continued from above
Driving that car on that course Saturday was...
challenging. Exhilarating?
Tiring! When I looked at the times it was more... frustrating. That word pretty much sums up my feelings after 3 runs on Day 1. I was now sitting .748 sec behind Sipe's RX8 (below left), and fell from 2nd to 3rd to 4th place at the end of the day, behind Wilson in the WRX and Roberts in the MZ3. I expected to be trailing the RX8 and maybe even the E36, but I didn't see the other two until it was too late. Ledbetter in the BMW 328is had some quicker times but coned them away and was placed behind me on Day 1, for once.
All night at the (Vorshlag sponsored) Saturday night Bar-B-Q dinner, I discussed my frustration with driving on street tires and too much power. Going from 305mm wide Hoosiers on track Thursday to skinny 265mm street tires on the same car
the next day was a big change - and is making me think twice about STX. It was
fun tracking the Mustang on R compounds and still being almost 8 tenths back after driving to the limit of
my ability on Saturday was driving me nuts. It didn't help sitting next to F Stock drivers Doug Willie and Casey Weiss as well as ESP driver Mark Madderash that night. They all drive on Hoosier/smoke the R compound crack pipe... "Go to ESP!" they all said. After that day's walloping, and several beers, I was giving it serious thought.
Bad influences from the Hoosier clad FStock and ESP drivers
Texas Tour - Day 2
We woke up early Sunday morning (still dark) and drove the Mustang off site to a nearby gas station, just to add a couple of gallons of go juice. Not being on course at Wide Open Throttle to disguise it, the RF wheel hub was making a HUGE amount of noise driving above 40 mph. Oh... wow, that was LOUD. We wondered: "Do we continue to drive this car today?" and risk a wheel hub failure/wheel coming off? We gave it a serious thought, and Ledbetter graciously offered me a co-drive in his 328is. That car was looking good with the fresh motor, new tires, and new DDP pistons in the rear AST 4200s. This offer was very tempting... but I was more interested in how the
car could do in class than how
I could do in class, so I stuck with the Mustang for all of my runs. I re-checked the wheel hub in the paddock and it still felt tight, but there was no denying that the hub noise sounded terminal.
Sunday's course was the same thing, but backwards. Technical, busy, some very tight spots, lots of slaloms. I walked it another 2-3 times and didn't see much help for my big, tire-limited car, except maybe in a few places where cars
might hit higher terminal speeds, which would then favor the Mustang's "long legs" in 2nd gear (about 74 mph @ 7850 rpm) - that proved to be true, and lots of drivers either rode the limiter in 2nd or had a lot of 2-3-2 shifts to manage.
Video of Amy Day 2 run 3 with a 65.945 sec lap
Amy went out again in heat 2 and put another 3.3 seconds on STX-L for an overall win of 5.9 seconds over 2 days. Ouch! She looked a
lot faster on Day 2, both from the outside and on the in-car video, so she found her inner bad-ass and harnessed her aggression on Day 2. Instead of being nearly a second back from me like on Day 1, she ended up barely 0.5 seconds behind me for Day 2's runs (she's beaten me more times than I care to count, so I have to savor these little inner-team wins when I can!). We had watched Day 1's videos the night before and I talked to her about driving a bit more aggressively and I guess it worked. She also listened to music coming to the line and throughout her runs, which works for her. I leave the radio off but talk to myself when I drive; its kind of funny listening to myself on video afterwards...
So heat 3 rolls around and I'm almost dreading it. I felt like I'd fall back from the leader another second or more and end up with a huge deficit and a mid-pack finish, or worse. That's not what happened though. With no changes other than the course direction and a good night's sleep, I came out on run 1 and the car and/or I was just... faster. The various "straight-ish" sections drove quicker and I was bumping near the rev limiter in 3-4 spots, which probably equates to 70-74 mph into a few corners. Nothing else that I know of in STX can do 74 mph in 2nd gear, so I felt like this might be a good day for the big red boat?
Video of Terry Day 2 Run 1. This was a 66.901 sec run with lots of mistakes
Run 1 was pretty messy (see video above) but on run 2 all the stars aligned and I had another nearly perfect drive (well, perfect
for a hack like me), and the announcer said my 65.468 second run
put me into the the lead...
Wait, the WHAT?! This is a National Tour, in the 3500 pound pig, and was .75 sec back on day 1! I was unsure of what to think just then. Suddenly I was on the hot seat and was ready for a "just kidding!" from the announcer. Amy left the vidcam on for like an hour, filled the SD card up, and the vidcam shut-off right as I got to the line, so there's no video of my fastest run, which was run # 2. Trust me, it was frakkin magic.
Video of Terry Day 2 Run 3 with a 65.827 sec lap (run 2 was best @ 65.468 sec)
Well, that was short lived, as Sipe cleaned up a dirty run #1 and put down a 65.808 sec run # 2 (which ended up being his best). Hey, I was still in second and had the fastest time of the day for STX, so I was cool with that! James Wilson ended up with a fast 2nd run that was a hair slower than mine, but still bumped me to 3rd place based on his faster run from the day before. Going into my 3rd run I was hoping for a few more tenths to
maybe regain 2nd, and 3/4 of the way through my 3rd run it was going great. I was deeper into the revs sooner than my fast run 2, so it was going to be faster, but with more speed in the braking zone I botched the entry into a slalom and put the car sideways, barely missing a cone and losing a lot of time. I might have been a few tenths quicker, might have regained 2nd, but threw it away. James Wilson, the last driver in STX, put down a smoking fast last of 65.384 seconds and re-took fastest STX time for day 2, with my 2nd run less than a tenth back. Gotta congratulate him on that - he made it a close race in STX with only .087 seconds separating Sipe and Wilson in 1st-2nd over 2 days. I ended up in 3rd and took comfort in my "2nd fastest on Day 2" time - gotta take the good news where you can find it.
None of STX PAXed well, which must have been course dependent, as the runs I could see looked clean and quick. C Prepared driver Todd Farris (the Divisional Steward who set-up most of the event logistics) took the Top PAX honors for the event in his AST equipped 2nd gen Camaro, which was pretty cool.
more below...