Rallycross: 12th of February 2006
Homestead Motorsports Complex
As I posted a while ago, I got rally tires for my birthday, which was the cause of much joy and celebration. They make an obvious world of difference on a loose surface, but I hadn’t tried them on Homestead’s very rough mix of small/medium sized limestone rocks, sand and rough limestone base. Ft. Meade is a different animal, basically pure soft mud and dirt. Mostly I was concerned about tire wear, and was very glad I opted for the medium compounds when all was said and done. While I like autocross and even managed a mid-pack (10th GS, 97/152th PAX) result last outing a few weeks ago, I live for loose surface escapades. We have a lot more room to work with at than the autocross guys, and we use it.
The weekend couldn’t have started any better. My Dad and I went fishing on Friday night, which he hadn’t done for nearly 6 months because of all the hurricanes and I hadn’t gone in longer than that. The experience couldn’t have been better. We came home with fish. I had a fresh grouper sandwich out of the deal, which I caught. Yum! Saturday, I had volunteered to help set up the course. It was very helpful to see it beforehand and sleep on the best way to get around it. Then I had a party to attend. I had some drinks and went to sleep around 1 on my friend’s soft, carpeted floor because the last thing I wanted to do was either stay up longer or double-back to get my car. I was up at 645 and drove home to have breakfast and collect my helmet, tires, and clean my car out more. A brief family encounter left me wired the wrong way, and I forgot that the temperature was going to go down and the wind would go up.
Still, Rallycross! At Homestead, too, where I don’t worry about destroying my car: just my tires. As annoying as my start had been, I was racing. After I slapped tires on the car and watched the first group run, I was trading ribs with a friend in a WRX on the awful stock Potenza RE92s. We were running nearly identical times. After lunch hiding from the wind in his car, we lined up again and somewhat to my surprise, my Dad showed up. I had a good amount of fun that run, putting in my best adjusted, scored time of 223? (100th seconds). I ran a 219 with three cones for the final run, the result of trying too damned hard. After wrangling some volunteers for the fun run, I guessed a reasonable time of 218 and lined up. I did not come close to 218. No, I squarely thumped it by 10 seconds, raising more than a few eyebrows and earning compliments. Even though it didn’t count, it showed me that I need to be more relaxed and that I’m familiar enough with the car that driving the 240SX instinctually instead of aggressively nets me the best results. I’m still very much new to motorsport. It hasn’t even been 2 years since my first outing in Australia, and I feel like I’ve learned quite a bit. Now I have to wait for the next event.