In my first run, I quickly noted that our car did NOT like all the bumps. They were causing the rear tires to rub the inner fenders quite hard and it was difficult to put the power down. The rear end was jittery and it was hard to gauge braking points since the bumps would sometimes cause the ABS to engage more and affect braking distance. My other difficulty was the Carousel. I would claim this turn to be one of the most difficult turns that I’ve ever encountered. Within this one turn, you have to transition from full throttle, to braking, to full throttle again, all while also altering the line to hit the late apex. Having never gone into the Carousel with anywhere near the speed at which I could with this E30 and no room to straight-line brake, I was conservative. I put together a clean, albeit bouncy run, with a best lap of a 1:13.2. It was good enough for 4th overall!
When I got back to the paddock, I was cooling off while Kevin checked over the car. I turned around to see something unexpected, but not necessarily surprising… My parents were walking my way! They had driven 4 hours down from Rochester, NY to see us run! They knew how important this event was to me, but I didn’t expect for them to make the trip. It really meant a lot to me that they came. I showed them the car and we walked the paddock, talking with other One Lappers and looking at the cars. It was nice to have them, as well as my friends Denny and Tim, on hand with Kevin to cheer us on!
Later in the morning session, there was a bit of unexpected excitement, as one of the Mustangs caught fire. It had blown its engine and then had a small oil fire underneath it. Fortunately, the driver was fine and the car is salvageable.
I geared up for my afternoon run and headed out. On my first lap, I carried good speed out of Turn 2 and the bumps in the braking zone sent the ABS into hold-mode, which almost sent me off the track. I managed to make the banked Oak Tree turn, but only just. While I didn’t have any other mishaps, I wasn’t pushing quite as hard through the 120mph kink because the huge bumps were causing the tires to rub so hard. I was actually a little slower in that session, coming in at 7th overall. We were 5th overall in points heading into the last event… the dry skidpad at the Tire Rack.
My parents headed out while we were packing up. When we were done, we met up with a bunch of people at a bar on the south side of the Cleveland, on our way to the Tire Rack. We did the same that night in South Bend, as the sessions at the big tracks were over and people were cutting loose. In between, though, Kevin and I had extensive discussions about our setup for the dry skidpad. If we didn’t do well, we would drop out of the Top 5. We ultimately decided to try our dry race setup, which had been fine-tuned earlier in the week. I would try it in a parking lot and determine if we needed any further adjustment or not.
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