Alright so now we're into May, convinced my father in law that autox was going to be fun, he signed up for the "classroom session" and
also took my cousin along.
I bought some 04 STI wheels from my boss' son's car that got wrecked, and put some 225/45r17 Direzza Star Specs on.
Stage was set, he thinks he can beat me in his BS RX8 on RE760's. I will be in ESP this year due to the catless downpipe, didn't
really care at that point in the season.
First weekend went well, made a camera mount to catch some videos of my driving in hopes of picking up some pointers and spot my
mistakes.
Heres event 1 shot from both the outside and in car. Actually not too shabby, fairly smooth and lines look alright, i'm not weaving 3 feet around
the cones at least.
If you hit play on the top video then immediately go hit play on the 2nd video you get a dual view of the action.
And here is the first of the GOOD pictures of my car, I suck with a camera so I have let everyone else do the work for me.
First event out I pax'd 4th. So now I'm really thinking I should get serious, talk it over with the wife and decide to
run the full season and aim for rookie of the year. She agrees and I pay my membership.
Over the next few months my driving steadily improves, I also upgraded some parts...
Mid Season
- Whiteline 24mm front and rear sway bars (fixed - no need to throw setup changes into the mix at this point)
- Whiteline alloy rear end links
- Whiteline Fixed front camber/caster plates KCA335 (+.75*caster and -.5 camber)
- STI catless Uppipe
- Sunny tune
Late Season
- 17x9" Rota DPT wheels with 245/40r17 Star Specs
- modified stock strut for even more camber (-3.25*)
Last minute I decided to head to nationals in Saskatoon, some vacation plans fell through and my wife agreed we should go.
Meanwhile the rookie championship points race is extremely close. Going into nationals I'm trailing by about 3 pts.
The national events coincide with the WCMA regionals which count for rookie points. A good showing here could gain me some
valuable points. My goal was top 30, and to be top 20 I would be thrilled. The event does not give a street tire modifier so
I would be further down than my local events, not to mention there are LOTS of fast drivers instead of 5 or so at each local event.
The weekend starts off great, the adrenaline in the first run of the test and tune gets to me and I launch the car harder
than I ever have before, and it felt great, Raw time was 8th out of the 50 cars that ran the practice session. WOW.
The national event was somewhat intimidating, very fast course, very large course and the biggest group (94 drivers)
of serious Autox's I've ever been around.
After the first run and hanging around in the pits it just feels like a larger CSCC event, lots of good people, all friendly
and plenty of car talk.
I'm running against a Fox body mustang on R888's and a 2005 Mustang GT on V710's or Hoosiers not sure, Rei was also there from
Edmonton on street tires. We had our work cut out for us.
After saturday's weird split, 2 morning runs then 2 afternoon runs, I was sitting 1st in my class by .887 sec over the 05 Mustang and 12th overall in pax.
Then starts my 2 weeks of mind blocks. 1st run Sunday was ok, safe like always, 2nd run I felt I made a mistake running wide early, so I decide to give er hell the rest of the run and see where I can push the car for the afternoon runs, I tag 1 cone in the slalom and the run ends up very fast. But coned away.
The afternoon 2 runs I knew I had to be fast, the 05 Mustang was quick and I didn't have a clean fast run, too safe on the 3rd, pushed too hard on the 4th and coned it away. Lost the class by .269 secs. I was angry at myself.
Anyways heres the final results, 18th out of 93. And lots of good results by other Calgary drivers...
TIME TO GO...more updates later
