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Well the event crept up on me faster than I thought it would and barely was ready in time.
The 2 weeks prior to the event I got my SFI approved neck collar, and SFI approved gloves. 1 week prior to the event I got my DTC60 Brake pads, 2 spare rotors, a helmet to borrow, and replaced some hubs. A few days before the event I went through the painful process or removing my SCCA stickers that have been on the car through the last 3 owners, and left some nasty residue.
Before
Clean
Stopped by MIS on friday to get my stickers to make sure the car was ready tomorrow morning.
Naked red camaro in the background.
Optimized
Day 1
The first day we were given our numbers and given the sponsorship breakdown, and events, and basic rules. Simple stuff nothing really crazy until we were told we could get unlimited attempts at both the Speed stop & the autocross. This blew my mind for a second, i'm getting so used to getting 3 runs that I was confused with the concept of just keep going at it over and over. Of course their was a certain amount of time limit we had to do each event (roughly 3hrs if I remember correctly) so it wasn't a completely all day affair.
While doing the autocross or speedstop you also had to get your car inline for the design and engineering portion. Get in line, show off all the goodies and talk to a panel of judges about your ride. More on this later.
Some Serious business cars being off loaded
Autocross
The even run group was setup to go autocross first, I was all excited to try out the new "jesus" tire (Bridgestones RE-71R), so I quickly got in line as the 2nd person to autocross. After some waiting around for a bit, strapped in to go, with no one really letting us know what's going on, we eventually were motioned to the starting line. Their were multiple instructors in red asking drivers if they needed or wanted an instructor to ride along, I opted out.
I ended up taking 4 runs in a row, getting faster and faster and more confident with each run before heading off to the Design and Engineering line. I left thinking the Re-71R's have great forward bite for a non drag radial and the corner grip was also pretty impressive for a street tire, I felt the front tire lift on more than 1 occasion.
After waiting in what looked like a short line for over an hour, I rushed back to get a few more autocross runs in. I show up to be told I missed my last run? it was 15 min before the scheduled session was supposed to end. After talking some more i got to have 1 last attempt and then I was done. Lucky me I got that last attempt, when it was all done I dropped another .5xx and stretched my lead over the morning session. I was very pleased with my runs, but was concerned that their were still half the cars to run in the afternoon season. When the afternoon session was all done, I impatiently went up and talked to the timing guys on the autocross course and they said they don't believe they saw any RWD cars beat my time. I was beaten by about 2 seconds by one crazy fast evo.
Here's the results and vid. Also bang shift did a small post about me. Fastest Run
Design and Engineering
Too explain this roughly and slightly bitterly, it's pretty much a dick swinging contest of how much money and flashy big name parts you have on your car. The reason I am bitter is because I needed only 5 points to have been the fastest 1st timer and invite to Las Vegas and getting 16th out of 21 cars didn't help that. Oh well, at least on the autocross and hot laps I proved to some people it's not all about the parts you have (and some on the hot laps proved they do make a big difference, lol)
Speedstop
The speedstop was a pretty straight forward event. Line up, drag race down 1 straight into a hairpin go through and offset and then pass the timing lights as fast as possible while finishing in the box and not hitting any cones. A friend who had competed in this event before said it's like a mini autocross and I should have no trouble getting a top time. The event's he had done prior this had a larger more abrupt offset which intimidated drivers to not carry speed. This speed stops "offset" was a full throttle setup for any person and didn't do anything to intimidate.
I started off braking really early and barely making it in the box to a more aggressive attempt. We tried adjusting the wilwood proportioning valve to see if I could get more out of the brakes, and after a few more sad attempts realized we should probably go back to the beginning and the other way. Sure enough the brakes slowly started coming alive. I was surprised at how little braking I had the car setup as for auto crossing (trying to help Icemode) and it just kept getting better and better, but still not good enough to get in the top of the pack.
Road Rally
The Road rally consists of getting a map and driving from point A to point B by a certain time (2 hrs) while having your drivers license sealed in an envelope. As long as you make it to the point B with that envelope still sealed you get the points. Since I live only 30 minutes from MIS I came up with the bright idea to get the new pads and rotors I was going to use for the hot laps tomorrow and work on them at the welcome party. The party and dinner was being held at the Lingenfelter Collection, which is one of the nicest collections of rare corvette's and exotics.
We got the pads and rotors and headed out to Lingenfelter, I made sure to set the cruise control and take it nice an easy all the way there.
Of course to waste more time on this road rally, we realized we had left some sockets we would need to do the brakes back at my friends house and decided that we didn't want to turn around and waste anymore time. So what do we do in this type of situation? Buy more tools to leave in the camaro!
After a very fast pit stop at Advance Auto (one of optima's main sponsors) we were back on the road and headed to the Lingenfelter Collection. The only problem we ran into after this, was the dirt roads... Apparently the map wasn't the greatest and ended up bouncing my super low hanging muffler dump setup a few times, but we made it there all in one piece.
Apparently ran out of room..... Making another post
Last edited by Boss002; 07-05-2015 at 08:39 PM.
Reason: Not finished
So those bridgestones really are a Jesus tire? Everyone says they are blazing fast. Curious to hear how they held up on track. Hope they realize there is a market demand for wider sizes.
nicely done sir! I almost wish I was taking my 4th gen T/A to Charlotte instead of my TrackMaro. I'd probally do better. I'm just hoping my son in his monster 4th gen Camaro doesn't beat me!
Sorry on my 1/2 post.... I'll try to finish this up tonight or tomorrow. Have to catch up on some work and just been winding down after winning ESP at the Toledo Pro Solo today.
nicely done sir! I almost wish I was taking my 4th gen T/A to Charlotte instead of my TrackMaro. I'd probally do better. I'm just hoping my son in his monster 4th gen Camaro doesn't beat me!
Almost makes me want to stay in ESP but I will be figuring that out this weekend. Depending on how the weekend goes I might be looking to race AS or SSR. Someone from the STL region is coming up to look at the car this weekend.
It's a 2000 hardtop car, roll up windows ect... He has a full Strano setup under the car with Koni yellows. he's making over 500 hp with a ls1 stroker, T56 with a Mosier 9". 315's on all corners. And he can drive it.
Ken's Camaro sitting out while the black one is getting worked on.
Ran into some problems
Sweet 2nd gen!!!! one of my favorites
Lingenfelter Collection Welcome Party
We arrived later than most, but on time to get our points, and without being pulled over! Most of the people were already hanging out inside digging in on some great chicken, past, and salad. We went in, used the facilities, got some food, took some fast photo's and went out to work on the catfish. Was supposed to be a simple job, just swap out the rotors and pads (DTC-60's) and then bed them on the way home... Simple? Apparently not...
Lingenfelter's bad vette's
Reventon, Buggati, Vector, and Ford GT
More exciting ferrari's
Shelby, 959, Alfa Romeo's
Oh look at the money and power....
Some interesting vette's
Lot's of rare old vette's
Chris starting the brake job when everyone is still there.
1 side done.... Everyone gone, but the lingenfelter staff was nice enough to give us shirts and hats.
That's a nice sun set..... Problem being we never got the car done in day light.
Finishing the brake job
Replacing a bad hub also...
Long time.... short story.... The pads didn't fit in the brackets worth a **** without being filed down. We ended up putting the old pads in the driver side after it was dark and drove back to my friend's and finish after midnight.
Day 2
4 hours or less of sleep later it's back to MIS for day #2 of USCA competition. This day we didn't have to worry about running around between event's and time and driving across the state. Just show up and have 5 session at setting your best time in the Hot Laps challenge around MIS 1.9 mile road course.
Map of course.
Entering the MIS tunnel for the first time
Hot Laps
Hot laps are pretty straight forward and simple. Go out, get the best time... The problem I ran into this last weekend are the 3 run groups they have for the Hot Laps. Since I don't do very many track days (4th ever, 1st in camaro) and I don't have any extra safety equipment to run in a higher class, I ran in the Novice class. The Novice class requires for you to run jeans, all leather shoes, long sleeve cotton shirt, SFI approved neck brace and gloves, SA 2010 approved helmet and your ready to go. The problem with Novice was that your not allowed to pass.... EVER!!!! No point bye's , nothing.... This became problematic during sessions....
In order to run the higher intermediate you needed a race suit of some sort and then point by's were allowed. To run expert you needed a 5 point harness, some fire system, fire suit, hans, and you get to go crazy on passing.
Brad Yonkers sweet C5 Z06, he won an event last year and a local michigan guy I autocross against.
I went and did my parade laps with an instructor and he seemed happy with my lines, just gave me some basic pointers and said give her hell! I was very pumped up and got first in line to do the hot laps so I could get out first and not worry about traffic.... Small problem... forgot some safety equipment and had to run back to the car and got shuffled back into the pack of cars.
First Session was a little frustrating getting caught behind cars that would pull crazy lengths on the straights, but then they would hold me back in the infield, and bus stop after the big straight. Were talking about C7 vette's and C6 Z06's, so I was pretty suprised, but being the Novice class I can understand people not as comfortable with pushing their car's as I felt. Either way I left the 1st session as the number 2 qualifier and was staged 2nd behind a C7 for the next session.
Second Session Was behind the vette and similiar to the first session, he would pull bus lengths on straights and slow me up in the tight sections.. So I decided to let him run away for half a lap and decided to go for it! This helped out making me the #1 Qualifier for session 2 dropping 2 second from my last session.
Third Session This was the session that changed everything. I went out and was pushing it really nice, hitting the curbing getting some tires in the air, felt really confident until it I batched a 4 to 2 down shift.... the rev's weren't matched and I found some wheel hop into the corner.. Luckily I held the corner, but from then on the rest of the day the car kept going into ABS inop , Low trac, and that's all she wrote for the ABS working for the rest of the day... This also ment that I had a of course in the same braking zone because now I couldn't wait until the last minute on the brakes. I went in from the session still thinking I had a few good runs, but was bumped by the C7 again. Near the end of the session my brake pedal had alot of travel and when I parked her in the pits the front brakes were smoking.
I jumped back in the car and drove her up and down michigan ave a few miles as a "cool down" and the brake pedal came back after a few minutes. I will still ahead of the boss 302, but him and I were getting very very close to each other. With the recent brake Problems I decided to sit out session 4 to let the car and brakes cool down and go at it for one last session. Also at this time my gas was getting lower than expected and the pads were more than half gone already.
Fourth Session As I watched from the sidelines the boss mustang dropped over a second and bumped me out of the GT novice leader and 3rd overall in the Novice Hot Laps behind him and the C7.
Battle of the Novice hot laps..... Camaro Vs Mustang, DOHC vs OHV, Marines vs Army, Iraq vs Afghanistan vets... It was one hell of a battle and a great guy to compete against.
Fifth Session Since I skipped the 4th session I no longer had a qualifying lap according to them, so I had to start in the back of the pack. This ment sand bagging and waiting to get enough distance in a hot lap attempt. My first attempt was ruined by a C6 Z06 who I thought I gave plenty of space from, but apparently had the same idea as me and slowed me down at the end of the infield. Ok.... fine I went around the banking super slow and set myself up for the bus stop and I was going for it again. This was my 3rd lap and ended up being my fastest of the session.
The best part of this run was even with no ABS and learning on the fly what I could get away with in the braking zones, I dropped over a second and was able to take the Novice Hot Laps victory by being the only driver in the 1:28's
When all was said and done I was 5th overall in my GT class with 3 point behind the Boss 302 (speed stop he killed me) and 5 point behind a new Z28 (2nd place speed stop). I later on went to find out the 3rd place camaro was the fastest first timer of everyone and got his money back for the event and since the other 2 GT class winners already have an invite to vegas, he was invited and got the $500 wilwood gift cert.... DAMN 5 points!!!!! so close, so far away.
David Tyo went on to collect the $3,000 bounty set by Showtime Performance and Ken T for any challenger or mustang to beat his Z28. David also got the K&N spirit of the event award, which consists of a custom help and a invite to vegas also. Congrats to David this weekend!!
So in the end I was the fastest RWD of everyone there, I was the fastest Novice hot lap car, 5th overall in GT class, and I lost tons of points of the speed stop and a few on design and engineer. It makes me proud to show up in a ESP legal 4th gen and be able to get a top 5 without any real trick parts or crazy horsepower or money into my car.
Now just random photos.
1st place autocross GT Class. While wearing my LS1 Diagram shirt.
Chris and I being stupid on the road rally
Sweet pic with the grandstands
Getting a little close to take barrel on my hot lap
Speaks for itself. Had a lot of people taking pics during the weekend.
Removing the transponder.
First timers!
Gear head homes and the mullet head band.
David Tyo being interviewed after winning Ken T's $3,000 challenge
Sounds like a very solid showing for a first timer.
Are you planning on going back? How did the RE-71R's handle the heat for track portion?
I would like to go to another event, but probably won't be able to focusing on National Autocross competition.
The RE-71R's lasted about 10 to 15 min out of the 20 min hot lap session before they started getting greasy, it all depends on how hard I was attacking it.
06-24-2015, 05:23 PM
Optima' 
