Post rallyx nationals update:
Just before rallycross nationals, hurricane Milton hit central Florida landing as a category 4 in the Sarasota area. We came through mostly unscathed. We had a bunch of wind and our side fence will probably only last one more big storm. A block away lost power for a week and a half because they got unlucky with a branch and a transformer. I was happy we were spared. This mostly doesn't matter for the rallycross but I had to cancel a test and tune which was scheduled during the hurricane. I wanted to make sure my new suspension setup was working before the big event (cough foreshadowing cough).
We left for Huntsville Alabama and a weeks vacation as soon as the storm cleared. We visited the Barber Motorsports Museum outside of Birmingham on the way. It was pretty cool. It had the entire history of the motorcycle and the entire history of Lotus. I am a Lotus guy so I had a great time. If anyone has a GRM priced Type 23, let me know. We stopped by the Monte Sano State Park to play in the playground and do some disc golf. The kids took turns getting stung by a bee and hit their head while jumping in leaves by the second hole. They spent the rest of the day collecting special rocks. Those rocks now live in Florida.
If you turned into an old man at age 34 like me and can no longer have gluten, I recommend Mason Dixon Bakery and Farm Burger. If you are still young, I recommend Canadian Bakin. All three are great. We were blown away by The Sandra Moon Art Complex and and the Lowe Mills art district. I play music semi-professionally and the idea that we could have a publicly funded place to rehearse and perform music is just amazing. Lowe Mills puts hundreds of artists into a single place and lets you discover new things while walking to the art you know you like. We ended up in an arcade and I introduced my five year old to Turtles in Time because we are a classy family.
I had a codriver for this event because his Boxster lost an axle on Tuesday night, about 10 hours before he was supposed to leave. This wasn't a big problem but my car is setup pretty specifically for my height. My codriver has about 8" less torso than I do so we had to think fast to get the seating position right. The five pillow method worked ok but changing drivers was a hassle. We showed up early on Friday, walked the course, prepped the car, and moved our tire collection to the grid. My first set of runs went pretty well. My first run was slow as usual. The only real news was the camera fell off the car and broke some of its mounting pieces. We swapped to an interior camera for the rest of the event.
Saturday (day two) was more of the same. We go there pretty early to walk the first course. The Saturday AM course was the toughest for me. I lost a bunch of time to the other drivers in PR and I am not exactly sure why. My two guesses are driving too slowly in an attempt to stay on line and the Z3 rear being too loose for the big sweepers on this course. I have some thinking to do about car setup.
The Saturday PM course ws a repeat of the first course on Friday PM. I got faster and stayed clean. The rest of the class got roughly the same amount faster so I didn't make up any positions. I ended up 7 seconds out of the trophies by the end of the day. The drama started when I heard some clunking when going back to grid. I popped the hood and noticed one of the strut top bolts was less than finger tight. After every run, it would loosen and we would retighten it. We got some
loctite from a competitor and that fixed the problem permanently.
On Sunday AM, I figured I was out of the trophies. I decided to just drive fast and take my normal line. I felt like I gave up too much time trying to stay on the clean line on the 2nd course. That turned out to be a good decision. Gonzo, in the last trophy spot, had a bad day and hit four cones. I hit one cone and my
runs were slightly faster than his. It should have been enough to make up the time to the last trophy spot.
Then disaster struck. The clunking came back and it wasn't the strut top bolt. Two or three of the caster bolts on one side had loosened enough that my drivers side strut went from full positive to the full negative caster position. I didn't realize it at the time but this added 2 degrees of camber and close to an inch of toe out on that side. I did notice the car trying to hook left under power, spin under braking, and the complete removal of clockwise steering self centering. We got through the last couple of runs but I dropped two seconds a run.
Here are my quick runs on each course. There isn't any video from the Friday PM runs because we lost a camera pretty early on.
I ended up 1.1 seconds out of the trophies. All in all, I was pleased with my driving and pleased with the car. It is so much more fun to drive with the torque spare in the big 6 cylinder. I come from a professional music background where the goal in pressure situations is to have an "average" day. If you have a good day, that is awesome. If you have a bad day, hopefully you can get by. Another season of tuning and getting seat time in the car puts my average day close to a trophy spot.
I also need to call out that jerk, Shawn (sneaky edit), for driving too fast. He managed so put in the 4th fastest class winning time out of the whole event. He had the fastest time in the second run group (PF, PR,PA, and UTV M) and was only beaten by SA, MF, and MA (by 0.2) in the other groups. What a jerk.
Offseason changes this year will include stiffer rear springs that allow for some more travel at full throttle. Maybe some bump stops that engage before the springs coil bind (I am still trying to figure out what is banging in the video). A seat that lets us swap drivers without playing with pillows. And some loctite.
It was cold in the mornings. I had a moment of panic when I didn't remember if the car had antifreeze in it.
Accelerating on the bump stops:
A central Florida local just went to his first regional and first national event and won trophies in both events. All anyone wanted to do was to take pictures of his bicycle: