We got into the Tire Rack on Friday morning and got registered. Kevin has been doing a great job on the transit driving throughout, keeping a safe and steady pace. Our first competition event yesterday was the wet skidpad. Our result was not good, as our car didn't really agree with that particular event and I had never run a skidpad before, let alone driven our car in the wet. We were 8th out of 9 in class and 53rd out of 68 overall. We weren't too concerned, as it was the first event of many, so we packed up and headed up to Elkhart Lake, WI.
Today went much differently. Road America has the longest straight-away of any track in the country (I think) and I was both nervous and excited to get out there. I'd spent an hour or so each night for the past few nights watching in-car video and playing Road America on X-Box. It sounds silly, but it paid off in a big way. In this morning's session, amid brakes that weren't really up to the task of slowing us from 150+ MPH, I managed to keep the car clean and cause people to suddenly take notice of us. We were 7th overall, among Porsche turbos, Nissan GT-R's, and Z06 and ZR-1 Corvettes! We are absolutely thrilled with our finish!
However, the extremely high speeds caused us to wear out our front brake pads more than I ever fathomed. We were suddenly in a crunch because it would be Tuesday before we went back through Cincinnati and no one could ship pads on Saturday. In typical fashion, one of our in-class competitors (Joe from Tire Rack) tried desperately to find us pads. We pursued several possibilities, but one of his suggestions was to contact Pegasus Racing, who was in Wisconsin. In a massive stroke of luck, they had the Hawk pads we needed for our Brembo brakes! They left them outside so we could pick them up later.
In the afternoon, we ran the short course at Road America, which eliminated the 2 longest straights. We started on a connecting road, where everyone stood to watch, and it had cones set up to lead the cars onto and off of the main track. The penalty for hitting a cone was 10 SECONDS! Brock Yates Jr. (event organizer and son of the creator of the original Cannonball Run) told me just before my run to not let a cone determine the results. In other words, "Don't be stupid and throw away your result by hitting a cone!"
With this advice fresh in my mind, I set out for my reconnaissance lap. I was running at about "full" speed, just because that one lap reflected 20% of my total experience at Road America, so I was learning a lot with each subsequent lap! So, I came up to a fast, blind, uphill left-hander, which I actually quite enjoyed in the video game and in the morning session. I came out of it flying and, when I could see the road ahead of me, several expletives and a healthy dose of embarrassment ran through my mind, because I just saw a sea of cones in front of me! I stood on the brakes and held the wheel straight, trying to slow as much as I could. I just BARELY made the turn and, as I went by everyone watching, I shook my hand out the window as to say "Aei, yei yei! That was close!" I could clearly hear everyone erupt into laughter as I headed up to the starting line!
Fortunately, the actual run went smoothly and we placed 7th overall AGAIN! So I guess that means it wasn’t a fluke! The Road America events have launched us up to 2nd place in-class, but we still have a bunch of points to make up on the GTI with the Stage 4 turbo, so we just need to keep doing what we’re doing! We are now running in the second run group (cars 6-10) for the rest of the events, so we will be with some fast company. We stopped at Pegasus and got our brake pads, possibly adding 1-2 hours to our trip. We've crossed into Iowa, though, on our way towards Mid-America Motorplex for tomorrow's event.
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