NOLA on my mind..
With a quick wash, some fresh brake fluid, and a general once-over completed, we loaded up and headed south. Got to the track, got tech'd, fire drilled, and decaled, then headed out to find some gulf coast seafood.
I'm not a 'take pictures of your food' kinda guy, but sometimes you just have to
Saturday we started out the day with design & engineering judging out of the gates, and finished in time to get our first autocross run in on the first trip through. I spent the whole morning tagging cones and being a general mess, finally gathering things up for a clean run as we went into lunch.
The course was fun, and required pushing right out to the limit of several cones to be where you needed to be. In the afternoon, I found time early, then fought all afternoon to put all the sections together into one run. We sat on a fairly comfortable lead until the next to last run, when Cody Puckett in, of all things, another 79 Camaro, got within .03.
He put together another clean run but wasn't able to improve on his last lap, and with the pressure off I let out a deep breath and finally stitched all the parts from earlier together into a 30.9.
The new format has autocross going all day on Saturday, which ended up being fun because we got to run with all the cars in our class vs. being split up like previous years.
Saturday evening was the road rally, D&E points were posted (a bloodbath for us again), and then we did some general maintenance including a pretty substantial carburetor change for the incoming cold front.
We knew coming in that to have any shot at winning, every single point in the timed events would be critical. Falling as much as 51 points behind other GTV cars, the hill got that much steeper Saturday night. We knew for Sunday every every last bit of time we could get would be critical.
Hot Laps and Speed Stop and Hot Laps and Speed Stop and..
In previous years, Sunday has been pretty typical of a standard track day. Go out for 20 minutes, come in and chill and look at the data, repeat. This year, the Speed Stop moves to Sunday and makes for a pretty hectic but fun affair.
Timing issues in the morning caused some delays, so we spent time at the Speed Stop chasing time on both sides of the mirrored course.
The whole day was kind of a blur, and I never managed to get video of any of the Speed Stop runs. Through random draw, we kept getting the right side first which put us on the left with hot brakes and tires. A 9.46 came fairly early on the left, but I just couldn't find the pace on the right until the very end after road course session 4 with a 9.37. We weren't able to keep up with everyone in our class, but felt good about the times and called it a day with that.
Road Course
Oddly, we came into this event with way more seat time at the track than on the autocross. I had studied up on video and track maps, and felt pretty good about the layout. The back side of the track has a similar flow to the front section of COTA, just without the hundreds of feet of elevation change.
Thanks to Optima for the shot
Consistently found time throughout the day, and our move to the expert run group proved to work out well with tons of clean track in every session after the first.
The T56 really paid off, as the car now just keeps pulling hard in 5th gear, running up to 145 on the main straight. We are planning some aero work for the front end that will hopefully help it out in that area in the future.
It once again came down to one final session. We had waited for the charge from Mills in the Beach Cruiser 68 all day, and went out for the last session to take one more shot at improving after sitting on 1:58s for three sessions. I was able to hook up with Feras in his Z06 through much of the lap and get some help with the line, and cracked the 57 mark with a 1:57.840.
The predictive timer on RaceChrono wasn't working, so I had no idea if the lap was good or not. It wasn't until I pulled into the hot pit after a cool down lap that I realized what the time was. It was an awesome feeling to finish up all three events with our best time of the day at the end.
When it was all tallied up, the road course was our best overall finish, which is huge.
Waiting for the Points
Optima awards ceremonies are fun, especially if you get to hear your name called. We were fairly confident we had the times, the question was were they enough to get it done for the class win and that invitation. Fortunately GTV gets called first, I don't know that we could have handled waiting through the other classes.
14 points ended up being the difference over Mills, with Ken Kelley in the former RideTech Chevelle close behind him. I'll say it again - holy crap.
Since these events started, we've watched them and thought about how cool it would be to get that invite to Vegas. As excited as I am to get to drive it in that event, it means a ton to get there for my dad who has treated this thing like a second job this year.
We also have to send a big thank you again to Mike at Wilwood for his help not only with the brakes, but also for putting us in contact with Speedway Engineering and recommending the new spindle and bearing setup. The braking has never been better, and has made a huge difference.
Now the to-do list begins again. Have to get ready for the show - see you guys at SEMA!
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
Hybrid Mode
