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

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continued from above

Wait... Track Events???

Yes, track events. I am breaking my own, very sensible rule of no longer tracking this "still too new" car yet again. It just rolled 10,000 miles today, so I guess the new has worn off!! Hehe. I'm going to try to hit several NASA Time Trial events this year in the Mustang - I just had too much fun driving it on track with the extra grip and new horsepower in December. Due to the massive restrictions of the base classing that NASA levies against this car, I'm moving it out of TTB, skipping TTA completely (I added up 64 points of mods from aero, shocks and tires alone!) and slipping right into TTS (8.7:1 pounds per hp) - which is a simpler power-to-weight class. It probably won't do well against the modded Corvettes and other creations that show up in TTS but at least I won't be counting every point, taking 4 points for having no OEM wing, 2 points for the stock brakes, etc, etc. I could literally build an STX classed autocross car, still on street tires, that was up into TTS class on points alone. I know I know... those are the rules for TT, but I'm just going to bypass all of that and go have fun.

With the 315mm Kumho gumballs, the current 430 whp, and the added aero bits in store we might not be that slow, but who knows until we track it? I'm ALWAYS fast when bench racing! The car is under the power-to-weight limit with 3650 pounds (with driver) and 430 whp - but only just. I'll have my dyno chart and classing work sheet ready at the next NASA event, in case I screw up and stumble upon a competitive set-up. Bad part is that I'm missing the first two NASA Texas events, due to scheduling conflicts, which sucks (MSR-H and MSR-C). I'm not happy about this AT ALL but these two were unavoidable. I will be at the April TWS event and should have two more track test days before TWS (TK2K12/GSS and Pro-Touring/HHR). NASA Texas has 9 events planned this year in this region so we could have plenty of chances to go have fun in TTS.


315/35/18 Tires on 18x10 D-Force

If we're running in TTS we could use wider tires, right? We also had several S197 Mustang autocrossers ask if we knew if 315mm tires would fit the car on our new D-Force 18x10" wheels. I had my doubts about using a tire that wide on "only" a 10" wide wheel, but I gave it a try. Ordered a set of 315/35/18 Kumho V710 R compounds to see...



This set actually came free from Kumho - our spoils from winning the $2011 GRM Challenge (and our E30 V8 is on the cover of the next GRM mag!). So yesterday I took one of the 18x10s and mounted one of the 315mm Kumhos, which is shown above. It looks a bit squeezed on the wheel, to say the least. For me, I'd want an 11" wide wheel for a tire that big, or maybe an 11.5". But for some autocrossers, this is fine (look at some of the crazy squeezed stuff Stock class guys do). Today we stuck them on the Mustang, starting with the front and using a 5/16" spacer we had...



Monster room up front, both inboard and out, with this 5/16" spacer. It would work with as little as a 1/8" spacer, but to be safe I'm going to recommend a 1/4" spacer when using this massive 315mm tire up front with these wheels. If you stick with a more sensible 275 or 285mm tire it still needs no spacer on these wheels, front or rear.



Checked them at full lock, room for days. Now this is with -3° of camber up front, but that's not much in my book. That's what we use for the street on this car. Now on the rear it wasn't as ideal, but still "good enough for auto-x" in most people's eyes. So I would say "these tires fit" but I won't be running these 315s on a 10" wheel. Stick with 285s or smaller, as those tires fit the 10" wheel width properly - no squeeze.



I'm now pulling the 315mm test tire off the 18x10s and re-mounting the 275/40/18s. Damn, we need a tire machine here at Vorshlag. It would pay for itself in one racing season. On the prowl for a deal. So now I've got these massive tires with no wheels to use them on. So... once we get the panhard and upper control arm on later this week we'll measure for 18x11 front and 18x11.5" rear 3-piece wheels. Forgeline, CCW, something. These should fit with fairly different offsets front and back. Can't let these tires go to waste, and it sure would make for some monster TTS grip.


Rear Suspension Fixes - Quick and Dirty

Our first autocrosses for the Mustang are in early March, with a track event in mid-February, so we've got some new rear suspension bits to install and test before then. I feel that much our our low speed traction problems in this car center around the compromised rear suspension geometry. When you lower the car with this 3-link rear suspension the pinion angle on the axle gets out of whack.



Solid axle RWD cars have so many limitations when compared to an IRS set-up that the SCCA Street Touring rules give the stick-axle vehicles all sorts of leeway, and we're going to finally attack these issues. We did a lot of looking, thought about making our own stuff, then looked at the calendar and bought the Spohn Performance's upper control arm and panhard bar as a stop-gap solution. Their adjustable length upper control arm allows us to adjust the pinion angle properly at the lowered ride height. The adjustable panhard bar lets us center the axle relative to the car, when lowered. Each piece features their optional "Del-Sphere" joints , which allow for high angular movement without bind or noise, at least on paper. These are basically giant spherical joints made inside forged steel ends with Delrin material surrounding the steel ball joint. They are rebuildable - we bought the tool to do that. Seems like a neat little joint that could give you the best of a rod end but without the metal-to-metal street nightmares. Once these new arms are installed we will set the pinion angle for our lower ride height and do some before and after acceleration data logging. I'm hoping for some help in 1st and 2nd gear for STX use - keep hope alive!


Non-NASA Track Events?

The first event of the year we're trying to make is Feb 17th at Harris Hill Road in San Marcos, being hosted by Pro-Touring.com. It includes an autocross, speed-stop event, and a timed track day, with a trophy for the combined winner? At least - we think so. Details are sketchy at the moment, but it looks like fun. The problem is they have one rule - tire treadwear limit is 200 - which rules out damned near every tire we have for the car (all four sets of our ST legal stuff on hand is 140-180 treadwear).



The Dunlop Star Spec tires are 200 treadwear and I've had great luck with them on track before (in the EVO X, at April 2010 Tire Test we did, the December ChumpCar event, and my 265/40/17 rears that I've barely used in this car) and there are two other 200 TW tires that could be fast for this series (they use the Optima Challenge rules), including: Falken RT-615K (275/35/18 @ $275 or 295/40/18 @ $300) and the Nitto NT05 ($275/35R18 @ $213, 275/40R18 @ $202, 285/35R18 @ $223, 295/35R18 @ $243). I don't really want to spend $800-1200 on tires to run for one event (and they'd be pretty much useless for anything else other than street use - which I have the fresh 275/40R18 RE-11s for), so I might beg/borrow/steal a set. So if any of you have some fresh 275/35/18 Dunlop Star Specs or any of these other tires in the sizes listed you'd like to loan me for 2 days, please speak up! (I have a line on some 275 Dunlops, but they are anything but fresh) In a pinch I might use that pair of 17x9's and 265s we have for the rear, but I'd really like something wider in 18" that we could put on the D-Force 18x10s.

We've still got some work to do before then, including the brake cooling, the Spohn parts, and some rear aero. Anyone have a good used 2010-up Mustang trunk for sale?? I'll post up with an update when we've tackled that stuff. We plan on a before/after test of 2nd gear acceleration on a control set of tires (probably the 265/35/18 Hankook RS-3) when the Spohn parts are installed.

More soon,

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Originally Posted by twistedneck Nice upgrades to the exhaust.. i swear i can hear my slip on axle backs leaking.. but its too late now! Have you considered adding hood vents for front end grip also? The new functional hood vents for 2013 reduced lift in front significantly from what the engineers have told me. No more hood trying to bow up in the center and rip off over 150 MPH. I'm looking for a simple way to cut the hood and add in the 2013 vents.. watch the Boss 302R in car footage from the 2012 Rolex race, that hood is bowing up when Ian James hits about 150MPh

Yea, we've got some rules restrictions that are holding me back from opening up the hood and reverse ducting the radiator. SCCA STX doesn't allow me to do any aero I want - but we can use "any" OEM front aero, so anything that came on a 2005-up S197 Mustang or that is in the Ford "Appearance" catalog (not Ford Motorsport catalog, after a rules clarification). This means OEM parts like the CS lower fascia and the Leguna Seca splitter are legal. I could switch to the 2013 GT500 front bumper cover, but I'm not sure about the hood. Is a hood considered aero by the SCCA? It is something I need to ask about. The SEB is like a bunch of Republican congressmen - all they know how to say is "No!".

Originally Posted by GaryK I don't know if you guys are interested or not, but I weighed my 2012 base GT with manual trans and no options other than front plate bracket. With everything in the car as it comes from Ford and a full tank of fuel it showed 3608 lbs on the scales. Just taking the spare tire and associated junk out along with the floor mats and dropping 10 gallons of fuel would get it down to about 3500 lbs. I know the Brembo brakes add a bit, but I'm guessing the premium model adds some weight relative to the base model too.

Wait... spare tire? Hmm, my car doesn't have s spare. Does your car come with the Brembos and 19" wheels, or 13" brakes and 18" wheels? I suspect the 18" wheel/non-Brembo package is a good deal lighter. I measured the "trunk junk" weight and fuel its not actually 100 pounds of fuel and trunk junk, on my car.



Gasoline is a little over 6 pounds per gallon, so that's about 60 pounds if you drop 10 gallons. Add in the trunk junk and you've lost about 73 pounds, so around 3535 or so.... but yea, its getting down there. If you do have a spare tire that will weigh more, of course.


This was the weight of a loaner '11 Brembo GT back in June 2010 - 3605 lbs with 1/2 tank of fuel

After weighing this Brembo / 19x9" equipped loaner we borrowed from a Ford dealer we custom ordered our 2011 GT with all sorts of options I didn't want (my wife - oiy!) and it came in even heavier. We ran it out of fuel, removed the "trunk junk", then weighed it at 3563 lbs baseline. I always try to weigh them with nearly no fuel, or show the fuel gauge to account for fuel weight.


This is the weight on our '11 Brembo GT with no fuel - 3563 lbs sans 12.7 lbs of "trunk junk"

Sounds like your '12 is a little lighter than our car - probably different options and such, or the brakes. We've been on a quest to lose weight from this S197, and here's where we have it now with 18x10" wheels and 275/40/18 tires:



Not much left we can remove or lighten and remain SCCA STX legal. Again, we're building this around two very different class rules, SCCA STX and NASA TTS, but using the SCCA ruleset when one set limits the other. Most of the cars we are racing against in STX are 2800-3000 pounds, but have the same tire width limits we do, which puts the Mustang at a disadvantage - but I knew that going in. If I could just find a "265" tire that was magically 11" wide... well, I came close. I've got one that is 10-3/4" wide. I'm not telling which brand it is though.

Cheers,

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Originally Posted by BlackNDecker 1) Have you looked into 2 piece rotors? Are these allowed? Full-Tilt boogie racing's rotors are affordable and shed some decent unsprung weight.

Yes, I'd like to do this but there have been rumblings about changing the brake rules in Street Touring to mandate that stock weight rotors be used. It would be just my luck to spend $800 on 2-piece rotors and have them take-back this rules allowance (they are known for doing that). I have never heard of affordable 14" rotors for the Mustang... got a link? Girodisc is $800 a pair.


The stock 14" Brembo rotors are a staggering 25.4 pounds each!

Originally Posted by BlackNDecker 2) The tiger racing vented hood is also a pretty big weight savings (10 lbs for CF, 20 lbs for Fiberglass, vs. ~35 lbs for OEM hood).

Yep, not allowed in SCCA ST.

Originally Posted by BlackNDecker 3) How bout an aluminum or carbon fiber drive shaft? That would net another 15-30 lbs of weight reduction.

I'd love to do a 1-piece driveshaft, in aluminum or carbon. Again - not ST legal.

Originally Posted by BlackNDecker 4) I'm sure you've considered a dry-cell battery (Odyssey PC680 weighs 15 lbs vs. 30 lbs OEM).

Already installed. Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects...-race-battery/

Originally Posted by BlackNDecker 5) Removing sound deadening? This would probably net another 30-40 lbs.

Again - not ST legal.

Originally Posted by BlackNDecker In all, the above probably shave another 75-80 lbs from the car getting you into the 3300 lb category. I believe the Boss 302S cars weigh a svelte 3000 lbs with a single race seat and no interior.

With the rule set I'm working with I'm pretty limited on further weight loss. This is also a daily driven street car, so pulling all of the insulation and such would not be as streetable. But I like the suggestions! I'm still looking for pounds... the 2-piece rotor thing is going to happen soon, one way or another.

Originally Posted by BlackNDecker Affordable is subjective, but Fulltiltboogieracing.com sells 2-piece rotors for $675 + shipping. That is the cheapest price I've found: http://www.fulltiltboogieracing.com/s197_brakes.htm

Yikes. Yea, that's a bit of coin. OEM replacement rotors from Brembo are under $60 each.

Originally Posted by BlackNDecker Can you tell me more about the mounting plate and bracket you used for the Odyssey battery? Is this a production piece? Any issues with cranking amps? I've been pleased with Odyssey batteries in the past.

Zero issues in the past year of street driving, autocrossing and tracking the Mustang. Amy drives it to work every single day.

If you go back in this thread to post #92, I describe who's battery mount we used, and the other bracket and bits we fabricated to make it bolt into the Mustang without having to drill any holes.



I have PC680 Odysseys in 3 of my personal cars. Only car I have any issues with is one of my BMWs, which has a known battery draw when parked - and draws down the battery after about 5 days of non-use (no matter the battery). We keep it on a Battery Tender and its fine. One of these days we'll chase down the voltage leak...

Thanks,

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Originally Posted by GaryK Ok guys, I'm looking to buy some new wheels and tires and I keep going back and forth. Now I'm considering the D-force wheels too. You're saying they will work front and rear without spacers, but is that with a normal strut/spring setup? What's the biggest tire you guys have tried with them (diameter)? The reason I ask is because I'm looking for just street tires right now and I'd rather not run smaller diameter tires...trying to keep fender gap to a minimum and I'm not lowering much. I think a 285/40-18 would be ideal, but there's a good deal on some 275/45-18's right now (with a 10.1" tread width). Those are some pretty big tires, actually a bit larger in diameter than the factory rubber...maybe too big, but I did find someone that's actually running them on a 18x9.5 et40 wheel.

We tried a 285/40/18 tire and it looks ridiculous...





These pictures don't show how silly this giant, tall tire looked up front. We all turned our noses up.

I get that you don't want a lot of wheel gap, and these cars apparently do respond well to running taller tires... but within reason. The stock stuff is 27" tall, which is enormous. There are no 18" tires that match the 27" tire height of the stock 255/40/19 tires. After much testing, calculations, and trial fitting we went with the 275/40/18 tire on the 18x10" wheels - that's the best fit for the car and the wheels. They look the best out of the many sizes we have tried, fit the wheel nicely, fit the car nicely, and were 26.4" tall. The closest we could get, without going over the stock 27" tire height.



Thanks,

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Originally Posted by GaryK On my car, I installed some Steeda sport springs and different shocks/struts, now I'm already wishing I had AST's! I got that stuff cheap just as a temporary measure, so depending on what happens I might end up getting some AST's for this car at some point.

Yea, you are int he same position a lot of folks find themselves... they install lowering springs with stock length struts and shocks, and the ride suffers greatly. This isn't because the springs are too stiff (they aren't), or the shocks aren't damping (they might be), its because you've lowered the car but have the tall stock length struts and shocks - and they are simply running out of "bump travel".



I've been there and done that.

This is partly why the ASTs ride so much better than most set-ups like yours at these lower ride heights - AST shocks are shortened appropriately and thus have the proper amount of bump travel at a lower ride height. Then there's the fact that they are adjustable monotube struts with killer pistons and customized valving... so even with more spring rate and a lower ride height they usually ride as good as or better than stock.

Originally Posted by GaryK As for wheels, I was gonna go really cheap but I'm leaning towards picking up the D-force set from you guys now. My car is black...wish you had the D-force in gunmetal color! Might just go with flat black for now and see how it looks.

Yea, the temptation to use some of the cheap replica wheels avilable for this car is huge... just know that they are horrendously heavy - which impacts ride, handling, braking and acceleration - and many are made for the SN95 chassis, and just simply don't fit these cars. If you need something quick just find some OEM take-off GT500 wheels (18x9.5" or 19x9.5"), but if you can hold out another month or two our 18x10s should be here and they are light, they fit right, and are a full 10" wide.

[Fair]

Project Update for Feb 17, 2012: We've been buried in work in the shop, but we took a couple of days off from customer work to attack the Mustang (while doing an M52 longblock swap on an STX prepped E36 328is, shown below). We are cutting it a little close (I leave for the track event down in San Marcos in about 4 hours) but the last few bits are going in the car now (seats and new 6-point harness mounts) and it should all be wrapped up by AJ and Ryan in time to load at 1 pm...



Rear Suspension Updates

We've installed the Spohn upper control arm and Panhard bar, both of which are equipped with their Del-Sphere joints (Delrin encased spherical). And yes, this is all legal in SCCA Street Touring - thanks to copious allowances for solid axle RWD cars - since none of these have proven remotely competitive in any ST class. Basically STX and STU have the same torque arm/upper control arm allowances as ESP.



So all of this has been installed, and yes, the non-adjustable OEM upper control arm made for a wacky 0° pinion angle at the lowered ride height. Basically FUBAR for a solid axle car. You want pinion to be at 0° under acceleration loads, so you try to shoot for -2 to -3° at the pinion at rest and at ride height (according to Spohn and many others). At the lowered ride height the fixed length OEM panhard bar resulted in axle offset, which we also corrected with the adjustable Spohn piece.



Can't say enough nice words about the Spohn UCA and Panhard hardware - its top notch. These Del-Sphere joints are super slick - they rotate and pivot with almost no resistance - so no binding - but are still wrapped in Delrin for less crashing than an all-metal spherical. Plus they have grease zerks and are fully rebuildable. I'll see how it rides with these in the UCA and Panhard shortly.






Weight differences between the OEM UCA and Panhard vs the Spohn hardware looks like a wash. We also used a new bolt-in UPR Products upper chassis mount - made of plate steel vs the stamped steel of the OEM bits. Yes, its STX legal - we can go hog wild on the upper control arms. I am now more worried about the factory lower control arms - they are far from parallel at ride height, and this plays hell with the Instant Center. We're going to measure that and come up with a solution to test soon (likely offset bushings).

Safety Gear Upgrade

I have been skimping a bit on safety for the various track events we've attended. For autocrosses in 2011 we have been using the fixed back race seats with 3" harness lap belts only - not a big deal when driving around a parking lot. We did most of the 2011 track stuff with OEM seats and seat belts (which is safe), but I admit to doing one track day in December with the race seats and lap belts. I did double-up with the OEM 3-point seat belt, but that's still pretty hinky. So for this weekend's track event I wanted something a little better...



That is a Corbeau harness bar I picked up from Stuart at AST/Moton. Nicely built piece, pretty hefty tubing used, and better than mounting harnesses on the lower rear seat belt locations. No, I'm still not running a 4-point roll bar, and likely won't ever do that to this car... don't want to mess-up the rear seats to make that fit. I'm sure some of you will reply with the "you are going to spontaneously combust!" safety concerns, and yes... I hear ya.

Again, this is not the perfect safety solution... so "don't try this at home". But this is NOT a race car, its a daily driven street car that I don't want to cut up for a roll cage. If the only other alternative is OEM seats and belts, then I'm going to stick with my FIA approed seats and 6-point SFI approved harnesses hung from this 1.5" dia piece of DOM, and mounted to the floor with proper G-Force clip-in floor anchors.

Hey, if business keeps exploding like it has been since our move to the new location I'll push forward with my S197 chassis race car plans later this year. Keep buying shocks and camber plates from Vorshlag, folks, so I can go American Iron racing in a proper race car!



Left: Here are the seats, about to go in. Right: All of the various pads we've got to test

I put a picture up above showing the various brake pads we've got for the Mustang. Going away from the Hawk options (HP+ for autox and DTC-60 for track) and moving to Porterfield (R4 for track and R4S for autocross). The R4s are on the car now for the first time so I will report back with my impressions from Harris Hill Road's tricky little road course.

We also bought a bunch of 3" high temp brake duct hose, and made some quickie brake ducting for the car that ties into the CS Lower Fascia, but its not complete so I'm not going to show all of the work this time around. Making brake ducting that is SCCA ST legal is damned near impossible - they have reworded the rules in such a way as to make it incredibly complicated to stay legal. Might just order a 2nd set of fender liners that we can modify for proper ducting installation and just swap this on/off for autocross events. Thanks SCCA!


click for video of 0-60 testing

I did a "before" acceleration test this week. I made three 0-60 sprints on concrete with the 275mm Bridgestones and the OEM UCA and Panhard, + the AST 4150 shocks. Best of 4.41 seconds, with a 4.45 sec and a 5.0 sec first blast (wheelspin). Once the weather clears I'll do an "after" test on the same tires but with the new Spohn gear and proper pinion angle setting. I'll post that and the video from this weekend's Pro-Touring track event / Time Trial. I've got to run on these 275/35/18 Dunlops, which have seen better days. These tested great in April of last year, so hopefully they won't suck on Saturday. And hopefully it doesn't rain - I'm bringing the Bridgestones just in case.

Oh! We are having an Open House here at Vorshlag on March 10th, all day. Tour the facilities, see our new capabilities, and check out some cool race cars. The Texas Region SCCA is having their annual Solo Inspection here that day as well. Check our Vorshlag Facebook page for more details about the open house. First autocross is the next day, March 11th.

More soon,

[Fair]

Project Update for Feb 24, 2012: It took me a week after the "track event" last weekend to write this update - needed time to get that disaster weekend behind me, I guess. This event was the first of 2012 for me, called the "Run To The Alamo", held by the ASCS / Pro-Touring folks, with the track portion of the event to be held at Harris Hill Road. The event was also a "qualifier" for the Optima Challenge, held each year in Vegas after SEMA. This RTTA event was supposed to be a 3 day competition event with a timed autocross, "speed stop event", and track day as well, but the autocross and speed stop portions were cancelled at the last minute (they didn't secure an autocross venue). They did have a car show, cruise-in and dinner Friday that I missed ("darn"). The somewhat lack of organization, problems with timing equipment, WEATHER, and a sick wife that tagged along combined to make for a full on "Charlie Foxtrot" event for me (clusterf*ck).

PICTURES: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...TA-HHR-021812/
"RESULTS": http://americanstreetcarseries.com/?page_id=751

So in my last update I covered the thrash by Vorshlag technicians AJ and Ryan. They wrenched on the Mustang for 2 days to get all of the new suspension bits installed and adjusted, brake pads/rotors on, harness bar and harnesses in, seats swapped, brake ducting built, car washed, oil changed and everything double-checked. We have been getting buried in customer fab/service work and we could only squeeze the Mustang in at the end of the week. This was the first competition event in the car since mid December, so everything need to be looked over.

The crap started with loading the trailer. I sold my 38' enclosed trailer in January (and just bought another one late today) so I borrowed a buddy's open trailer for the weekend. I was trying to leave Dallas by 1 or 2 pm, in a failed attempt to avoid Friday's "leaving town" traffic. I was also worried about the splitter making it harder to load, but with my nearly 12 feet worth of ramps (Race Ramps + the trailer ramps), it just cleared. Right as we started loading the car the weather went from sunny/nice to raining...



And the rain didn't let up for almost 48 hours. My wife, who normally co-drives our race cars and always goes to races with me, was going to come along as track side support and to help with driving to and from the event. Since we were only taking one car, and since I'm done trying to "double up" on track events in one car, she was just along to help. Too much abuse, and too hectic, to run 2 people in one car. Friday morning she was starting to get sick, and I knew from experience it wasn't going to get better anytime soon. I called McCall, he dropped everything and agreed to run down to San Marcos with me for the next 2 days to help. When I told my wife she was off the hook, she insisted she was going to go along to help, even when I begged her to stay, so we left about 3:30 pm and McCall was off the hook instead (this proved to be a huge mistake). She had set-up a blanket and pillow in the back seat of the MegaCab and proceeded to make a cocoon and slept back there the entire way. 6 hours of driving through crap traffic and steady rain the entire way... with her coughing and hacking from the back seat (later we found out she had full blown bronchitis). Oh joy.

So the drive down from Dallas to Austin/San Marcos was a nightmare, from weather and health reasons, but the truck and trailer worked fine (other than two hub caps coming off of the trailer along the way, which is $90 I need to replace now). The hotel she had reserved was very nice, full of high school cheerleaders (no joke), and we got there early enough to go out and get a real meal, but with a sick wife I stayed in and ordered room service food. She was up all night, throwing up and coughing. I almost convinced her to blow off the event and head home, since she was a mess, but she convinced me to stay. It rained HARD all night - rain pounded on the hotel window and kept waking me up, too. This all night downpour was not a good sign...


American Street Car Series "Run To The Alamo", aka Pain in the Rain

The ASCS guys said the track portion was to start at 7:30 am sharp, so "be there with cars ready for tech on time". We got up early and drove to the track by 7:40, just a tick late thanks to terrible directions by my sick navigator (heh!) and a "deep water crossing" we had go across at a bridge near the track (bad sign #2). We got to HHR and it was utter mayhem there, trucks and cars parked willy nilly, trying to unload cars in their postage stamp-sized upper parking lot. We finally figured out where to park (lower lot) and unload the car. It was raining pretty hard and it never much let up all day. Unloading a car from an open trailer in the rain SUCKS.

The main guy running the event showed up around 8:45 (oiy!), registration finally got started about 9:30, then we sat around watching the Daytona GRAND AM race in the clubhouse and kept seeing the rain come pouring down. Track owner said it had rained for going on 3 days in a row, and even though they were "in a drought" the area around the track was super saturated and "it will be draining across the track all day, even if it stops raining" (he was right). All the surrounding land drained into and across the property that the HHR track is placed on, and it was soaked.



Around 10 am they finally started had a driver's meeting ... that became a sponsor thank-fest that lasted a good 1/2 hour. By 10:45 am we had our RFID transponders installed (more on that) and a few of us finally lined up to get out on track. They wanted to do "some lead follow" laps to "sort out the drivers into groups" (never happened), and these laps lasted for almost 45 minutes, 2 laps at a time. Two drivers spin off track and proceeded to get good and stuck in the mud, during lead-follow laps. So yea, it was one of those kind of track days. I think by day's end we had 7 or 8 cars go off into the mud, needing a tow.



Watch this "highlight video" and you can see how much the weather and track conditions sucked...


in-car video showing "the opposite of track enjoyment"

There was a serious water crossing on the track, where you had to slow WAY down, and it made for 20' rooster tails whenever you crossed it. There were another 7-8 "rivers" crossing the track all day. This track has MAJOR drainage issues - not the fault of ASCS but it sucked all the same.



...see part 2 below...