ProSolo was both a success and a failure

Jason and I attended our first ProSolo this past weekend. I'm disappointed with how some things turned out. Apparently, there was a novice class for those that have never attended a ProSolo. I asked what time this class was and never got a response, so I planned to arrive at around 3PM on Friday for the practice session and attend the class.

With Friday afternoon traffic, I finally arrive at 3:30 PM and find out that the novice class was already over. It was scheduled for 2:30 PM. With not knowing the routine or what to do, I get the car ready and buy some practice tickets and get to try 4 practice starts. I've never done any kind of tree starts before and the advice I had been given was to start on the 3rd yellow. On my first start, I launch on the 3rd yellow turning on. The reaction time is 0.7xx, so on the next launch, I decide to try launching on the 2nd yellow coming on. That results in a red light and a 0.3xx launch time. After watching and trying the remaining two starts, I don't have the right timing down, but I calculate that it is somewhere between the 2nd yellow going off and the 3rd yellow coming on, so that is what we go with for the actual event.

The team is supposed to get together for a team dinner on Friday night and that ends up fizzling out and only a few attend dinner. Jason and I go back to his place and prepare our required stickers for the next morning.

There are supposed to be 2 sessions, a morning session and and afternoon session. Somehow, lots of things didn't go quite right and our morning session didn't end until somewhere around 3 PM. Talk about a really long day. At least it wasn't too hot. The event staff decided to bump the F125's to run the following morning and the rest of the cars finished out the day. We were very tired when we left the event site at around 7:30 PM.

As for the runs, it was a disappointing day. Jason ran first in the morning session. In the afternoon, the faster driver runs first and Jason was faster overall, so he ran first in the afternoon. I had some good runs on the left side, breaking into the 46's, but they were all dirty. I was steadily improving on the right side. By the end of the morning session, I was in 12th place out of 15. The afternoon was funny. I kept improving on the right side, but not on the left and still managed to move up into 8th spot. We packed up at the end of the day and went for a quick dinner before going back to the house to review videos for the day and see if there was something we could do to go faster the next day. I also placed a call to Dale to see if we were missing something and to get some ideas. One suggestion was to run the tighter line instead of trying to carry more speed. We'll try that on Sunday.

Sunday morning comes and we are off to El Toro in time for the morning course walk and to inspect the line to see what has changed. For the most part, it's the same with just one or two corners where we have to adjust the line a little because of the marble accumulation on the outside.

The novice talk mentioned that it is not unusual to go faster on Sunday because of the amount of rubber that gets laid down on the course. Unfortunately, we don't go significantly faster. In fact, I'm not even able to match my Saturday times (clean or dirty). Kevin McCormick is also not able to go any faster. It's funny (and sad) because on the left side, my best time was from Saturday morning.

By the end of the event, I remain in 8th spot and I'm not sure if Jason held on to his position or slipped one.

During the challenge event, Jason and I were out working on course and we had a chance to watch Julie Avard driving Steve Ekstrand's Civic and it is very clear that their car is able to carry speed and turn in places where our Civic would be understeering. Are our tires going away? Do the 615's have more ultimate grip than the 215's? Is our car not set up properly or is there something wrong with our car? Lot's of questions and no answers yet.

Various thoughts:
1. Not a bad outing for the level of readiness of the car, but not a good outing either.
2. This course was also a power course if a stock WRX on street tires can post a faster raw time than we can - or we really sucked.
3. Having a suspect clutch didn't help. Launching at 2000 RPM meant giving up 0.1-0.2 seconds in the first 60 feet.
4. Needing to shift into 3rd gear while others were able to stay in second may have hurt too. ECU reflash?
5. Engine with 232,000 miles vs blueprinted engines. Hm. You do the math.
6. Not driving my best didn't help either.
7. I'd love another shot at a ProSolo once the car is fully set up (mechanically).

No excuses. Lots more to do with the car and to my own head. Next event...