Not much traffic on this list lately- everyone must be just as busy as I
am, but I thought I would finally make the time and give you my report from
the San Diego Natl. Tour event.
Thanks to all you fast guys from points east not making the long haul to
Lo-Cal, I was able to win my first trophy! That's the good news. The bad
news was I sucked so bad on Sat. that I threw away any chance of winning,
and was just barely able to make up enough time on Sun. to climb back up
into second place. I was still happy with that result, though, in only my
third event driving a FF.
There were only six entries in C-Mod, all names I recognized from local
competitions except for Ken Edney, who brought his Zink over from
Arizona. People were saying it was a "horsepower course", but I wouldn't
know the difference, with my limited experience in SCCA events. I do know
that the Z06s in SS posted comparable times to the CM cars, so horsepower
must have made up for handling in some areas, for sure.
It has been a very dry winter here in San Diego, but a cold front just
happened to come thru on Sat. and a heavy downpour drenched the course
during Heat 1. CM was originally scheduled to run in the first heat, but
local sound ordinances conspired to move us to the last heat instead, which
was a blessing in some ways, as the course had dried out by then. I had
no rain tires, so a wet course would have been a disaster for me.
As it turned out, I was enough of a disaster all by myself that day, as I
could not seem to focus on looking far enough ahead and missed a gate in
the second slalom on my first run, and then missed another one in the 4th
slalom on my second run, resulting in two DNFs! Even though I had walked
the course twice, and it was fairly straightforward, I still got lost at
speed from the low vantage point of the FF cockpit, and failed to put the
car in the right place at the right time. I think the sparse placement of
cones and directional markers that is the common practice at Natl. events
compared to the local events I usually run was a contributing factor. I
had less visual clues about where to go and failed to pick up some key
references in time. Maybe I was nervous about how I would do and whether
the car would break, I don't know. I don't think I have made a mistake like
that on an autox course in 4 years, but this was only my second Natl. Tour
event, having only run the SD event last year in my Porsche previously.
I made a concerted effort to focus on finding the course and drove a
careful (read that "slow"), final run and was able to salvage a time, but I
was 2.4 seconds off the pace and sitting in 3rd place at the end of the
day. My delusions of a class victory and claiming the Hoosier contingency
of two free tires dissolved. I was totally humbled.
On Sunday, the butterflies were gone, I had nothing to lose, and somehow
the course seemed to be easier to follow when running in the opposite
direction. I never DNF'd or even hit a cone. I built my speed up on each
run, and actually posted the best time of the day in the class on my last
run. I made up almost half a second and jumped up into 2nd place.
Bill Martin won in his Lola FF, beating me by almost 2 seconds,
overall. Everyone told me he is a good driver and has his car pretty well
dialed in for autox, so that made me feel good about my Zink and that maybe
there was hope for me after all as a driver. I just need to work on
consistency.
TT
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Tom Tweed E-mail: tweedt@ucsd.edu
La Jolla, CA, USA or tweedt@rennlist.com
http://members.rennlist.com/tweedt/
Proud to be a founding member of Porschelist and Rennlist
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