I finally got out to one of these. I had signed up for last year’s Cone Clinic in Peru but wasn’t able to attend. I had some unexpected vacation time, so I took work off Friday and a half-day on Thursday and booked a hotel room for my wife and I.
All of my Saturns use oil rapidly, and I had planned to bring a quart of Shell Rotella 5W40 Synthetic to top off the SC2’s engine prior to the event. I forget to put the oil in the trunk when we left, but I manage to find another quart at the Walmart down in Kokomo. I add this quart in the morning before heading to the event, but it doesn’t bring the oil level to the full mark.
I am in the first run group and pull up behind an Acura Type R. A couple of STS Civic Sis are parked to the left of my car in the same run group. I definitely have the slowest car at the Cone Clinic, not to mention I only have the RT-615s while the STS guys are running the Bridgestones and everyone else is on R-compounds. Brian Davis is parked right next to me. He had the Bridgestone freshly mounted to 1989 Civic Si just before this event.
To get the car ready I decide to try higher rear pressures and pump up the rear tires to 50 psi, but leave the fronts at 30 psi. One of the pictures Christina takes shows the inside rear wheel lifting nicely through an offset. The front outside tire looks like it is getting flattened, so I will try a little more front pressure at the next event.
Perhaps partly from the overly soft front, the short practice course is difficult to drive well. I had recently read Per Schroeder’s comments in the Grassroots Motorsports article about beginning autocross drivers coasting too much through an autocross course. I did decide to really attack the course, but my first run is especially bad. Some of it may also be due to nerves with having an instructor in the car. My second run is much smoother, but it still doesn’t feel very good to me. My time for this run is 33.256 seconds.
For the next couple runs Ann Hollis takes the driver’s seat and scoots the SC2 around the course pretty aggressively. It definitely feels like the car reacts quicker to her throughout the offsets and the slalom. As she is driving she mentions that I need to think about the rear tire cutting across the backside of cones. She finishes her first run in 33.089 seconds and the second run is 32.521 seconds.
At the end of her second run she notices the Saturn’s valve lifters ticking and asked if I had checked the oil level. I mention that I knew it was a little low. She goes to work with the next driver waiting in line while I look to borrow some oil. Someone says that there is some oil in the timing camper, so I add a quart of 20W50 Castrol to the SC2. It will be time for an oil change when we get home.
With the oil topped off, I drive around the course alone quite a few times. Ann had taken the time sheet with her when I had stopped to add oil, so I don’t record those times, but most of the times were in the 33-second range. The toughest section was the long 7-cone slalom at the end. I hit the first cone a couple of times and the car got sideways a couple of times at the end. On some of the smoother runs I hit the third cone.
Mrs. Hollis finally returns to sit through three more of my runs, and I post some sub 33 second times with more trouble on the slalom, on one run I enter the slalom too fast at the wrong angle and loose all front grip. Before leaving the car she repeats her suggestions and suggests that she would like to see some sub 31 second times.
I make a couple more runs one at 32.747 seconds and the final one was 31.667 seconds. The last run felt pretty good, though perhaps I just didn’t push as hard that time. It seemed like a decent enough time compared to what the faster cars were running.
The course working time goes by very quickly. I don’t see much as the slalom requires a lot of attention—I’m evidently not the only person hitting those cones today. We are all done before 10 am, and pack up the baby and everything into the car and head back to Grand Rapids. Maybe next year we’ll stay for the National Tour, but I have a local Furrin Group event to make it to tomorrow.