Project Update for November 25, 2013: Wow, really got swamped for the past few weeks and haven't made an update to this thread, and a lot has gone on in the background. We were short 3 people during the week of SEMA, hired a new Ops Manager, and got swamped in service jobs and orders in the past week. So please excuse the tardy updates. Let's see... I will talk about our last autocross in the red 2011 GT, which was the annual "TMS Road Course" autocross event. I will then touch on the eBay auctions on both S197 test mules and what's next.
SCCA @ TMS Road Course Autocross - Oct 13th
Before this autocross event in October we had about 3 weeks of busy time at the shop. The Mustang did so well at TWS all we did was change the oil (which we do after every other event) and do a typical "pre-race inspection". The guys ended up leaving the brakes, wheels, tires and other systems untouched.
For whatever reason the racing schedule was pretty light in October this year. There was no NASA event this month (but two in September, with Miller Nats and TWS), so Amy and I signed up for this SCCA Solo event on the 13th in the TT3 Mustang. This was no run of the mill autocross but instead the annual "road course autocross" event this region runs inside the super speedway at Texas Motor Speedway, on the infield road course (see image below).
Texas Motor Speedway in Ft. Worth, Texas, has a NASCAR/IndyCar super speedway plus an itty bitty infield road course.
If you've been reading this build thread for a while you might remember that I ran this road course in our Mustang in
September of 2012 with Global Time Attack. The course we ran with GTA was the same basic
1.56 mile layout (the
red course in that link) as this autocross followed, but it was done at MUCH faster speeds with GTA, because they didn't add elements to this flat road course to slow us down. That GTA event was a lot of fun, and we met a lot of cool racers and saw some amazing cars. We were all sorely disappointed that GTA couldn't come back to TMS in 2013. A few local shops are working with us to try to get Jason Dienhart and his GTA circus to come back through Texas next year, and we even have proposed a "GTA" type class to run in NASA Texas TT, as a provisional/regional class. More on that in a later post.
Running this road course.... as a road course, in Sept 2012 with GTA
So with GTA I ran a
39.87 second lap (with my transponder off) and an official 39.975 lap to win Unlimited RWD class, but this autocross set-up would not be a complete lap of the 1.56 mile road course. It would instead have a separate Start and Finish gates that chopped off about a 1/4 mile of track, to allow for a braking area after the finish lights. And at GTA I was topping out 4th gear going into turn 1 (about 120 mph) and using only 3rd and 4th gears. To keep it from being a 25 second long autocross course with speeds
much higher than SCCA allows, there were a few (hundred) cones added.
But we knew what to expect, as Amy and I have run this event with the Texas Region SCCA many times over the past 7 or 8 years.
Amy pulls up to the start line, which just before the "crossover" and the start/finish line we used in GTA
This "TMS road course autocross" event is always lots of fun for area autocrossers, and they have to cap the entries at about 165. This event gives autocross racers a place to run outside of the normal parking lot confines, and on a real live road course at that. Autocrossing on a road course might seem alien to some, but I
started out in an autocross club (TAMSCC) that
regularly held high speed autocrosses on road courses (TWS "Aggiecross", Riverside Annex Firecracker 1.4, Riverside 4-10 split "Police Course", etc). Then running with Spokes down in Houston (Heritage Center!) or SCCA in Houston (at the Blimp Base, now known as GrandSport Speedway) I was exposed to even more road course autocrosses. So I was event chairman for these "road course" events multiple times and made hundreds of runs on autocrosses where we regularly used 4th gear, so it only seems natural to me to autocross on the biggest, fastest sites and road courses you can find. This is why I cringe so hard when I run needlessly tight autocross events, like what Goodguys holds (1st gear only). That stuff is what is alien to me.
Giant, open, fast autocrosses run on road course sized layouts are what I grew up on. My ESP '87 Mustang back in 1992
Sure, this TMS event has a little extra speed (high 70s/low 80s for the faster cars), but it is still nowhere near what the unrestricted course would let them see (I only used 1st-2nd-3rd gears on this course in autocross form). And it is still relatively safe, as autocrosses go. I wish more SCCA autocross regions tried this type of road course event once a year or so, to help bridge the MASSIVE gap that there seems to be between autocrossers and club racers. We constantly hear that the SCCA is
hemorrhaging members and much of that is from their dwindling numbers of club racers, as there seems to be very little new blood coming into their ranks. The PDX series (SCCA version of HPDE + Time Trial) is one such bridge between these two competitive groups within SCCA, but it seems that the rules makers have made it extremely difficult (read: expensive) to do PDX events, requiring the same safety gear ($$$) as club racing in many classes. I've begged our SCCA region's officers to come join us at a NASA race weekend to see how that club has made the switch from HPDE to TT to Club Racing so seamless and painless... but that's a different discussion for a different time.
Amy (at left) ran in W class in the Mustang, battling her best friend Melinda in her BSP C4 Corvette (at right)
Anyway, this TMS road course autocross is always on our calendar, and considering our plans for 2014 and the upcoming auction of this TT3 Mustang, we had planned to make this our last autocross in the red car. Looking back over the past 3 and a half years of racing in this Mustang, from where we started out (with our initial plans just to autocross this car in STX, where it floundered) to where it ended up (built for and around NASA TT rules, where it flourished), having our last autocross in it at a road course seems strangely appropriate.
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