Championship day comes around after a fairly successful practice. Both of us are feeling good about the car and feel confident that we'll be competitive against the other STS drivers.
We do our walks, taking time analyze the possible lines on this wonderful course that was designed by Guy Ankeny. It was a course that had wide open lanes, allowing many choices of lines, so while it looked like it was more of a road race course rather than an autocross course, I felt that it was in fact a fairly technical course. Lot's of high speed entry turns that pinched you on exit but then opened out onto a long section of full throttle acceleration.
The first group gets ready to run and Jason and I report for work. After our work assignment, we return to the car to find Moe under the hood. He has all the plugs out and is doing a compression test on all the cylinders. Kinda funny to see this happening on race day. All is well with the car. We have Moe's blessing.
We go out and have a terrible first run, coming in about 2 seconds slower than Jason. Towards the end of a fast and bumpy slalom, I feel like the tail gets bounced off line and I find myself facing the wrong direction and have to correct. Here's a classic picture that you may not see very often. I'm steering left, but the right rear wheel is in the air.
Anyhow, Paul Whitehead seems to come from nowhere and puts 8/10th on the me. By the end of the day, I end up with only 1 good run as the back end bounced me off line in the slalom for the other two runs. Maybe it's something I did, but right now I have no idea what that might be.
We check out Paul's car and chat for a while. Our basic components are virtually the same since his car was built by Chris Shenefield also. The only visible difference besides ride height was the use of the new 16" Bridgestone RE01R tires. It looks like it may be the tire to have. We'll have to wait and see.
I finish 3rd and Jason finishes 8th for this event. Need to find more speed...
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