Wow - what a great weekend!
Over the last six weeks we have been preparing for this Silver State Classic Challenge and this weekend we finally got our chance to try out some of the changes that we had made and I could not be happier with the results. With less than a week to go before we had to leave for Ely, NV Currie Enterprises built us a new 3rd member with a True-Trac replacing our(well and truly blown up) old differential. David was able to get a few miles on it before loading up in the trailer but there were still some unanswered questions as we hauled the car across "The Loneliest Road in America" to our destination.
Friday morning we prepped the car for tech:
and spent some time drooling over Cameron's ride for the weekend:
it's a former Mark Martin road course car that made it's way through Borris Said who used it for driver training before winding up with Cameron. Yes... it is the real deal and yes... it is awesome!
Since the transmission and rear end were still new most of Friday was spent on the highway outside of Ely - breaking in the new parts. We managed to put a hundred miles or so on the drivetrain and brought the car up to speed a few times - and it felt great. Friday night was the cruise through town which is a lot of fun - nothing like 135 badass cars snaking their way down Ely's quiet main street.
Saturday morning saw us preparing for the Optima High Noon Shootout - a standing mile competition which is made all the more challenging given Ely's 7000 foot elevation. When we ran in the spring we encountered an issue with the engine cutting out at 148 mph - we had spent a lot of time working on that issue so my fingers were crossed in the staging lanes as we waited for our chance to run. In May we were the oldest car in the competition and this time was no different, the competition consisted of a V8 Porsche, a couple of Vipers, two NASCARS and a whole lot of Corvettes...
...including a couple of new ZR1's.
As soon as we got there we got the familiar feeling that we had (once again) brought a knife to a gun fight
We new that we weren't a serious threat to win the event but wanted to see what we could do in the standing mile. We were the first car to hit the track (really a two and half mile stretch of 2 lane highway) which means that we had the fastest pass... at least for a while
Our second run yielded another 160 mph run so we decided to park the car and safe ourselves for tomorrow. At 161 we were still pulling hard at just under 7000 RPM in 5th...
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
Linear Mode
