Kansas City Divisional Review

So it’s Wednesday already, I’ve been back for a few days and haven’t done a review for the Midiv Divisional Solo event in Kansas City this past weekend.

So how was it? Based on my driving performance, very poor. Based on everything else? It was okay. Unfortunately I always feel whenever I go to KC things are rather unorganized, though I’m sure folks that come to STL from KC feel the same way with the way events around here have been the past few years.Saturday took a long time to complete, we started just after 10am, and didn’t get done till after 5pm if I recall correctly. Sunday ran much faster, which made for a decent arrival time at home.

SS ran in the second heat, so we benifited on Saturday from the course drying up, and some warmth in the air temperature, but it was still rather cold all day. For the event we had 4 runs each day, Saturday I ran 51.8*, 51.7*, 50.4*+2, 51.7. The class leader ran a clean 50.2, but dirty runs in the 49 second range. Needless to say I was not very happy with my runs, and sitting in 5th out of 6 places.

Saturday night I sat on the computer trying to analyze where I was so slow on my 3 consistent runs versus my fast but dirty run. According to the data from my trusty DL-1 (from www.race-technology.com) I was losing nearly a second in the long slolom and a section I called pain in the ass #1 and pain in the ass #2. Everywhere else on the 50 second course I was pretty darn consistant.

Sunday was a different story. The class leader, David Green, was one grid spot ahead of me, and on his first run he took out a few cones. At one point about 3/4 of the way through the course I could see a course worker slowly meandering for a cone that was down, it must of been 100-150 feet away from where he was walking from, I floored the car. I was going to get myself a rerun due to a downed cone if I had to take out every cone on the way to get there. I didn’t hit any cones, and I stopped well short of the course worker, who would have been standing right next to the cone when I was going past had I not stopped.

On my rerun I went out and turned a 48.8, this gave me a big boost in confidence, it was a quick time for first runs, though I was benifiting from warm tires for the rerun. My 2nd and 3rd runs were each faster, and somewhat closer to the top SS times. By fourth runs I decided I was going to go out there and just see how hard I could push the car, I had pretty much solidified 4th place, so I wanted to see just how close to the leaders I could get. About 1/2 way through the run I picked off a cone, it was a simple cone, not one I should have hit, but that set something off inside me.

I decided since the run was already hosed I was going to push the car even further. I managed to get myself a 46.6, 2 10ths off David’s quick time of 46.4. I was extremely happy with that result, and even though I had the cone, I learned that the car will do much more than I expect, and I need to push it to that limit in order to be up there with the top times.

Look out next St. Louis local event, I’m gunning for the top index position for the event, and will be running on Hoosiers to do it, no more dead kumho tires for local events.

I hope to have some videos up soon from the event.