First of all, a big thanks to Brian for giving me the opportunity to co-drive. Besides being a fantastic autocross car, it adds a teamwork aspect to the sport, and gives a good measure of relative performance. Also a big thanks to Scott Main, who lent us his trailer for the trip. Speaking of which...
The first incident occurred about 20 yards into the trip. Sorry Scott - we'll fix it!
We made it to Columbus, Georgia late Thursday night (technically early Friday morning) and Frankenberry joined us a couple of hours later.
We had a touch of rain on Friday for the test-and-tune.
The weather Friday night was rough, and Super Stock was running in the second heat. We knew that we'd be facing wet conditions for at least part of our runs. I was the 7th SS car to run, and my time of 50.756 was the fastest so far... and I had been really slow. The times fell rapidly as the course dried out. By the time everybody had taken three runs, several people had gotten into the 45s, including Brian (45.592). He was a little over 0.4s out of first, while I was more than a second behind first place with a time of 46.207. If I remember correctly, nine of of the top 10 drivers on Saturday were standing on their third runs. The course was drying so quickly that there were huge increases in grip as the session progressed. Because of that, Saturday was essentially a one-run day for everybody.
By Saturday afternoon things had cleared up considerably. The Lotus was definitely the sexiest car in class.
...even if it's dwarfed by its surroundings.
Sunday was a beautiful day, with mild weather in the morning and getting pleasantly warm into the mid afternoon. We starting running at maybe 9:45 AM, when it was still fairly cool. The car felt good, and the course was fast. Unfortunately, we were a little under-geared and under-powered. Brian and I both had to shift to third going out, and were riding the limiter for a couple of seconds coming back. And the turnaround at the end was slow enough to get the car out of its powerband... although I didn't feel like I took that turn well in any of my runs. I was dirty on my first run, got a rerun on my second, was dirty on that rerun, and managed a conservative 45.894 on the third. Brian had to stand on his first run, a 45.632, because he coned his other two. We each moved up a spot: Brian finishing in 5th, and me finishing 8th.
This $200 Saturn met its demise and was turned into a makeshift stunt object.
But the Lotus came out unscathed, and was safely loaded back on the trailer for the trip home.
I'll go through some more pictures sometime soon and post them as I get time.
Mississippi Region #83 SS / #97 STU