ut got it mostly sorted out in the afternoon, so was hoping to continue that trend.
instead of towing, I decided to drive the car the 2 hours to the venue in West Virginia. In retrospect, kind of remembered why I tow now....even moreso the car is loud and uncomfortable to be in for any extended time - though a few factors that I'll mention below later contribute to that as well. In any case, loaded up the tires and started driving 2 hours in the rain...I will mention the rack worked great, and no tires went flying off the car. However, tires on an uninsulated roof sure make a lot of wind noise at 70-80mph.....
It didn't stop raining until about half an hour after arrival, which didn't bode well for things. Panthera is VERY hilly and also has some pretty significant drop-offs that could end up causing a roll or other damage if you overshoot the wrong corner too much.
With that in mind, the course designers made it tighter than usual to slow things down, with a ton of offsets, slaloms, and other features meant to keep everyone safe within rally-x rules. For me, that's music to my ears, since I love the technical courses.
Our run group got lucky and got to run 2nd (though I spent about 2 minutes trying to get unstuck just transiting up to the top where we gridded, since there was deep/wet grass going up a steep hill). Ugh. But by the time we started running, the course had dried enough to actually be pretty tacky and not slippery at all if you stayed "on the line" more or less.
As usual, MR was the largest class. Due to the weather the event was smaller than usual with only 40 or so people showing up out (we usually get 50-60). MR had 12 entries, down from our usual 15-20, but only one of the regular "fast guys" was missing - Stephen Nichols. In his place Chris's 17-year old son Thomas ran in MR. Thomas had been running in PR since he got his license and actually starting to get close to Shawn, so he's pretty fast. It was interesting seeing him put down times pretty close to the MR leaders (but with a few too many cones). more competition. As usual, Nick was there in the M3 and Jeremy was there in his e36 (they went 1-2 at the first event and are always fast). Chris, Eric and Neil, and Josh S. rounded out the usual 'fast group' with Dan Gugger still learning the Porsche. Also had a turbo Miata there, but they drive fairly conservatively from what I can tell.
We did 5 morning runs of about 70 seconds, and as usual, the top half of the class stayed pretty clean and consistent. Nick got off to a slow start, but as usual was called for no cones. I picked up a couple cones as did Jeremy, and Josh, Chris, and Eric all had a bad run here or there. Neil ran at the back of the pack (as the 2nd driver in his car) and quietly was putting down really good times. At lunch break, Neil and Jeremy were pretty much tied, and I was about half a second behind them, with Nick and a couple others just a couple seconds back.
Vid of the morning course;
In the afternoon, I didn't make any real changes other than taking one of the two spare tires out of my trunk to try to help with rotation at the big haripin, which had more traction than I would have liked. I wanted to focus on consistency and on this afternoon I did, running five more runs, all of them clean, and all of them faster than the previous. The car felt good and the PM course had a really good rhythm to it. Meanwhile, Nick was picking up speed (with no cones), Neil was running fast as well, and Jeremy was matching my times on each run. Coming into the last run I had jumped slightly ahead of Neil and Jeremy with Nick just behind them and Josh closing in with some super-fast runs. I went for it on the last run and put down the fastest run in the class all afternoon (clean). Jeremy went for it and got a bit out of sorts, picking up three cones and dropping from 2nd to 4th (that's how close this class is). Neil was ultra-consistent all afternoon but not quite as fast, finishing about 8 seconds behind me in the end, with Nick 4 seconds behind him. Jeremy and Josh were right behind him. Chris took a bit of an excursion and shattered the oil pan on their 325i with two runs left, so he ran his last two in Jeremy's car (and had his best time in it, I think...). I let Thomas do his last run in mine and he seemed impressed by the handling and braking compared to their car and immediately told his dad the things they needed to "upgrade" lol.
I'll also note, for what it's worth (not much) that I was 2nd place overall (out of 40 cars, including things like an STI Type RA). The only car that beat me was Adam Kimmett, who is ultra-fast in his STi (and also an extremely fast stage driver), who is almost always FTD. And I was only about 5 seconds behind him. So, that's kind of neat and it speaks to how good this car is on technical courses.
Also interesting that among the top handful of MR drivers, there were VERY few cone hits - like low single-digits in 10 runs. Meanwhile, we had some experienced/fast Subaru guys (including Kimmett) picking up 20+ cones as they understeered their way through the tight sections. I think one of the usual Mod AWD front-runners had something like 35 cones on his own, which is insane.
vid of the afternoon course:
So, here's the final standings for class:
A little follow-up. As I may have mentioned, I used my "backup" transmisison when I did this swap. Now I remember why it was a backup, because the idler shaft bearnings are really, really loud. Doesn't seem to be a performance issue, but boy it's annying, especially with hard mounts and no insulation in this car. Driving home both the bearings and a leak at the exhaust/header joint were making things pretty unpleasant in the car, honestly.
So, I pulled out the transmission I had been using with the M42 and did new seals on it today and cleaned it up. So my intention in the next few weeks is to swap it back into the car (and at the same time address the exhaust leak) to try to make it a bit less unpleasant to drive this car - though the convenience of towing will likely make that my regular plan for most summer events where A/C is nice to have on the trip home...
