What a week it has been!!! I just got home last night from my roadster's first
outing at SCCA Nationals in Topeka in the CSP class. The event was held at an
active military site and they were bringing out lots of military vehicles and
aircraft adjacent to the north course, where I was running on Tuesday at about
noon. I was about 5 minutes from getting my 2000 on the course for my first
run. Then they announced that we needed to completely evacuate the site right
away. There was no word as to whether the event would resume and we all went
our
separate ways. We learned late Wednesday that the event was to resume Thursday
morning on the south course only and we would get only 3 runs on the south
course, as opposed to running 3 on both courses.
When I returned to the motel late Wednesday night after the banquet to learn of
the event plans, I found a semi-truck had blocked access to my car trailer and
the motel management could not locate the driver. With not having walked the
south course and needing to get back on site early Thursday to unload the
roadster, getting a reasonable amount of sleep was not in the works.
As you all can probably realize, the very unpleasant distractions of the week
did
not make it the ideal event. I somehow made it to the site Thursday morning,
but
with very limited time to spare. Then I drove poorly as evidenced by the
results:
http://www.scca.org/amateur/solo2/nationals/2001/results/
Comparing my times with local drivers who were there, I was about 3 seconds off
my normal mark. I had to guess on what carb jet changes to make since I had
about a 5,000 feet drop in elevation and had no opportunity to test and tune.
I'm not saying I would have been near the top but should have been a lot closer.
CSP is an extremely fast class at the National level. The fastest car (the
240Z)
in BSP class (which should be a faster class than CSP) would have come in 3rd in
CSP. Bob Tunnell in his M3 would have placed 4th in CSP. I think SCCA needs to
evaluate and act on this situation. The fast CSP times at Nationals are close
to
DP and EP fast times.
Just before my first run, some guy walked up and said, "These Datsun roadsters
are cool looking cars with the chrome, etc. They're just not very fast". I
think these cars are very fast, especially if prepared to the level of the other
top cars at Nationals and driven well, which mine was not this year. The
surface
at Topeka is not too roadster friendly either. It's very rough and the comp
springs were not the right setup. I was sure hoping to represent the Datsun
roadster in a better fashion. I did get to meet other fellow roadster owners
Don
Miller and Elliott Harvey.
Oh well, enough excuses. My less than gratifying experience at Nationals this
week is completely insignificant compared to the other tragedies that occurred.
Happy roadstering,
Gary Boone
'70 2000
Cheyenne, WY
Gordon Glasgow wrote:
> Wow! He beat Bob Tunnell in the M3 by a quarter-second. That ain't easy.
>
> Gordon Glasgow
> Renton, WA
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Poorboy [mailto:bitterrootprop@nidlink.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2001 4:12 PM
> > To: Gordon Glasgow
> > Cc: datsun-roadsters@autox.team.net
> > Subject: Re: Solo II Nationals
> >
> >
> > Gordon and List,
> > They are only going to run one course after the event was halted
> > for a day and a half. It is an active Air National Guard base and
> > for security reasons they shut down one of the courses.
> >
> > For Datsun Lovers Vi Sias's 73' 240Z has won BSP over 43
> > Corvettes :-)
> >
> > Mike
> > Wish I could drive like the Big Dogs !
> >
> > Gordon Glasgow wrote:
> >
> > > Gary Boone is currently 23rd in CSP with a 53.283. Tom Ellam is currently
> > > leading the class with a 48.574 in a '72 Mazda RX3. BTW, I've seen
> > this car run
> > > and it's a rocket. Looks like they've only run one of the courses
> > so far, or at
> > > least that's all that is posted.
> > >
> > > Gordon Glasgow
> > > Renton, WA
> > >
> > > [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/ms-tnef
> > which had a name of winmail.dat]
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