S.A.S.C.
Solo => Other Events => Topic started by: Reijo on March 04, 2015, 09:49:00 AM
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San Diego is starting up on Friday March 20 (practice, registration etc) and the Tour on Sat./Sun. followed by the El Toro Pro Solo on the following weekend (Irvine - sort of SE corner of metro LA in Orange County).
There are a number of us planning to go - Jay, Ryan C, Tim, moi, Ashley, David G. and a future resident of Calgary - Stephen Hui from Seattle ... Did I miss anyone?
It's a great way to get an early start on the season! :)
http://www.scca.com/events/index.cfm?eid=8371
Reijo
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Good luck!
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Good luck and have fun! I made it once, and it was an incredible experience -- that venue is something else.
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I will be watching from here. It's good to see that we are sending a good (and fast) group down this year. Best of luck!
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thanks all.....Quentin is on the road yesterday hauling Jay's (and Orieta, of course) SSM 'vette down ... was in Billings last night. Work and other stuff has held me back since I wanted to "ideally" leave last night and make some ground but instead I am still at home early this morning with packing to do, sending out reports and trying to finish at least one report before I leave ... but truck and car is outside and I will be leaving fairly shortly. :)
Plan was also to maybe meet tonight with Q at Mesquite, Nv....cheapest rooms on the way (about $23-24/night!)...about 1.5 hours north of Lost Vages. I don't know if I can make that now ... will be too late leaving I "think" ... we'll see.
Reijo
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Caught up to Quentin and had breakfast with him in St. George's, Utah (almost in Nevada) ... he had a tire go bad yesterday and replaced two on the trailer .... I went most of the night just crashing temporarily at rest stops a couple of times ... about 7-8 hrs. to San Diego from here ... and will miss the LA rush hour ... which is important, of course! :)
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Good luck guys!
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Well, we lost a diff this morning .... asked around and found an AP1 diff. about 20 minutes away ... picked it up ... and just got back from the site ... diff is in, tires changed, and Ashley runs in BSP first heat and then we run in the 2nd heat ... with Jay (SSM). Look for streaming video and commentary on sololive.com
Time for bed ... very tired now ... have a few photos from today ... Did not get a course walk in yet ... no test 'n tune runs ... could not get new tires ... been a bit of a crazy day ... All a part of the "national" experience. But also nice to see how all the people around here come together to help out their stricken friends....a good thing, definitely a good thing! :)
Reijo
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Well, we lost a diff this morning .... asked around and found an AP1 diff. about 20 minutes away ...
Didn't you guys have my AP1 diff with you?
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Did that diff really last zero events? Hopefully your luck turns around.
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Watching the live feed right now, and today's course must be a doozy. Cones flying everywhere. Reijo spun in his first run, and on his second run, got 6 cones. His exhaust pipe was dragging on the ground when he came into the finish -- hope they can get it tied up in time.
David G was in the trophies yesterday (STF) -- congrats!
Edit: Jay just moved into the trophies -- congrats!
Edit: Jay got bumped down again; one spot out of the trophies :(
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A huge congratulations to David G -- 2nd place trophy in a car he hasn't driven before. Impressive.
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Well done David, a trophy from a Tour event is a huge accomplishment!
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The Tour and course was great....our tires not so much. Tire Rack screwed us around and did not deliver the new tires so we ended up driving on dead Hoosiers (maybe 100 or so runs ... dead, dead, dead..... It was ugly). The tail was wandering around all over the place on Sunday morning ... which contributed to the spin.... After softening the rear shocks to the max and lowering rear tire pressure to 24 psi (instead of 29-30), I finally got enough grip to keep the rear end behind me and finished a clean run ... ugh. Dead tires are no way to even bother to try and keep up with the likes of Steve O'Blenes (with whom I co-drove his A-Mod in 2008 ... and also a member of the "many jackets" club ... and Anthony Porta who won. Steve was saying old tires were about 2-2.5 sec. at San Diego so that would have put us in the running. We'll see. We finished finalizing the new Hoosier order last week and today ... shipped today and should arrive here on Thursday or so ... in time for Friday to mount and run Sat./Sun. at the Pro (Many thanks to Hoosier Tom (Reichel) from Atlantic Motorsports for coming to the rescue!).
We can now see how we do against Steve and Anthony at El Toro (we brought the car there this morning and parked it for the week). I trust the handling will be better. :)
In the meanwhile the weather is just beautiful here ... .shorts, of course, ... was just out on the Huntington Beach pier this evening ... got a few great photos ... will post on FB.
Cheers,
Reijo
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David did really well co-driving with Mike Heinitz, of San Diego, ... who is definitely a National-level competitor and has placed at least 2nd at the Nationals in the past ...perhaps twice that I know of......don't recall off-hand whether he has won ... but, hey, 2nd place says a bunch too!
Poor Ashley had zero time in an S2k before jumping into our monster BSP car on dead tires however she kept it in shape for the most part and progressively sped up during the weekend ... more to come.
David will be co-driving with V-Q in his XP 240SX ... which will be exciting I am sure! Ashley will also be returning to drive the S2k. Jay/Orieta's 'vette was parked at El Toro we noticed this morning so there will be 6 Calgary reps there on this coming weekend ... which is pretty cool! :)
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The Grey's and us are staying at the La Quinta Inn ... which is the closest place to the site ... only a few minutes to the tarmac and most of the driving is around the west side of the site. I notice El Toro is being developed ... buildings from the old base (WWII bldgs) are being torn down, earth movers, dump trucks etc. are all around the west side of the site. Alas I fear El Toro is not long for autox since it will become a subdivision. The recent (since 2008) recession hit SoCal hard and delayed the development of the site but it appears the construction has begun again with the slow recovery of the economy (which is still not great down here from I've heard ... and understandably so). But the skies are blue and temps are about as high as it gets in Calgary in mid-summer so that is all good! :)
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hah! +17 right now in Calgary!
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Yah......not much of a winter in Calgary ... They have been saying, even this evening at dinner, that they are getting mid-summer heat/weather here now ... must've been around 90F here today ... somehwhere around 30C .... hot day.....sweaty....
David, should be here any moment ... flying in from Denver....saw Jay and Orieta earlier this evening walking the course (Tom Berry design).... |There are a number of gotcha's in there ... a bit of up and down in the course....line choice is all important and basically a button-hook turn at the end ... shades of Fort Macleod! All the Calgary group should do extremely well at the turn-around! :)
There are actually more people at the Pro (220 +) than there were at the SD Tour ... very odd since usually it is the other way around!
I'll post some photos from today a bit later .... if I get a chance on FB.
BTW, we picked up our new tires around 3 pm today ... as well as some 110 octane fuel so we should be more competitive if we drive well tomorrow... Ashley runs in the first group and Tim and I work first.
Check sololive for video, scoring etc.
Cheers!
Reijo
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Interesting to see a turn so close to the start of a Pro.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/SCCASolo
http://sololive.scca.com
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Another brutal day .... Ashley got her runs first thing in the morning and then one of the three-piece wheels started to leak air so bad we probably could not complete a run with it. We took it apart between runs, re-sealed it, but it still leaked air ... more badly in fact. In the morning we ran rains on the front ... pushed like a bugger ... and then rains all around for the afternoon......and then the bolts holding the driveshaft on fell off!
Good grief!
Anyhow, Tom Berry has the leaky wheel (apart again) ... and he will seal it and install the tire tonight ... thank you Tom!
In the meanwhile we also hunted around and found some bolts that may work on the driveshaft (some were bent).....so we have to bolt that together for first thing in the morning for Ashley. We have 2 runs on each side to redeem ourselves ... provided something else doesn't fall off? hahaha.....crazy.
Anyway, hopefully things will turn around tomorrow and we can get some decent runs in.
In the meanwhile David was finding Q-V's 240SX (with LS1 Chevy V-8 no less) a bit of a handful but I think a fun experience..... :)
Ashley also seems to be getting adapted to the S2000 ...
Reijo
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Shame about the car.
On the video feed, I noticed David lined about against the McKee RX7 at one point, and wondered if I was watching Formula D. :o
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Man, hope things go better for you guys today. Fingers crossed for ya...