SCCA Pro Solo Finale article

[Reijo]

Jay managed a faster run than Ambrose on one side but too many RL's and cones on the other side to manage a good run out of the 2 clean ones he had.

Looks like Jeremy Foley has beat Ryan on points for the overall championship (there are more points for the Finale win ... Foley came in with a 1st and a 2nd into the Finale whereas Ryan had won all his pros).

Other surprises, Kevin Dietz goes from the lead after day 1 down to 6th!  Note that the 8 trophy places are separated by less than 0.5 sec!  Crazy competition in that class!  Kevin did not improve today and many others did ...

In STS the 5 trophy places are separated by about 0.3 seconds.

In STU Heitkotter didn't win but a Nexen-shod STi did ...

DS, Mark Scroggs, BEAT FS on raw time!  Yep, 2016 2.0L Turbo 4cyl Camaro beat the 2014 M3 with Jeff Cashmore at the wheel and all the slower Camaro SS's ... There were no Mustang GT's in the field.  What do you think of those apples?

In HS Scott did not improve today and fell from 1st to 4th place and out of the trophies.   

In R2, Patrick Washburn (SoloPro instructor who has been here a few times to teach) managed a 3rd place trophy in their EP Civic.

In CAM, Ryan Otis of Portland came back and took the win this morning.

There are still runs going on and some other interesting info but have at it ... results are out there.

[Reijo]

There seemed to be a lot of DNF's and cones on these courses ... Neal Tovsen is looking for a clean run into his last two runs ... jumps into the trophies ahead of his co-driver Todd Cochrane ... talk about leaving it to the last minute, eh?   

[Reijo]

runs are over.  I think Ryan is still qualified for the Super Challenge because he was so close to the winner ... coming up in a bit.

http://sololive.scca.com/PS/OtherDir/SuperChalQual.html

[Reijo]

Ladies Challenge goes first ... they were just called to grid:

http://sololive.scca.com/PS/OtherDir/LadiesChalQual.html


Live broadcast is here:   
http://sololive.scca.com/PS/liveaudio.html

[Reijo]

You needed to be within 0.065 within the winner's time to qualify for the Super Challenge.  Ryan is 0.051 so he is in....as per the radio announcement just now.

UPdate:   2 dropped out, so Ryan is the 28th qualifier out of 32.

[Reijo]

Sam Strano dropped out and now Jeff Kiesel is in as 32nd qualifier ... always a formidable force in Super Challenges!    Watch out!

[Reijo]

Someone else dropped out and Mark Daddio is in ... lol ... this is getting tough!  A few minutes left for drops ... wonder why people are dropping out.

Fred Zust is out ... John Hale and David Hedderick are in at the last minute.

Trophy presentation in 10 min. before the Challenge rounds.

R

[Reijo]

They changed it:  Trophies after the Challenge Rounds ... Ladies' Challenge coming up right now.

[Reijo]

women's bracket:

http://sololive.scca.com/PS/OtherDir/LadiesChallenge.html

[Reijo]

Ugh, Ryan red-lighted in his first round against Joe Tharpe ... 0.472 sec.  (min. is 0.500 reaction time or else you get a red light ... so barely).

[Reijo]

Summary article on the Pro Finale with Jonathan Clements (from the LA area) winning the Super Challenge in the family Formula Ford ... well done on Jonathan's part:
R
https://www.scca.com/articles/2007796-underdog-wins-2017-tire-rack-prosolo-finale

[NickST]

Pretty interesting event, I was following it closely on my phone live as it all played out, haha. Really loving that live scoring, such a great thing to have for these events!

I think the Rivals are the tire of choice for most at nationals from what I remember.

I am not really sure which is best, I think I'd need to see some more evidence before I jump off the Bridgestone wagon. The RE-71R's are only available in 205's, while the Rivals come in 215. I think that is why people are buying them over the RE-71R's for this car. I still kind of feel like the Bridgestones are a better compound.

At the Canadian Nationals this summer, the H-Stock champion from 2016 came out with his Fiesta ST equipped with Rivals. He also had a rear sway bar, and he had done the front Koni shocks. I was eager to see how the cars would stack up against one another with these slight differences. Time wise, I ended up ahead of him by 6.63 seconds over 4 runs, although it is pretty hard to quantify exactly why.

In the end I am still left wondering which tire is a better option. I might pick up a set of Rivals as my second set for next year (if I decide to keep my car that is) and then I can run them back to back with the Bridgestones and see how they feel.

[Reijo]

Pretty interesting event, I was following it closely on my phone live as it all played out, haha. Really loving that live scoring, such a great thing to have for these events!

I think the Rivals are the tire of choice for most at nationals from what I remember.

I am not really sure which is best, I think I'd need to see some more evidence before I jump off the Bridgestone wagon. The RE-71R's are only available in 205's, while the Rivals come in 215. I think that is why people are buying them over the RE-71R's for this car. I still kind of feel like the Bridgestones are a better compound.

At the Canadian Nationals this summer, the H-Stock champion from 2016 came out with his Fiesta ST equipped with Rivals. He also had a rear sway bar, and he had done the front Koni shocks. I was eager to see how the cars would stack up against one another with these slight differences. Time wise, I ended up ahead of him by 6.63 seconds over 4 runs, although it is pretty hard to quantify exactly why.

In the end I am still left wondering which tire is a better option. I might pick up a set of Rivals as my second set for next year (if I decide to keep my car that is) and then I can run them back to back with the Bridgestones and see how they feel.

Size availability is certainly one factor of why people run the BFG in some cases. 

Something I noticed a couple years ago when I co-drove a car at the Packwood Tour  I thought it was trophy time when I was offered a car that had just run the fastest time on the west course of the Solo Nationals in the previous Sept.  The tires had been stored properly etc. in Portland but when we ran on them the car skated all over the place and we kept tweaking the shock settings all weekend trying to balance the car ... eventually running on settings that had never been used before (good, expensive custom-valved shocks .. don't remember which ones they were now but there was lots of adjustability).  IN the end, we decided that the tires which had hardly been used beyond the Nationals runs, had gone off; they were dead!  BFG's.

R