Second event - finally

It's been a long time coming for the second event. The last event was in January and the February event was cancelled (don't ask). I've been very impatient to get out there and try out the Civic. Jason has continued to work on the car and has been teasing me with all the changes that were made to the car since the last event and last testing session.

This event turned out to be held on a very windy but otherwise beautiful day. I suspect the temperature was somewhere into the 90's during the day because it was still 88 degrees when we left at 6:30 PM.

Since we were scheduled to run last, this was an exercise in patience since we experienced multiple delays for a variety of reasons. The bushings on the car have been done and i was looking forward to driving the car to see if it was much different (Jason said it was) - and only 3 runs to figure things out. Hm, should be interesting.

The course design was a fast course with a few technical spots in it. Not too many transitional elements though they had a decent high speed decreasing radius turn that was tricky trying to get into without the tail hanging way out there.

We get to take our runs while Steve let's Stacy take her runs first. Jason is up first and takes the first spot and I cone away the first run. Jason goes after the same cone in his second run and I run a slow feeling 65.888, which jumps me to 1st place. I wonder how long that will last. No sign of Steve yet. Jason doesn't go any faster on his third run and stands on his first run. I don't go any faster on my last run either, so I watch while Steve makes his last run. He goes in to a turn way too hot and it's all over. He can't catch us. By now, the grid is pretty empty and I notice that a familiar FSP Escort happens to be in the grid with STS on it. Holy cow, we've been running against Will Kalman also. He had sticker tires and ended up slower than us today, so I'm sure he'll be faster the next time out.

We ended up winning STS in only the second outing for the car. I knew the changes that Jason and Daniel had made would have improved the car, but not to the extent that we would actually be able to win. Maybe Steve was sandbagging to lull us into a false sense of security??? Maybe we just got lucky? Time will tell. Jason did well too, ending up only a half a second behind Steve in the final results.

All in all, a very very cool (and hot) weekend. More changes are planned before the next event, so I get to see what else will change the next time out. It was very cool being able to turn in and actually hit cones on the inside instead of missing them by a foot or more.

Until next time...