GRM....er...GLDiv National Challenge RallyCross wrap-up thread.

A lot of GRM'ers at the GLDiv rallycross challenge this weekend. In fact, MR class (8 cars) I think was pretty much 100% GRM guys as far as I could tell. In any case, great meeting you guys and running on some awesome courses this weekend.

MR finished up with the top three separated by 1.01 seconds total after 1500+ seconds of runs. And it could have very easily been a half dozen drivers within a few seconds if not for some unfortunate car issues, really. The class was that even.

For those not there, I can wrap the MR class at least:

Kevin won by 1/2 a second, and I'm pretty sure he ran clean for the entire weekend which is damn impressive.

Nick (my co-driver) held the lead for most of the weekend before relinquishing it late sunday to Kevin and me as he hit a "time wall" of sorts and couldn't get any faster.

Evan was leading in the morning saturday and then decided to attack a bunch of cones, and then was attacked back by electrical gremlins.

Pete may have laid down the fastest RWD run of the entire event immediately before laying down the only de-bead of the class on the next run.

Chris is fast as hell in Evan's car, and in Josh (bluej)'s car, too bad he couldn't run both days, and that the cars he drove kept breaking..... it would have been very interesting.

I spun out on my first run in the wet grass like an idiot (unlucky grid position draw, to boot) and managed to claw back to 2nd thanks to nothing breaking on my car all weekend, basically. And Berkeley You slalom cone on run 14.

Josh S. gets the GRM award for most improvised fixes over the weekend to try to keep the car running, but in the end he drove my (uncomfortable) car 7 hours home to DC and I towed his car home on my trailer

A few quick pics of some GRM crew and would love to hear everyone else's impressions.

Evan and Kevin (well, his car)

Me/Nick and Pete

Josh spent a lot of time doing this kind of stuff

And working on Evan's car

Jerry

DC crew

Nice pics. Wish I had remembered to try to find more of you out-of-towner's to chat and get to know. Nationals? EDIT: and some days I miss my '87 MR2 more than others.

I ran dirty on the 1st course but I think day 2 I only hit 1 cone. It was a great battle and great racing all weekend. It sucks about Josh, he was having the worst luck all weekend :(

My lack of power made 2nd gear useless and with the course design I was just better off winding out 1st gear.

9700 rpm x 4.10 rear gear x 25" (or so) tires x 3.483 1st gear ratio = 50mph, and at 8000rpm it is 41mph

I burned 5 quarts of oil that weekend and about 15 gallons of gas between my co-driver and I.

The last 2 (maybe 3) years I took 3rd place at the GLNC, so this felt like a great win. I did call it early in the 1st day, 1st through 3rd will be decided by a cone!

The courses were all so fun it was hard not to turn them into drift battle, which is what I did most of the 1st course in the AM on Saturday. Also props for not having slalomcross. I forgot how much fun a rallycross COULD be. I wish to make it to New England NC but the car's exhaust needs attention and I cannot afford to do both. Also I fear your fast courses will wipe the floor with my low compression. :)

Also, I am in that picture but with the reflection on the windshield you cant see me lol.

Not a good Mod Front weekend. Pat's Honda had a blown headgasket, so he had to keep it topped off with water, Leon's VW shattered a motor mount and missed 7 runs plus another semi-unrelated DNF, and I had a pair of DNFs on Saturday and really terrible driving in the first set of runs -- I think my first run was all of 7 seconds off the pace and I wasn't making it up, even without the DNFs.

I did discover that there is an Advance Auto about 15 minutes from NTR, so that could be handy in the future, I can do an axle swap and change all four tires in about 30 minutes, and the Craftsman cordless impact with a high capacity li-ion battery can swap 10 tires and do an axle job with plenty of battery power left.

Even with an awful finish, it was an awesome time and with my expectations way lower for Nationals, I think I'll wind up having a better time out there!

On the other hand, I am trying to mobilize funds for four new rally tires... if I can get them by the end of September.

In reply to Knurled:

That reminds me... The magnetic sheeting that I'm using is this: http://www.mcmaster.com/#5756k35/=tfuju8

Saturday was a day of ups and downs for me. My parade lap in the miata was tons of fun as I reacquainted myself with the car and the joy of boost and roost. Leading the class after the first heat felt pretty good too.

The afternoon heat went down-up-down-down with Evan's car not starting, Josh S letting me drive his car, me deciding to call it quits after two runs when his car started getting hot, and then his car getting really hot followed by his unfortunate screwdriver incident.

Bluej, did you get the car & face patched up?

His face survived with no medical care and he seemed to be ok, though I'm sure he'll have a little scar there and a story to tell about it....

After we fixed the motor mounts in the dark on his car (cutting two of my solid M42 mounts in half to make a pair of M20 mounts), that was ok, but he had fuel issues on Sunday and pretty much just limped the car around at half power for most of the day. It was bad enough that I actually towed his car home (it's sitting in my driveway now, where a tree branch fell on it today and scratched some paint....I think it's cursed). The worst part for him was that he had to drive my car (with no interior and non-comfy seat) 7 hours home yesterday, using his street tires since I didn't bring any. So I'm sure that was a long drive. I start hating my car after about 2 hours in it on the road....

I'm sure he'll jump in here and comment at some point, but I think he had a busy week coming up.

We took a "scenic" road for part of our way home instead of the toll road, which ended up to be great for sporty cars (through the mountains where all the wind turbines are), but not fun in the tow rig. At one point it had a 4-5 mile long downhill run with curves at a 9% grade. Took a while to clear out the burning brakes smell, even engine-braking in 2nd all the way down and the trailer brakes boosted. Pretty impressed with the Hawk HPS on the Sequioa though, there was very little fade.

lol....I went like 10mph on my parade lap, which really hurt me not realizing how slippery that grass was in the 4th starting spot Saturday morning. It didn't feel slippery going 10mph, haha...

Chris (I think) was behind me during the first parade lap, and I was behind Bill. I was hanging back a bit, then blasting through grassy sections to get a feel for how grippy the course is(n't). Some days I think I do better on the parade lap than in actual competition.

The really tricky part is when you want to drive what you think is going to be an optimal line, but you don't want to show that to the person behind you

Yeah, I was the 2nd driver in my car Sunday since Nick was in 1st at the time, so I got to do the parade lap with nobody in front of me. I went 80% full speed and actually caught the back of the 1st driver pack, haha...

Being right behind the "pace truck" sucks for parade laps. I also wasn't sure what the protocol at your venue/national challenge events is. At ours we go crazy on parade laps, but I didn't want to get in trouble in case it's more slow/chill at GLDivs or if hooning is frowned upon on parade laps

cghstang wrote: Saturday was a day of ups and downs for me. My parade lap in the miata was tons of fun as I reacquainted myself with the car and the joy of boost and roost. Leading the class after the first heat felt pretty good too.

Maybe you should come to nationals so you can have more fun in the Miata.

The purpose of the parade lap is to throw as much dirt as you can to clear the surface for the early runs. This is best done by liberal application of throttle on any surfaces that appear excessively slick.

Aw man, at the Enduro, I was first in parade behind Ballinger. He was just gone. What I did was drift the entire wet grass course. It was slow and hilarious and somehow I did not spin once.

Meanwhile, at one of the years at Nationals, I was stuck behind some expletive in a 944 who was driving the parade lap at slightly less than walking speed.

(If you go up to Detroit, you'll find an interesting supplemental rule: Any cones hit on parade will be applied to the driver's first run.)

Well yeah, we do that at ours. Though at ours the purpose is to actually see where the course goes, since our courses are usually too long to easily walk them (even our short courses are longer than Saturday morning's course, and walking that distance on loose gravel is no fun on the ankles). So our parade lap is usually the first time we see where the hell we're going. While clearing the course of loose gravel and trying to establish a line, of course.

But never know what other regions customs are when doing them. I've never heard of a region that doesn't allow drag starts, but you guys don't. We generally don't do course walks. So "how its done" isn't always consistent.

But ve must have ze rules consistent mit all regions !

Loose gravel... When I first started rallycrossing, one of the purposes of the course walk was for everyone to find any stones, sticks, etc. and chuck it off to the side. Actual gravel surface would make a course walk take days!

And it's big gravel, not little girly stuff. You probably didn't notice, but the fronts of my rear wheel arches have been repainted about 20 times and have a thick coat of bedliner on them....and are still chipped to hell, even with mudflaps on the front and my car being RWD

cars with pretty paint need not apply at our venue

Also, high-powered cars going by....you'd better not be within 100 feet of the outside of the turn or you're gonna get pelted (I know this from experience)

it also eats subie bumpers for breakfast

oddly enough, I can only think of one car de-beading at this venue all season and he was on old-ass all-seasons.

Knurled wrote: But ve must have ze rules consistent mit all regions !

ur soundin' uh-lot like an autocrosser, boy....

irish44j wrote:

Knurled wrote: But ve must have ze rules consistent mit all regions !

ur soundin' uh-lot like an autocrosser, boy....

Hey now, dem's fighting' words!

Pictures are up... Jason Massey Media

bah! Work blocks most image sites, hence why I only comment on some build threads cant see most of the pics! lol

This is the downer of not having a computer and being limited to cell phone for these pics, however its a big cell phone so that should help.

I don't know what it is with you 'mericans and your rallyx and autox... but I love how competitive you guys are.

NOBODY competes that hard at rallyx up here. We have 30 car turnouts, but no nationals of any sort.

I just want to go as fast as I can as sideways as I can.

cghstang wrote: Pictures are up... Jason Massey Media

Ayup, that's debeaded...

It's not dead yet! Next shot in the series...

Isn't that me driving? I never debeaded...