continued from above
If you look at the results above, it shows my name but not times. Earlier this week it did show my best wet time of 1:59.2, which was still 9th quickest - not bad considering I left well before the track dried out, and these guys were driving until dark (the fastest lap of the event was the very last lap of the event, apparently). For some reason they deleted even that time, no idea why. I don't know why, for some reason them deleting all of my times now, after posting them before, is really pissing me off - especially since I made at least 2x or maybe even 3x as many laps as anyone else there. There were periods of 20-30 minutes where I was the only car out there - some guys made only a handful of laps in their high dollar Pro Touring cars. I get that, too. My time listing, before it was deleted, did have the little **not on 200 TW tires** noted, and I was ranked in order with the rest, but now my times are wiped off the results, so I guess its like I didn't even make a lap.
What a bunch of jokers. I will never go to another ASCS event after seeing all that went wrong here - not even considering the terrible weather and piss poor track drainage. They spent more time talking about what was for lunch than what was at stake from the competition. Its just... not the same as a NASA Time Trial, or something else equally as competitive. Heck, my local marquee BMW autocross club takes the competition more seriously. Even the TX2K11 event I went to last year, which was a total train wreck, dangerous, disorganized, and which I vowed to never attend again was more on the ball and had better results than this. Maybe if the track had been dry, where I would have immediately switched to the Dunlops, then they would have no basis for throwing out my times - then maybe I would have had more fun? I almost never have much fun at non-competition events, and that's what this became - plus miserably wet. But then again, I
have already signed up for TX2K12... so I guess I should never say never.
Pictures I have posted from the event will show you some
seriously nice muscle car hardware, and many of you will recognize a these cars from the pages of
Popular Hot Rodding and the Pro-Touring scene. Neat cars, a LOT of money invested in many of the, and I was impressed with how many of the owners
weren't afraid of throwing them off the track and into the mud. I can think of only
one car there that
wasn't driven on the wet as hell track. There was no real damage done, luckily, but it could have been ugly if a car had spun off sideways and gone shiny side down. Oh yea, the "Detroit Speed Inc" 53' 18 wheeler transporter was chock full of kickass cars, any of which I would be proud to own. They are doing something right - that transporter was nicer than some NASCAR team's units (and may have been an ex-NASCAR Cup teams' setup). The DSI owner was a super nice guy, and worked his butt off to help me get my timing issues sorted - big thanks to Brian for that. He's apparently an owner of the new ASCS series, so maybe he can help guide them into a more organized competition series.
So, overall my thoughts on the ASCS Run To The Alamo = "meh". Needs more organizational work.
Dry 0-60 Testing
Of course our Mustang was completely filthy when we got it back to Dallas, from driving through that slop for the full day + towing it home on wet roads. AJ worked his magic and got it cleaned up this week, the weather cleared up, and I took the Mustang on another set of four 0-60 test blasts on the same roads as a week ago. This was to test the dry traction with he new rear suspension parts and pinion angle setting...
Click for video of 0-60 testing in the Mustang with the new rear suspension bits
So that was pretty much "the suck". The damn thing was slower 0-60 in all 4 tests, by 2-4 tenths. I am not a
complete noob when it comes to drag racing on street tires (have made on the order of "thousands of runs" at the drag strip in similar cars), so I want to think it wasn't driver error. This testing was performed on a closed course with professional drivers driving around me, of course. It only looks like residential streets - its a TV thing. After speaking with a few more solid axle savvy friends they all think we're running a bit extreme on the pinion angle we started with (-2.5°, straight from the Spohn directions), so we're going to back it down
quite a bit, do iterative testing, and inch our way to the best pinion angle. Its a grind, but this needs to be done.
What's Next?
Next event for this car is March 11th, which is the first Texas Region SCCA autocross. Local concrete lot, pretty tight, so its usually my worst event site for a car like this. I'm looking in the shop at 3 of the sets of 2011 tires we ran in STX class last year and none of them are fresh enough to re-use for this event, except the 265/35/18 Toyos R1Rs, which I wasn't at all happy with (these were the worst in our April 2011 tire test). Been trying to sell these Toyos for almost a year. So I've been looking at buying fresh tires this week, and I have it narrowed down to the 265/40/18 size in the Yokohama AD08 and the
Hankook RS-3. The RS-3 is new to this 40 series size, and of course they are not in stock yet (I keep calling our guy at TireRack). I think I am going to hold out and wait for this one, as it handily won the dry autocross test that GRM / TireRack did last year, but the AD08 was right on its heels and fastest in the wet.
If we can arrange it in time I am going to hold a private autocross test before this March 11th event, but things have been so damned busy that all of my plans are going sideways lately.
New Track-side Support Vehicle
The weekend wasn't a total bust. On Sunday the weather in Dallas was picture perfect... literally not a cloud in the sky, 70°F, just beautiful.
Son of a B! I took this time to go pick up my new golf cart-sized
"track vehicle project", which isn't a golf cart at all. Taylor Dunn, Gas powered BG-150 "utility truck". Think
"Austin Powers", but not electric, and with a front cab and box on the back. The rear box is coming off for a 2nd row of seats and a flat load floor. The TD is very narrow and
should fit nicely in the front section of my new enclosed trailer, next to the built in aluminum work bench and cabinets.
Vorshlag Open House March 10th
Also, Vorshlag is having an open house along with hosting the Texas Region SCCA's Annual Solo Tech event, Saturday March 10th from 9 am until 4 pm. Feel free to come by our facility that day for a tour of our shop, meet our guys, see what we can offer in terms of fabrication/service/set-up work as well as products we build, stock and carry. Free burgers, drinks, etc. Join us
here!