El Toro Championship event

There was some concern that the day was going to start out like it did at practice yesterday - winds gusting to 65 mph and cones blowing over. Instead, we had a calm morning that was interrupted by road closures for a local marathon, which set off a mad scramble to find a way to get around the event and to El Toro.

A local LAPD babysitter proved to be most useful. We still arrive early enough to get two course walks in. Jason is already there and we start our walk. This is going to be one of the more technical courses we've had. I relish the challenge. Lots of places to trip up and lots of places to choose our own line. My kind of fun.

Jason and I start to lay out our strategy. This course provides several places where it would be easy to be tempted into overdriving the course. Must be disciplined to survive the traps.

We continue to do some tire testing and dedicate the 3rd video camera to just taking video of one of our front tires. It's pretty neat because we can actually hear the tire noise and 'see' what the tire is doing at the same time.

It's a long course with high speed and traps. Jason and I are focused on what we need to do and not paying attention to the announcer as we go through our routine to adjust and make changes. In a way, it's more like a test and tune as we try different pressures while we try to figure out what needs to be done to be competitive at the same time.

Both of us go about making our runs and helping each other figure out how to drive the course better. It's proving to be harder than it looks. As the morning progresses, we get to pressures that we like and the times are starting to come down. By the end of the morning, Will has broken on his last run and has been dirty on his remaining runs and ends up further down the pack. Jon is broken also - out with a broken ankle for a while and Sebastian is struggling with something and looks frustrated. By the end of the heat, I'm not sure if I've been able to retain first place.



There is no time to wonder. It's lunch break and it's time to take the kids on their course walk and get them ready to race in the kart. Both of my kids are having a good time and still need to learn to go faster, but that will come with time. In the mean time, I'm waiting impatiently for this day to happen, but loving having them out to spend the weekend with me.

The afternoon rolls around and we test different car settings. This time we make an adjustment that we have never tried before. As Jason goes out to take his first run, I wonder what the verdict will be. Unfortunately, there will be no time on his first run as he stops for a down cone right before the finish. I'm also irritated at the course worker who spends more time trying to get the attention of the radio person while standing there instead of running to reset the cone to allow the event to continue with a minimum of delay.

The look on Jason's face when he comes back to grid said it all - this new adjustment is better. Now how do we make it go even faster. We go out and continue playing with this setting. This is definitely better and puts us closer to where I feel the car should be.

Now we keep testing... (to be continued)