Lots to catch up on here...
Yesterday and today was the SCCA National Tour Time Trial event at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut. I registered in the T4 class, but didn't quite understand the class rules so when I got there they bumped me to the Unlimited 2 class due to running a Hoosier tire. Regardless, didn't necessarily care about class but the goal was to set a decent lap time. What differentiated this event from the prior track events is that this one is officially timed, whereas the Track Night events are not.
It was a 2 day event consisting of over 7 sessions (3 practice, 4 time attack) which equated to over 2 hours of seat time. It was HOT. ~90F, 75% humidity. They ran us by run group (novice, intermediate, advanced) instead of by class. Being that this was my first dry event at Thompson I figured I was better off in novice.
The practice sessions went very smoothly and laid down a respectable 1:25.2 which put me in 2nd place in novice (out of 20+ cars) behind a C7 Corvette Grand Sport who put down a 1:24.9...throughout the day I made small gains in time, but so did he. Finally at the beginning of the 2nd day during the first time attack session I got within 3 hundredths of a second, but wasn't able to successfully make any more gains in time. Unfortunately, there were some VERY slow people in our run group that made getting good flyer laps difficult. Regardless it was an absolute BLAST putting so much pressure on a 70K+ car, and even the vette driver let me go ahead of him for a couple sessions so we could take turns chasing each other. We were pretty much dead even the entire event.
Despite missing Top Novice, I am still incredibly proud of how the car performed. The car got hot, and I meant HOT. Oil temps reached 290F but DSG and coolant temps remained stable. I will need to replace my center O2 sensor and will likely do the primary just to be safe. Throughout all of this I learned so much and gained an incredible amount of trust with the car. It was a bond between man and machine like I've never experienced before. The Hoosiers gave so much grip that my hips/lower back are SORE. I will likely benefit from a proper seat and harness.
That being said, SCCA recently made a rule change that if you are running a Hoosier tire, you need to be at safety level 2 which includes a roll bar, harness, fire suit, extinguisher, and something else I can't think of, none of which I had. Thankfully Heyward Wagner (who is an awesome guy by the way, if you ever get a chance to meet him) gave me a pass, but I'll likely have to invest in some safety gear if I'll want to continue to participate in SCCA events. The local time attack events I run with CART don't follow these rules nor do the Track Night events follow these rules so I won't have to make any immediate changes.
If you want to see an awesome video of me duking it out with the C7 vette I mentioned earlier, look no further--
https://www.instagram.com/p/BzlfV3Oh_bx/ -- I had several people come up to me afterwards wondering what the heck was up with the car, they definitely were not expecting for me to put up such a fight!
The XLR8 mounts held up amazingly well and will be drawing up a review either today or tomorrow--stay tuned. I originally had my eyes on VWR/034 but it was 2 days before the event and I needed something ASAP. I did have a 034 pendulum and VWR subframe pucks which is likely why my 034 street mounts lasted as long as they did...but they definitely aren't for KO4+ power levels.
