Project Update for June 15, 2012: With all of the pre-event prep and changes made to the Mustang (see my last thread update, above) to tackle an autocross, speed-stop, and track event all in one weekend we loaded the car into the trailer Friday morning and headed to QuikTrip Park for the Friday events during the Optima Challenge Faceoff. We saw lots of cool hot rods and muscle cars on the highways, as the week long Power Tour was wrapping up at the same location... across the street in the parking lot for the at the horse track called
Lone Star Park.
OPTIMA FACEOFF AT HOT ROD POWER TOUR
I was ready for autocrossing on the surface at LSP, as I had raced there many dozens of times and new how the site would bite. When we rolled up and saw what looked like thousands of cars parked all over the giant open asphalt lot at LSP, I was confused. I asked the guy at the gate: "Uhhhh... Where is the event!?!" "You see the small parking lot across the street? That's it." Oh damn. The lot used to park cars for the minor league baseball field (QuikTrip Park) and neighboring Verizon theater (which had some high school graduation going on) was our lot for the day. It was a much smaller, sealed asphalt surface, and I didn't know this site at all.
Oh well, no home court advantage today (but I knew the ECR track better than any other track I've raced on - hopefully that would pay off tomorrow!). We wound our way through the barricades and finally found a spot to park the truck and trailer. While Amy unloaded the Mustang I went over to registration, which was already well underway. The organizers had several
huge trailers set-up, including this massive multi-level rig Optima brought they called
Optima Prime. It really
was like some massive Transformer, with all of these swiveled and rotated and flipped out sections on this 53' trailer, and both air conditioned space and a shaded upper level observation deck. Very cool.
K&N, Bowler Transmissions/Royal Purple, RideTech, Wilwood, and others also had their big display trailers set-up, there were bleachers for spectators to sit in, (hundreds of people came by to watch the events) and TV cameras EVERYWHERE - on man lifts/cranes, crews walking around with 2 SpeedTV hosts, mobile lipstick cameras they put in and on cars, and more. I was blown away by all of this pageantry and spectacle
for an autocross - in 24 years of competing in this sport I had NEVER seen anything like it! After I shook my head, pinched myself and was positive this was real, I made it up to the registration platform inside the Optima trailer. I got checked in, signed all sorts of insurance and release forms (TV stuff), they handed me an event T-shirt + a gaggle of decals, and I went back and got the car "stickered up" and ready.
Amy did her magic and put the huge Optima side decal boards, Optima numbers, and Optima windshield banner decals on perfectly (as usual we laid them up wet - you shoulda seen some of the other decal installations!) Drove the Mustang over to the pre-grid area where all of the entrants were lining up and started talking to some folks. Damn fine cars here, including the LG ZR1 and numerous magazine featured cars I had seen before or knew of. Wow, there was some serious hardware in the 40 car field! After snapping some pics of several of my dream cars, I began to walk the tight autocross course several times, and also talking to some friends I knew that were entered. There was a driver's meeting at the Optima Prime trailer, then we were split into 2 groups, and my group was lined up for the Speed Stop Event.
Wilwood Disc Brakes Speed-Stop Event
Now remember: we had just mounted these brand new Nitto tires, rolled the car onto and out of the trailer, and then driven it 100 feet to the grid area. So yea,
the tires were covered in silicone mold release. Also, the R4 brake pads and dedicated rotors were swapped on, but not in the perfect order from the last time they were used, also with zero driving. Guess where I'm going here? The tires were not scrubbed in and the brakes were not bedded, so
I had NO grip and NO brakes on my first 3 speed stop attempts! Blew right out of the stop box every time.
This also wasn't a straight forward "accelerate then brake" deal, due to the size of the lot. We had a decent little acceleration zone (I saw a peak of ~60 mph), then a
pirouette cone lined in water barriers, then a super tight offset slalom (35' apart with significant offsets) into the 20x40' stop box. And there was water seeping up through the parking lot at the front of the stop box, which never stopped all day (from heavy rains the day before). Not complaining - we all had to drive the same thing - it just wasn't a straight "go and stop" kind of deal. You had to set-up for the turn-around and subsequent slalom to get a good time. The acceleration box from the standing start was also pretty bad until it rubbered-in, later in the day.
Lined up for the Start-Stop event in front of another crowd of spectators
Right before the Speed Stop event was to start they had pushed our group temporarily over into the autocross line for 1 run (while some cars were moved in the Speed-Stop area), which also felt like driving on greased ice. My first 3 Speed-Stop runs were pathetic, and I blew through the stop box each time, pressing like mad on the brake pedal. After those first 4 attempts to do anything was losing my mind. I noticed I had no fuel left, and I was drenched in sweat already - and had no water or ice in our cooler, and it was already hot (95°F day). I had to get out of here and get fuel, water, ice, scrub the tires and bed the brakes. I asked for a fuel break, was told where to exit, and I got out of that parking lot. About 1 mile away was a RaceTrac gas station, and in that mile of driving I broke more traffic laws than I can count. It must of looked like somebody was driving a car full of sting-crazy bees - I was swerving across three lanes, accelerating like mad, then panic stopping. But when I got back 10 minutes later the brakes were bedded and those tires were scrubbed in.
Ride-Tech Street Challenge Autocross
So with the silicone off the tires the the brake pad surfaces matching the rotors, I went back in line to wait for my group to start the autocross portion for the next hour. We had 4 straight hours of racing (with one 15 minute break where we went back to pre-grid), and each hour we'd rotate from S-S to Auto-x. My first auto-x run on the greased-up tires was a 35.6 sec run. My next run an hour later on the now-scrubbed tires was a 33.2. Then I had a string of 32s, then five runs in the 31s. I was getting faster and the announcer noticed...
By the end of the day I had taken about 12 autocross runs and managed to run a 30.8 and a 30.5 second pass. We thought those might be in the top three but since they were not posting times we didn't know how close we were. The announcer was calling out times over the speakers, but these were pointed away from the grid and towards the crowd. By around 4 pm I had two buddies join us (McCall and Ed, the two nose-pickers shown below) that were helping with tire pressures, tire spraying (these NT-05s were boiling in short order), keeping me hydrated, and this let Amy go across the event site to the Optima trailer and listen for our times (which she would text to us after each run).
With 40 cars moving through the line it made for a little wait between each run, and the camera crew used those periods to do on-camera interviews with drivers. I was interviewed 3 times during autocross & Speed-Stop events, and you can hear one of the interviews at the end of my autocross video, below.
Click for in-car video of one of my 31 second autocross runs + an on-camera interview with Bill Goldberg
more below...