Saturday recap:
When I went to start the Camaro at 6:30am in the cold Vegas morning I discovered that the poor idle and off idle characteristics of my engine tune were even worse with a totally cold engine. After the car starting and dying 3 or 4 times I managed to get the revs up to about 2500-3000 and did the Mike Maier clutch technique to get the car moving out of the parking lot and down the street. The rest of Saturday I fought the engine in trying to move the car around the pits at slow speeds.
Jason gave away the look already in his pics but here is the car after going through tech and getting all stickered up for the event!
I thought the stickers added a certain race car flare to the car
Saturday was the day Optima did speed stop and autocross. They broke the competitors into two groups and each group did one event for half the day and then switched.
I was in the group that did speed stop in the morning and autocross after lunch. speed stop was the event I looked forward to the least. It was one that I perceived to be really hard on the car due to launching hard like a drag race and having to stop from high speed and I already did all the flat spotting I want to do at Fontana within the last month. However, the speed stop was a lot of fun. They had a 90* left hand turn pretty close to the start so that combined with an unprepared surface meant the launch wasn't all that hard on the car. Then they had a half chicane like setup on the straight so you didn't get crazy speeds so the stop wasn't too bad.
After 5 runs I had blown the stop box twice and hit the exit cones (and flag once) at a pretty good clip. I was pleased my new spoiler took the blows and didn't' show any marks or deformation. However, at this point Jimi Day's warning not to "use up all your junk" on the first day is starting to play back in my head and I'm wondering if I can get a better time. I try to encourage myself and run two more times, each one being "just one more run." Sadly, both of those "one more runs" didn't improve over my first run let alone my best.
Feeling discouraged, I decided to call it quits on the speed stop and go over and get my car judged for the Engineering & Design portion. However, this gave me a perfect view of the speed stop event and while watching everyone else keep trying and having fun I realized I had to go out and try at least "once more run." It took so long to get through the line at the Engineering & Design I only had enough time for my one more run so this time it was for reel... sort of. After being told it was my last run the timing lights didn't trip so I got another shot at it. Bam! I was able to drop my time almost half a second. The effort to try one more time paid off as that better time was the difference between placing 8th and placing 4th in my class for speed stop.
In the afternoon it was time to run the autocross. This time my best run came on 5 of 11 runs so running "one more time" didn't pay off. Normally, I would of run all the auto cross runs they would let me but I was fighting a charging issue. The heat soak my alternator was experiencing at the autocross caused it to stop charging at idle and barely charging at higher RPM's. So I was slowly running my battery down. However my best autocross time was still good enough for 5th in my class for the day.
The end of the competition of the day came and it was time for the road rally. This time, not only would the cars be tested by having to go down the Vegas strip in stop and go traffic where it took 3-6 stop light changes to get through each light and about an hour to go a handful of miles but the entire 35 mile route we got varying amounts of rain. Again I was thankful for having working windshield wipers. Some great pics came out of the cruise though!
In addition to the pics Jason shared above the following two are my favorites. I take partial credit for being the vehicle these pictures were taken from... ha.
Maier's Mustang. I can't imagine how much his clutch sucked to drive on the Vegas strip...
Cheryll's Nova:
As you can see we had legit rain to contend with.
After returning to the track we learned the Holly party was cancelled due to the rain and I returned to the hotel with a mission. Reverting my tune back to the original Mast tune. After fighting the software for 2 hours I got it working on my wifes laptop and it took about 5 minutes to do in the car and Bam the camaro sudenly was fun to drive again! It started right up Sunday morning after sitting outside overnight and I could actually accelerate from a stop like a street car rather than race car. Yes!! I'm sticking with the no tools theory in that the computer doesn't count lol.
I will try and recap Sunday and post up the video I took from each of the events soon.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
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