When is the first local autocross event this year?

MPTech

MPTech

Member # 032
GCC Member
Location
St. Louis (south county)
First Name
Mark
Last Name
Patterson
I see the schedule: SCCA schedule

What is a "Clean up weekend"? any racing(?) or is that a maintenance activity?

when is the first racing event? and where?

Thanks guys!


(Mike, how that rebuild going? r u going to be ready?)
 
MPTech said:
I see the schedule: SCCA schedule

What is a "Clean up weekend"? any racing(?) or is that a maintenance activity?

when is the first racing event? and where?

Thanks guys!


(Mike, how that rebuild going? r u going to be ready?)
Click to expand...


Not sure if I will be done in time for the 1st event. We shall wait and see.
 
Anyone going to Gateway this Sunday?
What time do they start and end?


● Sunday, April 1, 2012 - Solo event #1 at Gateway Motorsports Park.
 
I am not ready yet so I will be at home working. Can't stand to go watch my main competition collect points un-challenged. I am hoping between me, my co-driver, and Keith he will spend much of the season collecting points for 4th place.
 
Stopped over there for a couple hours today with a friend.
Looked like a pretty good turnout and it was a great day outside. :D
 
I just checked the results. My main competition was guaranteed 2nd because a guy was registered that showed last year with a 3rd gen RX7 with an LS7. Unfortunatley the RX7 got a DNS and my main competition took 1st. I need to hurry up and get mine done to stay in the points.
 
Spotting him a few points only makes it sweeter when you pass him in the points,he will be devastated,I can see him hanging his head already. :D
 
itzdapig said:
Spotting him a few points only makes it sweeter when you pass him in the points,he will be devastated,I can see him hanging his head already. :D
Click to expand...

Good point Keith! I am counting on you helping to put him in 4th. When will you be back up and running?
 
mmarshall said:
I am not ready yet so I will be at home working. Can't stand to go watch my main competition collect points un-challenged. I am hoping between me, my co-driver, and Keith he will spend much of the season collecting points for 4th place.
-----------------
I just checked the results. My main competition was guaranteed 2nd because a guy was registered that showed last year with a 3rd gen RX7 with an LS7. Unfortunatley the RX7 got a DNS and my main competition took 1st. I need to hurry up and get mine done to stay in the points.
Click to expand...

Jeez, Mike. We joke around at the races, but everything is friendly. This reads kind of harsh.
[Not even credit for finishing above the Mustang at the first event with a four cylinder, front driver.]

Maybe it's not the same being the guy who's supposed to loose miserably, and manages not to.
It would be different if the situation was some rich guy that doesn’t know how to drive, showing up with an expensive sports car, and gets embarrassed by some guy with a full race Honda Civic that has every aftermarket part available bolted onto it.

But much to my despair, after a couple events to polish your driving ability, you proved you are a better than average driver. Your car got rebuilt last season with what could not be less than expert advice to purpose build a national level autocross car. And I swear both you and your co-driver have been sneaking racing school classes that you won’t admit. Your co-driver broke the index at the fourth event last year and left both of us in the dust.

And my car is an econo-box with not a single aftermarket part available to fit it. The only thing that was originally adjustable from the factory was the toe angle. Everything on the car had to be built from scratch, by me. As far as driving, my main talent is working around the inadequacies of a poorly handling car, and now that I finally have the suspension working, the car is faster than I am. It only took six years of frustration, working the problems out of the car, to get to the point that I can now be frustrated with my inability to drive it.
(In case no one knows what kind of car it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdOlq7bt6I0 )

I don’t remember you offering to sit out the first half of last season when it took me five races to sort out the springs and sway bars. I couldn’t go over 45 MPH without the car spinning! Average index points per event for the last half of the season was 8336 for you, and 8301 for me. Average class points for the last half of the season was 9711 for you, and 9761 for me. That looks like a dead heat.

Now get that car running and racing so I have something to measure my results against!
 
Bill good to hear from you. I did not mean to be harsh at all, but seeing points go to a tough competitor unchallenged is difficult. I would rather you take the points from me by beating me straight up like you did last year in the rain. Fact is if the RX7 from Peoria showed for every race we would both have to step up our game! Give Keith and his roadster another year of development and things will get interesting.

Congrats on the win over the mustang but that car (like yours and mine) needs much development to run well. He has a big slab of railroad track welded in the trunk to try to balance the car. That is not the best way to build a fast XP car. I doubt you will find any railroad track in Rick Ruth's CP mustang.

As you and I have discussed, you have taken your econo box way past what the engineers ever envisioned for it. Where you see your disadvantage, I see my having to compete against a car that is completely custom and has many years of development in parts and driver skill (since 1995??). I feel good that a hack like me can compete with the entire Iperformance racing team. You after all are the owner of "the world's top manufacturer and supplier of performance parts for Isuzu, Geo Storm, Asuna Sunfire, and Lotus Elan M100 cars". I do feel honored that my Daytona is now front and center on your companies web page! Thanks for giving me the international exposure. http://www.isuzuperformance.com/bills/

You give Gary and me too much credit for our driving skills. Neither of us have been to a single driver school and have just learned as we go. Gary had never driven a car in anger until 2010 so he is making great improvements. I have sought tips from some of the local RWD guys, but that is about it. We will really get to see what my car is capable of when Andy H co-drives with me the next time. I think with him at the wheel my Daytona is capable of being the fastest car in St Louis. With me at the wheel...not so much.

My Dr has cleared me after my surgery this winter, so I am finally making some headway on getting the car back together. God willing I will be back by June to keep you honest! Until then keep up the good work and save some of that purple crack for later in the season.
 
mmarshall said:
We will really get to see what my car is capable of when Andy H co-drives with me the next time. I think with him at the wheel my Daytona is capable of being the fastest car in St Louis. With me at the wheel...not so much.
Click to expand...

NO! Not the dang Ringer!
Everyone here knows Andy is an Evo driving school instructor, right? In the second to last event last year, you had the Ringer, and he eaked out one last run without touching the brakes (and spinning) to end any hope of taking the event points.
I'll have to get Joe Floretta to drive my car again. He beat me with my own car last event last year. He's finishing top 8 in the index back in his own car, every event so far this year. Then you can keep me company down at the bottom of the pack.
You just need to go back to the setup you had at mid season, before the brake change. You were up over 9000 on the index for a couple events.

The guy with the Mustang needs a more experience. Unless he really has that thing messed up underneath. On paper, he should be cleaning my clock.

And let me be the first to say that I am a truly lousy driver. Years of driving badly just means that I have ingrained all those bad habits that keep me from going fast.

You need to get well and back to the races. You're missing all my good material.
Like rewelding my firewall made my car 10% faster. The crack needing repair was under the gas pedal. The car probably hadn't seen WOT for five or six years!
And my other new upgrade, moving the shifter one inch forward so I don't grind and miss shifting into second when my elbow hits the seat side bolster.
 
Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike! Come on and race tomorrow!

Some region in Ohio keeps sending me notifications for their events, and they have nine cars in XP for their race tomorrow: Two Corvettes, a Viper, a Factory Five car, an MR2, a Plymouth Le'mons road race car, and a bunch of other stuff.

BUT, Ned is signed back up for tomorrow with the V8 RX-7 to race here.
And he is fresh from the racing school over in Northern Illinois last weekend, to practice what he learned this weekend.

My only accomplishment since Event 2 is re-plastic-welding the bottom of my dash board so it doesn't rattle any more. Now all I can hear is the rattling of my passenger window, sunroof shade, and all the nuts and bolts in the ashtray.
And somebody find me a five gallon gas can, I need to get rid of five gallons of ballast (stupid me for filling the tank all the way up and parking the car for two weeks).
 
I thought I would run down the results from Event 3, and compare them to 2011 Event 2, which was the last time that Ned raced here.

2011 Event 2
1 Ned Neuhaus 42.544 sec. 9346 Index Championship Points
2 Mike’s Competition 49.162 sec. 8088 ICP
3 Mike 49.584 sec. 8019 ICP
4 Gary 53.220 sec. 7471 ICP

2012 Event 3
Ned won, but I knocked down his margin of victory by two-thirds.
1 Ned Neuhaus 42.137 sec. 9293 ICP
2 Mike’s Competition 44.633 sec. 8768 ICP

Index Championship Points are calculated by taking the indexed FTD of the event, dividing by the driver’s indexed time, and multiplying by 10000. So it is how well the driver (and car) does on a scale of 10000.

I don’t remember the course form 2011, but the comments about Sunday’s course was that it was a mini road course, all sweeping turns, and it should have provided a lot of advantage to the higher horsepower cars. Except that the surface of the pavement is so slick from pebbles and grit.
Ned slipped a little from last year, despite having attended driving school one week before the event.
I managed to push my time up, above my previous average, and above my previous best ICP of 8648 from the last event of 2011. And the margin of victory was cut from 2011’s 6.618 seconds, to 2.496 seconds.
Mike’s average ICP from 2011 was 8465, but his best was 9393. So theoretically, he could have placed anywhere between a close third place if he drove to his previous average, all the way up to beating Ned if he matched his previous best.
Gary’s best ICP from 2011 was a 8948, so his theoretical range would have been from a close second behind Ned to a close fourth.
 
Thanks for the update. We may need to have a build party at Mike's to get him back out there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top