El Toro ProSolo - Day 1

I've been waiting for this event for a while now. Dale is coming out from the East Coast to join us. I'll have my two racing buddies together for the first time. Phenomenal!

The weather forecast has been iffy with rain forecast for Saturday. I've been teasing Dale that he brought the East Coast weather.

It turns out that it did not rain on Saturday, but it was windy and unseasonably cold. Everybody was bundled up and trying to stay out of the wind.

We did practice starts on the new tree, which is made up of LED lights. The lights no longer light up like a traditional incandescent bulb, but instantly. Without the drag racing experience (I think), I'm having trouble getting the timing down to get a reaction time in the 500's. I am consistently in the 600's if I react to the light that I can see. We decide to play it safe and wait for the light instead of trying to anticipate it coming on.



The morning runs were ok. Jason goes out and puts some pretty good runs down, staying in trophy positions throughout the morning. I'm going out to make my runs and I have good times that would put me in trophy contention too, but I don't have a clean right side - a little deja vu.

Dale runs in STX and has a ball. He comes back very excited and likes the way the car feels as he gets used to the car. Right now, he's over thinking and relying on his left foot. I remind him gently to cut it out ;-)

In the afternoon, Jason makes some really good runs and Jason ends up in 2nd place. Our planning is paying off and Jason is driving very very well.



For my afternoon runs, I've decided that I'm going to try and take advantage of the afternoon and put some safe runs in the books. Unfortunately, on my very first run out, my seat bracket breaks and the seat now tips left to right. It's a freaky feeling trying to drive with a seat that moves around. I turn away from a cone, the car moves away from the cone, but my seat tips and I feel like I'm still heading toward the cone and end up turning even more. It's not very effective to try and go fast with this configuration. I would not recommend it.

I pull in and try to get a mechanical and get to learn more about ProSolo rules. Once you have pulled out and are in the 'lanes' to take your runs, there are no mechanicals available. I've missed one run in the mean time and we pull back in line to take the remainder of my runs. It's not much fun trying to go fast this way and I don't go very fast, but given that I have no good runs from the morning, I do at least have a time in the books which puts me in 9th place - out of the trophies.



We examine the seat and decide that the simplest thing to do is just to remove the broken bracket and revert back to the stock configuration.

Dale comes up and takes his afternoon runs and decides to just drive and goes a lot faster, almost matching my times on the left side - very cool. This move Dale up to 5th place in STX.

There has been a proposal to move the ST Civics to STS to compete with the Miatas, but to specifically ban the Civics from STX. I don't follow the rule changes too closely, but this sure doesn't seem to make a lot of sense as half the STX class is made up of Civics. If they aren't wanted in STX, just make the rule to not allow Civics in STX (even though they are underprepared for the class). There isn't any need to move them to a different class. Since I don't know the specifics, I'm not sure my comments are accurate, but it is my feeling based on what I know.



Today seems to be very very inefficient for some reason. It's almost 6pm and classes are still running. All day, impound was very slow with results taking 30 minutes or more to come out. The AM sessions didn't finish until around 2PM.

It's been a long day. We elect to leave and grab dinner. We can do the walk tomorrow.