[Fair]

continued from above

After these first 4 runs (of 1 we take for the weekend), I was inexplicably leading the ESP class - ahead of the 7 car field that included CP Nat'l Champion Todd Farris and 7-time ESP Nat'l Champion Mark Madderash. Huh?! I mean, sure... the car felt quick, but it had all sorts of understeer, no testing, the wrong tires, the rear diff was letting go, and was still just an STX prepped car with a spoiler and Kumhos. Even the heat 1 announcer Andy Hollis was shocked, and sounded incredulous when he made the announcement of who was in the lead after my last run. That was pretty exciting, and we had dozens of racers come by that morning and congratulate us on "finally finding the right class for the Mustang!" I was hooked on grip once again so I doubt we'll ever run this car in STX again - it just fits better here!


Left: ESP class results after round 1 - I was in the lead! Right: ESP results after all 3 rounds, I was in 2nd. Orange line shows Super Challenge cut-off

Official Event Results: http://scca.cdn.racersites.com/prod/...%20Results.pdf
PAX Results: http://www.sccaforums.com/LinkClick....rcedownload=tr

Unfortunately, that was the high point of the weekend, and the rest of the ProSolo event went pretty much downhill for both of us. The car developed some funky "Service AdvanceTrac" fault, the steering feedback jitters were rampant, and the poor stock limited slip devoured itself completely - by Sunday it was an open diff; we never got close to our Saturday morning run times. I was trying everything I had on every run, and my final two Sunday morning runs were .7 to 1.0 sec slower than my Saturday morning left and right side runs. Looking at my 12 class runs I cut five .5xx lights, five .6xx lights, had one .4xx redlight, one in the .7xx range, and a pair of cones. Meh, I never claimed to be a ProSolo expert; in 24 years of autocrossing (I uh... started racing when I was 2!) I've only attended 7 ProSolo events, and it never really suited my driving style (I just don't get much better over the course of 12 runs on the same course).


Left: If you don't show up on 315's in ESP, don't bother. Right: "SERVICE ADVANCETRAC" fault

With the car's performance falling off like it did I was lucky that my Saturday morning times were still good enough to hold onto 2nd in ESP class for the event, and put me at 12th place in PAX standings. That was a bit of a shocker. Madderash slapped on a sticker set of Hoosier R6s Saturday afternoon (I would too, if I had them) and looked faster everywhere, dropping a second per side on his final two Saturday afternoon runs, which were his fastest of the weekend. I ended up .4 / .6 sec off of him per side, so a total of 1.007 sec back for the weekend. He got 2nd in PAX overall for the event, by a mere .002 sec, so he was driving very well. I was still VERY happy with my results and look forward to more battles with Mark and the other ESP racers in the future.


Everyone had a bit of push in this corner, it seems

Amy's Saturday morning times weren't enough to keep her in 2nd in L1, however. After two of her L1 competitors improved dramatically on their 11th and 12th runs of the weekend (with sticker tires Sunday) that bumped her to 4th place out of 9 cars in class on the last Sunday runs. Not unexpected, considering how far off my times she was and how the car was sort of imploding. Here's the video of Amy's Challenge runs - which was the only in-car video we got from her all weekend. She was about 3.5 sec off of her own pace, ugh. My Sat afternoon and Sunday in-car videos contain so much foul language (from me fighting with the car - and losing ) I cannot post them, heh!

Somehow both Amy and I made it into the Challenges - she into the Ladies Challenge and me into the Gumout Super Challenge. Amy's times were way off of her "index times" from Saturday morning and she went out in round one. Mine were similarly "off" from my best, and I was paired up against #1 seed Andy Hollis - oh boy. Still, I gave him a run for his money and cut a .514 light on one side and even beat him back to the line on one of the 2 runs (I think he had a mistake), but he beat me enough on the other side to advance. As I came through the lights on my first pass the AdvanceTrac fault light was on and I had mere seconds to get to the staging lights - not enough time to "reboot" the systems, so run 2 was plagued by a wacky throttle (it kept cutting out and flashing lights). Oh well, just making it into the Challenge was a first for both of us, so that was cool.



I got a quick weight on the Mustang at full ESP prep using the SCCA scales, and it came in at 3467 lbs (car is on the scales backwards so ignore corner weights). The 4th gen F-bodies in class are 3200-3300 and the lone 3rd gen is 3100, so we still have the heavyweight in ESP class - but its nothing like the weight discrepancy we saw in STX class (with 2600 lb RX8s and 2750 lb BMWs). With ESP rules we can lose more weight now, too. After the trophy presentation we helped clean up the site (hauled 20 bags of stinky garbage to the dumpsters) then loaded up and headed home by 7 pm. Thus ended our exhausting 3 day race weekend, which we are still recovering from now as we load up for another race weekend.

Many Upgrades in Store

We have a laundry list of things to fix before our next ESP outing, and our guys here at Vorshlag have already tackled most of them this week including: more rear spring rate, rear differential rebuild (carbon disc upgrade - before we finally pull the trigger on the Torson or Wavetrac), and more. I will show the guts of the original factory diff, which was indeed coming apart. The steering rack has got to be reprogrammed soon, so we're trying to schedule a 2 week window of no events so we can pull it and send it off to Ford. There aren't many 2 week gaps in our schedule for months, so we might bite the bullet and buy a 2nd $1000 electric steering rack to have programmed. Ugh.



So overall it was still a great weekend, I was just a little disappointed at how the car's performance (and our own) peaked early, then fell off quickly. The tires still feel fine, but they are no Hoosiers. We are going to use them for track events from now on, including NASA's Time Trial event this weekend at TWS. Before we run in ESP again the car will be on fresh 315/335 Hoosiers (there's even room out back for 345s). As expected every single car in ESP that weekend was on 315mm tires front and rear, including: four 4th gen Camaros, one 3rd gen, and two S197 Mustangs. I was the lone driver on Kumhos and two driver's were on Goodyears (that were sticker tires Sat morning but wore down to cords after only 25 total runs - these things are way too soft!), with the rest on Hoosier A6s - the default DOT Race Tire in Street Prepared.

Check back next week and I'll talk about the prep for this weekend's NASA event (rear wing uprights, full brake ducting, etc), which is wrapping up this afternoon up as I post this (I need to be on the rode to College Station right NOW). By next week we should be shipping any backorders on S197 Camber Plates, we might actually have a more solid date on the long overdue D-Force Mustang 18x10s (agh!!), and we can work on fitting the Moton Motorsport Pro 2-way shocks on our car with the new VM Camber Plates. We have 3 race weekends in June, including another Optima Challenge event - so that's another set of $1200 street tires (200TW) we need to buy. I might open a used tire store here, since I have like 7 or 8 sets of half-tread 140-200 TW tires from racing the Mustang in STX for so long.

Thanks,