The Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational was an incredible event and I am honoured to have been invited to participate despite our relatively poor showing. We knew that we had transmission issues going into the event and they definitely hurt us on the road course. I had about 50 miles of highway driving on the car and a few shorts stints in Las Vegas going to and from the show and knew that the car was going to have issues. I was right. The first thing that I found was that there was an issue with the brakes; I would say that I had 80% of the brakes that I expected or needed. Could be pressure, could be fresh pads, could be fresh rotors, could be pedal ratio, could be master cylinder sizing - don’t know at this point. All I know is that while I had some brakes, I wish that I had more. That hurt a bit and definitely made me think twice at the end of the straights and heading into the curves. The much bigger issue that we encountered was with the transmission – or clutch – which slowed us up even further. While I had no issue up shifting, I could not get the transmission in gear while downshifting. There are a couple of 2nd gear corners at the end of some 4th gear (or more) straights so the inability to get the car into gear at speed hurt a bunch. I have a couple of not so fond memories screaming at the top of my lungs at the car while pushing or pulling on the shifter with both hands trying to find any gear. So, if you were there and were wondering why I seemed to be down on power in the turns 8 through 10, there you have it.
Telemetry from the Racepak dash would later show that although my maximum velocity on the back straight was only 104 mph, we did see 1.4 lateral-G’s on several occasion and there was one corner were we held 0.6 G’s or more for over 12 seconds.
The Autocross was a completely new experience for me. I had said before the event that I had never participated in one before – which was true – but what I hadn’t told anyone was that I had never even seen one live before. I talked to Mary Pozzi before my first run and she took the time to walk the course with me and suggested that I walk it a couple more times before running it with the car, She also gave me some really valuable advice on how to run it and how to make the most of the course. It helped and although it is too late now if I had another run or two I already know what I would do differently.
At the end of the day, I had a great time at the event and am more than satisfied with how the car performed on its maiden voyage, I hope that I have the opportunity to take another shot at the track once I have the bugs sorted out and have more confidence in the car’s abilities.
Tom Holt was great throughout the day, offering advice and assistance at every opportunity, Probably the greatest disappointment was when I took Tom out on the road course for a couple of laps only to be turned back at the starting line because the track had been oiled down.