Well I finally got my car back together (after its little encounter with the wall in turn 17 at Sebring) in time for the SCCA Regional double event at Daytona on Aug 8 & 9th. I was planning on heading up to RA but the gas prices make it too expensive so we opted for Daytona.
I’ve gotta tell ya, driving on the high banks of Daytona was a blast :woohoo: . We finished rebuilding the front of the car on Thursday night and then headed over to Daytona on Friday. So once again our first time driving the car after a build was going to be qualifying:S . It will be nice to just load the car and go to the race, not spending all night finishing up thins and wondering what we forgot.
There were 61 cars in my group (IT7, ITA, ITR, ITS) and 31 of them were ITS (19 were RX7s). There was 1 '87 E30 also. The driver said he normally runs middle of the pack.
Saturday’s qualifying position of 42nd with a time of 2:33.2 wasn’t that bad for the 1st time on the track. The race was fun with 61 cars going into turn 1, exciting. I moved up a few spots during the race but when it started raining, I backed off and ended up where I started at 43, but I did drop my time down to 2:29.8. I wanted to make sure I brought my car home in one piece! I can’t afford to rebuild it AGAIN!
I had been so focused on getting my car finished and teched, Saturday’s driving was pure instinct, no thinking about what I should be doing, but just going with the flow. Post race discussions at the “adult beverage” party, I started remembering things I should have been thinking about. Like looking farther ahead in the corners and actually making sure I was actually hitting the apex and not 5’ away gave me a new focus and excitement for Sunday’s race.
Sundays qualifying was better. While my time was about my best race lap from Saturday, my qualifying position moved up to 37 with a 2:29.9 Being on the outside line going into turn 1 I lost about 3-4 positions as folks keep slipping in side on me. But I got them back! Remembering we had switched ECUs to one with a chip in, using the extra 500 rpm was really nice. Now instead of shifting into 5th in the middle of the banking, now I was shifting at almost the end of the bank. Top speed was 6000 rpm crossing the start/finish then slamming on the brakes for turn 1. Thinking about driving and not going on instinct I ended up finishing 28th and dropped another 1.6 seconds for a 2:28.2.B)
Then best part of the race was catching the ITS E30 on the final lap!:lol: Imagine a lowly rookie in Spec E30 caught an ITS decked out E30, and in only my second race weekend!
Sorry if the post was kinda long, but since I haven’t posted in so long I thought I’d catch y’all up on what’s up with my car and I.
