I really haven’t done any work on the SC2 for a while. Since there is a lull in the local autocross schedule I looked on the myautoevents website for slightly farther away events. In the past I have run events with the South Bend and Indiana Northwest regions of the SCCA. These are normally smaller events much like our local West Michigan events.
But I had enjoyed the large Detroit Region Memorial Day event. The Detroit and Saginaw Valley regions have a joint weekend event up in Oscoda, Michigan at the Wurtsmith Air Force Base. I suggest to Christina that we could make it a short camping trip as a family. I am just interested in the autocross on Saturday. The Sunday event is a SCCA Time Trial—basically a simpler high-speed event—probably not the most fun in an H Stock car on street tires.
Oscoda is about a four-hour drive from Grand Rapids. I make a reservation through the State Park website to camp at Tawas Point State Park for the weekend. The weather report online state there is some low chance of Thundershowers on Saturday.
One of the games we play while driving is to find all the letters in the alphabet in order by spotting them by finding them at the beginning of words on road signs. My wife and I are both stuck looking for a “Q” when we reach the State Park. We get the car unpacked and tent set up, and I leave to go to registration for the event. On the 14 miles from the campground to the Air Force Base there are nearly a dozen signs with words beginning with “Q.”
When I get to the event site, one of the women at the registration table tells me that she had raced on my wheels. I hardly think it is possible, as I had gotten them from several different junkyards, but painted “Sawtooth” style rims are a common item among Saturn autocrosses. So it isn’t too surprising if she had driven a car with similar wheels—someone at the last Detroit event even had some polished Saturn “Sawtooths” on a 1991 Ford Escort GT in my class. She explained that she had driven David Pearson’s 1991 Saturn SC, which had also had white wheels.
The surface at Wurtsmith is very nice. Some of it looks to be rather freshly poured concrete. Overall it looks to be in much better shape than Grissom, but there are still lots of weeds growing in the cracks. My biggest concern about the course is that there are many places where you just cannot see the next gates. There are also many ambiguous places where the cones don’t truly indicate the course direction and several extra pointer cones are placed where the car shouldn’t pivot. It is definitely not a course to run without walking. My guess at the intended path seems like a fast, challenging course with plenty of width to choose a line. It certainly wasn’t just a long string of connected slaloms.
I walk the course four times and talk with a couple of people about the event. The plan is to run the course counter-clockwise in the morning and clockwise in the afternoon. I learn that the course is nearly identical to the one used the previous year, so most people at the event would already be familiar with it. Satisfied with my knowledge of the course layout for the morning runs I head back to the State Park.
Street Tire H Stock is running first heat in the morning and last heat in the afternoon. I take the Novice walk given in part by Al Chan the course designer. A small optional slalom has been added to the beginning of the course since my walks the previous night. The novice walk takes quite a while, so I rush to get parked in grid and ready for the first heat.
I really liked the improved feel when I ran low pressures in the front tires and high pressures in the rear tires at my first event. I hadn’t played with pressures at the last event, but I decided to pump up the rears to 40 psi and check the fronts to about 32 psi. THS is the last class to run in the heat so we watch the faster cars try out the course. The better times are mostly in the low 60-second range. My own first run feels great. I really try to be aggressive with the slaloms and use as much of the course width as possible in the turn arounds. My first run time is great at about 60.5 seconds. I improve a little more each run, but my first time would have been good enough to win the class.
For my last run of the heat I pump the rear tires up to their rated maximum of 50 psi. This seems to work well to stiffen the rear a little more, and the SC2 is still not at all loose.
The Pro index class runs in the second heat, and probably partly because of that there is a shortage of experience workers. Worker chief and fellow Saturn driver, Rob Heiser asks me to work Control—at least I get to stay dry as some dark clouds are gathering in the east.
The afternoon runs are interrupted several times by lightning. I head back to the State Park during one of the breaks to pick up my wife and kids. I get back on site just as the course is getting started again, but it only lasts for a few minutes. During the next break the decision is made to limit the afternoon runs to two each, but several competitors protest, so the original plan of three runs is followed for the remainder of the heat.
The track is pretty much dry when my run group gets back in their cars for the final heat of the day. However, the winds soon change direction and a huge black line of clouds blows quickly in during the middle of the second run. My wife and kids hop into the SC2 just in time for some huge winds and pelting rain to cancel the rest of the event. One of the port-a-johns is literally blown across the paddock. With everyone huddling in their cars they open the course for fun runs. I let my wife and children out at the timing trailer and take one run across the flooded course.
My one afternoon timed run gives me almost a three second lead on the next place driver in Street Tire H Stock. The Storm finally calms down and they hand out the trophies that are $5 discount coupons to the next Detroit or Saginaw Valley event—I had hoped for another teeshirt.
The day ends with a potluck dinner onsite. We don’t have anything with us—not even something to drink, but we eat some delicious food. Next year we’ll have to plan on camping on site and making sure we bring something to the potluck.