continued from above - last one!
At this point on Saturday it was looking like Hobaugh had this whole weekend sewed up, but I knew one thing these Pro guys didn't:
the TMS Infield Road Course. With a couple of hundreds laps under my belt here in 2012 with GTA and 7+ years of SCCA autocrosses on the same layout, I had a little course knowledge over anyone else in attendance. Would knowing the course be enough, since everyone would get 6 fifteen minute sessions on track Sunday? I had no idea - only Sunday would tell. I was worried about being down on power to virtually all of the top 15 cars, too. But one thing that really helped my overall standing was the last "competition" that happened on Saturday: the design challenge.
Lingenfelter Performance - Design and Engineering Competition
During the middle of one Autocross session they pulled me over to the Optima trailer "to be judged". There was no Judge Dredd there waiting but instead 5 industry icons picked mostly from the company owners from the event sponsors who would evaluate each car. This judged event was also worth a total of 25 points, from a ranked score. The judges first scored each entry on six categories of "street car amenities" (things like air con, door glass, lighting, and such) and then on another series of things such as the paint, interior modifications, engineering changes, drivetrain, and the fit and finish of the car. I was really worried about this because our Mustang is far from a show car, unlike many of the Pro cars. But, also unlike many of those, our Mustang is really a street car - with a full interior, air bags, air con, and all of that. And the unique and custom aero and wheels look the part, and then some.
Prepared to be judged....
Turns out we didn't do so badly, and the judges noticed that I had all of the "street car points" in the 6 categories they were looking for. We maxed out the 15 points that made up these streetable things, while many others did not. Some of the Pro Touring entries here were barely disguised race cars, and they did poorly in these street categories by not having things like HVAC, real doors, side door glass, interior materials, or a radio.
The other 10 points of the 25 point score were subjective numbers based on a 0-100 scale from each judge. They threw out the high and low judged score on this subjective scale, average the remaining three numbers and divide that score by 10, then added this to the 15 point scale from above. Sounds easy, right? Looking at the score sheet above helps it make more sense. On the subjective 0-100 scale we scored a 61 average, better than many others. That meant I got 6.1 points out of the subjective 10 point part + all 15 points for the 6 street car amenities categories for a total score of 21.1 out of 25.
That the 21.1 points wasn't my final score in the this category, of course, as this was only used for the overall class ranking yet again. The car's score here was good enough for 4th overall in class, so I netted 18 out of 25 points in this event, not the 21.1 points scored. Follow?
Cheryl Herrick's beautiful Chevy II (above) from Jet Hot won this event, and if you had seen it up close you'd know why. That car was amazingly well prepared and scored a 72.2 score on the 0-100 judge's subjective scale (7.2 points) and she also netted the maximum 15 points for "the street amenity score". Her overall score was really only a 22.2 out of 25 possible points (only 1.1 points better then our Mustang), but since she ranked first she got the full 25 points in this category. That ranking thing is how they do it in all categories, and it really pays to win as many events as you can. Finch scored one place ahead of me here (by a 0.2 point scored margin, doh!) and netted 20 out of 25 points. He also beat me on the Speed Stop by one place, but I nudged him on the autocross by one place. So, unbeknownst to me, I went into Sunday 2 points behind Finch and what
I thought was a huge gap behind Hobaugh. But his Camaro's Design score was hurt by the lack of a some street car parts and the resulting ranked score was only a 6.95, which hurt him.
End of Saturday
Jason and I checked the car over at the end of the day, fueled up again for Sunday morning, and we left the car parked in the garages for the night. The BFG tires looked EXCELLENT at this point and I felt like we'd get several more weekends like this out of them, at this rate. I was tired - between shuffling back and forth from the Autocross and speed stop events I was rarely unstrapped and out of the car most of about 6 hours that day. We did get a nice lunch break and the rain delay for about 90 minutes, so we relaxed in the garages and shot the bull with everyone during that down time.
We had a BOATLOAD of fun that day. I have never taken so many autocross runs in a single day, and never had to work course - sweet!
They had all of the events wrapped up by about 4:45 pm and we buttoned up the trailer and loaded bodies in the BMW to head home after a long day with lots of wind and cold, some rain, and a mix of frustration and elation. The E85 fueling mistake ended up not being a big deal after all, as we had been diluting the tank all day with more and more 93 octane. By Saturday evening we had it virtually purged of ethanol (well, other than the 10% that most Texas gas pumps include, for a normal E10 mix).
My mind was spinning about how badly I got beat in the autocross (in raw time, 7 tenths is an eternity) and what that could mean for what Hobaugh had in store for the road course? While I was still hopeful Sunday would be the
one event I could
possibly still win, my thoughts of an overall win for the class/event and SEMA invite were nil (at that point I had no idea what any of the Design scores were). I was resigned to maybe place in the top 3, which would be a good placement with these Pro built cars and top drivers in attendance.
But Sunday was a whole new game...
Click image above for a "fly by" video on the main straight of the TMS Infield Road Course
More next time!