are the odds, that out of 38 hands there would be two people with 5 of a kind??? It seems that this winning hand was the end of Danny's good luck for the weekend. They both got to pick from the door prizes that USCA had paid out, and all of us got a new Optima battery tender in our goodie bag after completing this event, as well as a USCA TMS event T-shirt that was pretty nice.


Left: Marc with his "five eights" hand. Right: Chad announcing the door prizes and talking about the events on Saturday

Dinner was burgers and sides in one of the Marriott ball rooms, and we had fun telling stories of our road rally driving, karting, poker hands and bench raced a bit for the next day. We got back to TMS to park in the garages that night by about 8 pm, tired and ready for some shut eye. Since we live only about 50 miles from the track we just drove home. I left the truck, trailer and Mustang in the garage area - Amy had followed me out to the track Friday in her long wheelbase BMW 740iL, which we call the Couch, and Marc Sherrin and his dad Carl rode back to the far side of Dallas with us.

Tune in next time for my Saturday USCA event coverage - the Autocross and Speed Stop competitions!

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Project Update for April 8th, 2014: This post covers the second day of the 3 day Optima Street Car/USCA event at Texas Motor Speedway March 21-23. I also have some "house cleaning" clearance items that are Mustang related to post and talk a little about Pro Touring and SCCA's CAM class.

House Cleaning!

As happens around here a lot, we change parts on our Mustang "test mule" from time to time. And when we pull anything off one of our cars we sell the used bits on our clearance page. I won't get too salesy here, but if you see something you or one of your buddies might like, check it out.

We recently installed our 4th different set of shocks onto our Mustang - a set of MCS RR2 shocks that I will show in one of my upcoming posts - so our old Moton Club Sport remote reservoir double adjustables are now for sale. We bought these new in May of 2012 and they have proven to be very rugged, have a large rebound and compression damping adjustment range, and we've set a lot of track records and notched up a lot of wins on these.


What you see here is for sale, just as they came off our TT3 Mustang a week ago

Lots more information can be seen about these used Motons if you click the pictures above. A winning set-up, real-deal remote reservoir Moton doubles at a big discount. If you don't see them listed on that page then they have sold.



Next we have the last of the used Cobra Suzuka Kevlar racing seats from our Mustang. This is the "normal width" (aka: narrow) Suzuka, best suited for folks under ~175 pounds. We had this on the passenger side of our car for several years, and it has of 2005 build tag. It is in decent shape, with no tears or rips in the fabric but it does have significant fading of the material. It basically went from Dark Black to a Slightly Less Dark Shade of Black. We replaced this and the driver's side Suzuka "GT" width seat about a month ago with a new set, to better show off the current Cobra models we sell. The used driver's side Suzuka seat lasted exactly 48 minutes after we posted it for sale on our clearance page, so if you want this click here and buy it. Once its gone, its gone.



Last but not least, we still have multiple sets of the new 305 and 320mm Continental DP racing slicks as well as a many pairs of used Hoosier DOT racing tires we need to move. Stacks of tires are all taking up far too much room in our overly crowded but climate controlled shop. The Contis are normally about $2000 for a set of 4 but the we have dropped the price on these brand new race tires to $550/set, below what we paid for them.



All of the used Hoosiers listed right now are 315/30/18 sized A6 tires, which until very recently was the tire we used on our TT3 Mustang. I normally hoard my old race tires, but since we moved to the 335/345mm tire sizes on our Mustang, the crew here is grumbling at me to move out these 315s. Each Hoosier has some tread left, and we have listed each pair currently for sale with pictures of the actual tires being sold and DOT date codes from the sidewalls.

Happy bargain hunting!

A little About Pro Touring Cars + SCCA's CAM Class?

Before we get started on the 2nd day of USCA coverage I wanted to back up and cover the PT "movement" to explain some of the cars that were at this event or seen at other events nationwide - and to state that not all Pro Touring cars are created equal. The typical cars that run the Pro Touring series of events - Goodguys, USCA, ASCS, Optima - are 1972 and older American made muscle cars, with a smattering of old Corvettes and even a couple of wild T-buckets (or kit cars) and Cobras (or kit cars). The typical Pro Touring car has some modern wheels, brakes, and big 200 treadwear tires. Most nowadays have big LSx motors, and the Pro guys all seem to have built 7.0L+ LS7 based engines that make 650-700+ hp. It has gotten crazier as the years have passed and these events have gotten more popular.



This Pro Touring "movement" has been around for a long time, and there are disputed stories about which was the first Pro Touring muscle car. The car I remember first, and that those of us that have been around HOT ROD magazine long enough remember, is the Gottlieb 1969 Camaro called "Big Red". This was more of an "Outlaw" top speed event car, but it had the look that Pro Touring adopted. This car even has its own Facebook page and it's own website. Built in 1987 (when I was but a wee lad) this car became a semi-tube framed "silhouette" car with a giant 540ci V8 motor that made 750 hp, wild and crazy and very little of the 1969 Camaro was left. It started out radical and nuts. It was built to run the La Cararrea and Silver State Classic open road races, and the car had just enough of the look of the classic Camaro to be allowed to run those. It was an over-the-top build that is chronicled here.

The cars that followed, like the Camaros from famed Pro Touring builder and GM Engineer Mark Stielow, were still packed with crazy powerplants and modern suspension, but more often than not today's PT cars are still mostly based on factory unibody structures and much tamer builds compared to Big Red. These are more streetable cars that were entered in One Lap of America events, and later beget the Goodguys and Optima "Pro Touring" scene. These latter events were made to allow pro built show cars to have a place to show that they were... more than just show cars. Show them being driven in competition.


A pair of 1st gen Camaros built by Mark Stielow, which both ran in Optima Invitationals

As these competition events have grown in number and popularity, more radical Pro Touring builds have been built and they are fast approaching the Gottlieb car - and in many ways have surpassed it, at least in suspension sophistication. These PT cars have more and more radical mods: extreme lightening, lightweight and big race motors tamed just enough for street use, and modern, uncompromised racing suspension designs. The popular front suspension for a 1st or 2nd gen PT Camaro includes narrowed hydroformed frame rails with aluminum spindles, modern double-A arm suspensions, and a narrowed set-up that allows 315 or 335mm tires to fit with the outer track unaffected. The transmissions are increasingly more racey (Jerico, G-Force, etc) to take the power of these big LS-V8 engines. And rear suspensions have gotten beyond solid axles, with fabricated tubular IRS set-ups going under classic Detroit Iron.



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Even the "iron" component is becoming less evident, with engine blocks mostly in aluminum and sheet metal going over to composites & carbon fiber. There are Pro Touring cars with 4 pound fiberglass doors, Lexan windows, CF front ends, and big aero, with exotic materials and methods creeping in. And why not? There are essentially NO RULES in most of these series - even fewer than the admittedly open NASA Time Trial "numbered classes" (TT1/2/3) that we here at Vorshlag campaign in. On top of that PT cars usually have show quality paint, bodywork, interior coverings and more. You can spend a lot of money building a fast Pro Touring car, and the arms race doesn't seem to be slowing down. With top name street rod and race shops building these cars, price tags in the $100-200K range are not uncommon.


A Pro Touring Camaro being built with an LS9 engine, custom crossmember and firewall, modern suspension

I'm not saying they should change anything in Goodguys, ASCA, Optima or USCA, not hardly. More power to 'em! These cars are beautiful and fun to watch, and these groups all put on helluva show. I'd give my right arm to be able to own one of these Pro built cars, or to have clients that trusted us enough to let Vorshlag build one for them. But that's not what we do, and the PT type scenes is really not what the SCCA is about, either (more on that in a second). Sure, the 200 treadwear tire limitation does ultimately put some limits what you can do that really matters, and the 3000 pound minimum weight for the main class in USCA is a good number, but these series and the PT cars that enter them are going to get wilder and less recognizable as time goes on.


A classic Camaro built around SCCA Solo rules looks almost nothing like a PT car underneath

Why do I bring this up? Because the SCCA created a class explicitly to attract Pro Touring cars called Classic American Muscle. And this class has the fewest rules of any class SCCA has created in the history of Solo. Jason Rhodes deliberates on the many problems with the ruleset in CAM. Jason built the 1967 Camaro Z/28 shown above for STX class, only to have it moved to a less competitive STU class a year after its debut. If you look at the CAM rules from a racer's point of view there are some crazy things that you could build. And in typical SCCA style, the rules makers haven't thought this through very well, and when (not if) these wild creations show up there will be a series of TAKE BACKS and rules changes the likes of which have never been seen.


Brian Hobaugh's Pro Touring Camaro ran in C Prepared class at the Solo Nationals, and did very well

We always complain about rules, and some of us have wished for more unlimited rulesets... just be careful what you wish for. Instead of fixing the issues in STX and STU classes, with respect to the modern Muscle Cars, the SCCA punted all pony cars into STU and seem to be ignoring any requests for allowances because "they can just run in CAM". But CAM is not a National class, and probably never will be - at least with the wide open rules it has now. I think creating CAM was a mistake, in this form, and removes all impetus to fix the pony car problems in STX and STU.

That being said, I'm going to be doing some autocross testing on street tires by running some SCCA Solo events in CAM class (and in our region they have split it by years, so we will run in MAM or Modern American Muscle). This will hopefully help us tweak the set-up and improve my driving to get ready for the Optima Invitational in Vegas. I actually renewed my SCCA membership last week (shocking!) and have already signed up for an event this weekend at TMS bus lot. But that doesn't mean I'm "building for CAM", no no no. If I was, first I'd ask someone to smack me over the head. Next, it would be a dedicated build along the lines that Rhodes laid out, but that would be a spending war that I wouldn't want to be a part of 2 years form now when the class either blows up and gets a rules re-write, or dies away from lack of attendance.


We tilted at windmills in SCCA's STX class for 2 years, and briefly in STU. I'd rather not be a part of the Solo Circus again

Anyway, I made that brief foray into the history of Pro Touring just to see how it has evolved and relates to the STX/STU/CAM/MAM classes within SCCA, which I honestly don't have any heart to fight for anymore. SCCA Solo is going to do whatever it is going to do, and I'm not going to get involved more than casually entering a few local autocross events to use for practice for another series. I caution anyone looking at CAM as "the answer" to the woes of the pony car drivers that may have formerly run in STX/STU classes. CAM might never take off, and if it does, be prepared for MAJOR changes when the rules makers figure out what they have left open to exploit. Enjoy!

USCA at TMS, Saturday March 22nd, 2014

Now that the house cleaning, PT history and SCCA rules discussion is out of the way, let's cover the Saturday series of events at the USCA qualifier at TMS on March 22nd! On this day we were to compete in two of the toughest competitions: the Speed Stop and Autocross. I will discuss each event separately, but we were running these both concurrently off and on all day Saturday.


The USCA driver's meeting (left) was held after the ChumpCar driver's meeting (right) in the same garage, an hour earlier

We had a driver's meeting early that morning at 8:30 am, right as the 12 hour ChumpCar race that was being held Saturday on the infield road course had started. We were told that the last digit in our assigned car numbers would determine which group we were in, "Odd" or "Even". We were given some time to walk both courses, and I took it, walking the large autocross course 3 times and the speed stop twice.

Ride-Tech Autocross Course

I will start with this Saturday event first, since I was in the "Odd" group that started out on the Autocross course first, and then we switched about every hour between this and Speed Stop. Towards the end of the day both courses were open to anyone, and lots of people had stopped running while others kept taking lots of runs.



Before we got going I took my walk-throughs a little more seriously and jogged / walked briskly by myself two times after walking it once with some friends, to get a good look at the autocross course. Chatting with others is normal on your walk-thrus but I've learned that I absorb a lot more of the course when I walk by myself, without distractions.



The course was set-up by an experienced SCCA autocrosser and it looked good, and nothing like the Goodguys gymkhana course. This made me very happy, as it would more suit a "normal car" and not the strange gearing and insanely tight turn-arounds that the Goodguys courses focus on. It wasn't an "easier" course than the weekend before, per se, just more flowing and with higher average speeds. Gone were the worries of another "1st gear only" course and as I walked the site it felt like a perfect 2nd gear course for our 3.31 geared Mustang - and it was. There were a LOT of cones and they even lined the course with white chalk, so it should be hard to get lost. If you did make a mistake I could see where there would be a lot of cones to collect.

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Left: The man lifts used for filming were in the middle of the course, out of the way. Right: The world's biggest video screen, recently added to TMS

They had video camera stations and Man Lifts set-up inside the course, and the layout had one crossover, but it made for a much bigger layout. If you look at the map in my previous post they had a LARGE area for the autocross to run in, much bigger than Goodguys used the week before. This is where SCCA normally has the paddock when they do the TMS Road Course autocross events, and it was BIG. There were a few "gotcha" sections the designer put in there, trying to make it challenging, but nothing that someone with 25+ years of autocross experience couldn't see past, heh.

Event Results: http://www.optimabatteries.com/en-us...dds-four-more/


Left: The Autocross course was overlooked by the Optima Prime trailer. Right: Dennis Pittsenbarger was announcer all weekend

There was a slight delay while some timer issues were worked out. The USCA folks had a brand new timing system, but the wireless lights were apparently interfering with another signal. The Texas Region SCCA folks working the course and instructing helped them diagnose the issue and it was found that the 3+ TV cameras around this course were stepping on the signal for the lights, so they fixed that after a bit. Before they did Jimi Day sent our group to go make one run on the speed stop course, while they fixed the issue. I'll talk about that in the next segment. Also, the weather was super sketchy. Rain was in the forecast (not if but when) and the temps had fallen, with winds whipping up all day. You'll notice dark clouds in many of the Saturday pictures, and that's what we ran under all day - a constant threat of rain.



Once the Autocross course finally went hot around 10 am I got in a fast first run. I was lucky to have Amy, Kyle and Jason spotting on the course, listening for times, and helping with tire pressures and getting me ready before each run. I made a few more good runs in the first session by the time we were told to switch events with the "Even" group. At that time I was temporarily in the lead for the Autocross. We came back to this area 3 or 4 different times that day, and I quickly found out that my early leading times had fallen. I was in the low 43 second zone in the morning but the big gun drivers were already in the 42s and Brian Hobaugh was in the 41s. Yikes! I stepped up my driving and worked the tires hard, trying to maximize rear grip.



The rear tires became the limiting factor in everything on the autocross course that day. Yes, even with 335s on the back the car struggled to put the power down from this stock Coyote 5.0 (433 whp SAE). I was pushing the car to the edge of the cones, and picked up more than a few cone penalties that day (often just stepping on the cone bases, which is verboten in USCA). The event announcer (Dennis Pittsenbarger) was noticing my quick-ish times but was quick to also point out my penchant for cone penalties, and dubbed me The Conekiller, heh. He had nick names for lots of people, like "Cookie Monster" for Jon Miller - who had won a big bag of cookies in the Poker Run - and "Five Eights" for Marc Sherrin. He kept all of us informed as well as entertained all day, standing atop Optima Prime announcing.



I earned the Conekiller name, of course, but luckily this wasn't a "3 and done" sort of event. I kept making autocross laps until I could get a faster time clean. Then I'd push in another area and run until I had it clean and faster. Rinse, repeat. Over the day I made close to 20 autocross runs - more than most but less than a few. I worked my way into the 42s, then the high 41s. At one point I had a 41.7 second run but that wasn't good enough for the win, as Hobaugh had his orange Camaro down to a 40.900 second run. Brian Finch and Kyle Tucker both had 41.7 times a hair quicker than mine, so I was in 4th. I didn't think I could catch Hobaugh but was so close to Finch and Tucker that I kept making runs, looking for a tenth...



Side note: everyone was supposed to stop in a stop box after the autocross Finish timers, but I quickly noticed that most of the Pro drivers blew that off, as it wasn't manned like the stop box in the Speed Stop event. I kept killing my brakes to try to make that stop box, and it was TOUGH. But the new Ford Racing M-2353-CA" ABS/TC module worked brilliantly and our Mustang was definitely stopping well, considering the hefty weight it was carrying. All of the weirdness I've noticed when autocrossing on street tires was gone - with this ABS module I could go from wheelspin into full ABS braking without it missing a beat. It never once let me down all day - success!


Left: Our latest ballast weight rack, now with MCS remote reservoirs installed. Right: Our Mustang on the autocross course

We had the TT3 ballast plates removed (above) but the Mustang still pushed 3550 pounds, then add another 200 pounds for me. Many of these top Pro drivers were in purpose built muscle cars and were much closer to 3000 pounds, which was the class minimum weight for the "GT3" class - the class we cared about.

Towards the early afternoon, after we had stopped for a lunch break and got going again, I was making autocross runs and the the fuel level got very low on the Mustang. I was parked in grid at the autocross course, strapped into the harness and ready to pull up for another run, so I asked Jason and Amy to go back to the trailer and grab the fuel jugs then get them filled at a nearby gas station with 93 octane. There were no active fuel pumps at TMS that day, but the gas station was about a mile away. I would keep making runs while they were getting fuel.

Strangely they arrived back to the paddock with a 5 gallon fuel jug and dumped that into the tank while I was strapped in. I figured they found a competitor with some 93 octane and would replenish that next, but I asked them "Where did you get that fuel?" They said, "It was in our trailer". "Uhh.... that's not one of our fuel jugs. You need to find out what you just poured into the car, please."

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E85 ethanol fuel is becoming popular with racers running boosted engines, for the high octane rating yet low cost compared to race fuel

I don't think anything more of it and I'm in line about 4 cars back from the start line, ready to make a run, when Jason runs up and says, "Shut off the motor, that was E85!" Oh crap. I pull out of line and get out of the car. He explains that a friend of ours put his fuel jugs in our trailer overnight, after I told him he could stash his stuff in our trailer. He runs E85, didn't mark his fuel cans, and they just put 5 gallons of corn juice in my tank. CRAP! I kind of... lost my temper. I wasn't so much mad at them but mad at myself for watching them put "unknown fuel" in our car. I should have stopped them. They went to go get our fuel jugs both filled, and we talked about ways to get this fuel out of the tank. Kyle had already left for the day and we didn't have the Ford quick-connect fuel line tools needed to make this easy. The weather was looking bad and we knew we might get rain at any minute. The only dry runs left for the day were about to happen in the next 10 minutes. CRAP CRAP CRAP!



I did some mental calculations... I had about 2 gallons of 93 octane in the tank (fuel light had come on) when they dumped 5 gallons of E85 in there. There was not enough time to dump out the tank and no tools on hand to do it easily. We'd need to run to town, get the tools, dump the fuel, refill it with 93, and that would take an hour or more. By then it would likely be raining and the day would be over. I needed to make some more speed stop runs as well. Instead of all of that I decided we would DILUTE the E85 with a lot more 93 octane, but before that I'd take one more run. I was so mad, and so far back in the standings (4th place would cost me a lot of points in this event) I just didn't care, and needed just a tenth of a second better to make 2nd place in the autocross.

I got back in line, strapped in, and made this run below. Click that image for the in-car video, some commentary about the E85 fiasco, and go to the 720P for the best resolution.



I don't know why I was faster on this run, maybe since my head was somewhere else (E85 dilemma) that it let my subconscious drive the car? I wasn't thinking about driving at all, I just drove. Jason said I was smoother and cleaner than I had been all day, not hanging the ass out for the camera, and he knew it would be a faster run before I even crossed the finish line. This 41.581 second run ended up being my fastest lap of the day and moved me up to 2nd place, just squeaking ahead of Finch and Tucker (shown below). I never got close to that time again in the half dozen laps I ran in the hours after the rain had come and dried back up.



My 41.58 run still was pretty far off of Hobaugh's best, and he backed up the 40.9 with another 40.9. Nobody had anything that could touch him in the autocross competition all day, but even being almost 7 tenths back my 2nd place finish was good enough to net me 22 out of a possible 25 points, which made all the difference in the end. After we quit switching courses between the even and odd cars we were finally able to run together, so and I could watch Tucker, Finch and Hobaugh run. Wow, those guys were hailing some tail.


Left: Hobaugh's Camaro was in a league of it's own. Right: He took a lot of autocross and speed stop runs! Each of those papers is a time slip.

All of their cars looked great but Hobaugh's Camaro was so hooked up I cannot describe it. Here is one of his runs on video, below, which is obviously much faster than any of mine - or anyone else's. He dominated the Goodguys autocross event the weekend before (on Friday/Saturday) by an even larger margin.



That Camaro is hooked up and Brian had no driving mistakes. Very well done. Agian, he won the Optima Invitational last year in his dad's 1965 Corvette, and he has been autocrossing for something like 28 years, so he is no stranger to these events. Looking at his video, I'm going to have to step it up driving-wise as well as make some fundamental changes to our TT3 set-up to work better on these street tires for the Vegas Optima event. I had enough little driving mistakes but for the most part my run was right on the cones and on the limit of the tires everywhere.



I might never catch Hobaugh on any autocross course, and I don't think with 100 more runs that Saturday that I would have caught him. That car is seemingly tailor made for the tight stuff, and I was very happy to pull off 2nd place at this event.

Saturday Breakage

Our Mustang was a tank all weekend with nary a hiccup, but that couldn't be said for everyone. When you are making 700+ hp and taking dozens of runs in a row, things can break, even on street tires.



One of the more popular builds was this vintage Volvo built by "Swedish Ops". This had an LSx V8 swap and a manual transmission. Apparently they lost a McLeod hydraulic throw out bearing and had to snatch the transmission out to repair it. This was one of 2 cars in the "under 3000 pound" class, which it ended up winning. It barely made weight, as you had to weigh under 3000 pounds to run this class.



Saturday was also a bit of bad luck for the DSE crew. Kyle Tucker's 2nd gen Camaro munched a clutch, one of the multi-disc variety. His crew had the transmission out and the clutch changed in a little over an hour, and he was back out there making Speed Stop and Autocross runs.



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