Not one word can describe this event. I’m not too sure I can even describe the event in a thousand words. But I’ll try.
This year’s 2012 SCCA Solo Nationals were held in Lincoln NE, where nearly 1200 competitors from all over the country drove their car to compete against others in their class. For Eric and I, we drove 600 miles each way to compete in the newly created class, Road Tire – AWD, in Eric’s 2011 Subaru WRX. If you’ve been reading past blogs, you would have read a few of the Milwaukee Region events that we’ve attended.
Leading up to the event-
Using some of the local events as test’n tune events, we’ve came up with a final car setup. Stock class only allows a few things to be changed (Shocks, 1 sway bar, and catback exhaust). We’ve had very poor luck with Koni and decided to run the stock front shocks. Not because they are better, but because they are 10X more reliable. We also switched back to the rear sway bar as we felt the car rotated a bit more (which we liked). So with the car setup to our liking, we packed up the car and headed down to Lincoln NE on Tuesday night after work.
We arrived Wednesday morning around 9am in Lincoln. We quickly found our paddock spot, unloaded, took the car through tech where we got all stickered up, and went through registration. We’re ready! But not before we get some practice on the Evolution School practice course. This was a HUGE help, we got to experience what it felt like to drive on this sort of concrete. STICKY! The amount of grip reminded me of driving on R-Comps. Each of us came out of practice with about a dozen runs giving us a bit more confidence.
After practice, we watched and walked the West Course. We had some local friends that ran Tues/Wed and supplied us with some in-car video’s for us to study (BIG HELP). –Thanks Colin
Thursday Morning-
Heart is already racing at 6am. Watched the in-car videos about 20 more times before leaving the hotel. Got to the course around 7am to walk it a few more times. RTA ran in the first heat of the day, 9am. Running this early isn’t the best for the tires we ran (RS3’s) as it was a cool morning. The Hankook RS3’s perform best when hot. Our Day 1 runs seemed like one big blur, it happened so fast. Eric started out his runs right with keeping them all clean. I (Andy) decided to be a fool and screw up the first 2 runs leaving it all riding in that last run. Last run, desperately trying to keep it clean, I put down a good enough time for a 2nd place finish in day 1, just .04 seconds behind first, and Eric in 4th place.
Day 1 complete, blood pressure drops back down to normal…. Time to start memorizing the East Course.
Friday Morning-
Wake up, turn on computer, and watch in car videos of East Course. Our runs start a bit earlier today, 8am. With even cooler air temps, we needed to find a way to keep the heat in the tires. With the help of some good friends, we were given some tire blankets to cover the tires in-between runs. This East Course was much more fun for us. It was also a bit more tricky, but we like tricky. Eric ran his first 2 runs nice and clean like he should and saved his last run for the bonzie run, where he hit 5 cones…lol. He passed Tom Reynolds up taking the 3rd place spot in RTA with a best Day 2 time of 73.63.
I came into day 2 with one goal, don’t leave it to my last run. Things couldn’t have gone better. My 2nd run I was able to put down a 73.29. Andrew Barrette having only one run left to beat it ran a 72.59 but a late cone call cancelled out that run. This was the big sigh of relief as that locked me in the 1st place. I had one run left to further my lead. I pushed it hard and came in with a 72.21 but clipped 2 cones with it. Oh well….
With a 1st/3rd finish, we couldn’t be happier.
Thanks to many many people for the help along the way!
Video and Pictures:
Day 1, West Course, Andy:
Day 1, West Course, Eric:
Day 2, East Course, Andy:
Day 2, East Course, Eric:
Pictures taken by GotCone.com
