So last week Nick and I (mostly nick) ran around franticly got the Z06 ready for our first autocross in the car. The event was the last official event for the St. Louis region for 2007. It was the somewhat annual Index Challenge.
The competition was team format, teams were put together with "performance potential" numbers based on driver's highest finishes on local index results throughout the year. Nick and I were both team captains, covering 2 of the 14 teams.
After driving to Indianapolis and back on Saturday we headed to https://www.solotime.com to pick up some numbers mount the tires to the wheels that Nick had also acquired during the week. The tires were extremely easy to mount so it didn't take us long to get that taken care of. Saturday night Natalie and I went to the annual Halloween Party at the Fantasy Ranch in Fenton, I went wearing my black driving suit, helmet, gloves and shoes. Natalie went as Little Red Riding Hood.
Sunday morning came bright and early, earlier for me than Nick as his phone decided to switch the time for Daylight Savings a week early. We got the wheels changed on the car and I cleaned it up, applied another coat of wax to areas I believed would be prone to getting hit by cones and then I drove the car over to grid.
The event was fun, the basics were this. Each team had 4 drivers, each team could take 22 runs, each driving getting at minimum 5 runs. Each car had to be driven at least once, but it didn't matter who was driving the car (as long as the car owner didn't mind). The top index time per CAR was then added together to create the team's overall score.
The plan for our group was to run some of the street tired cars in the morning and then I'd run the Vette in the afternoon when it would hopefully be warmer. Well, about halfway through the morning session we realized we were going to get 22 runs in that session alone, so I hoped in the Corvette and took it out to have some fun!
I ended up taking 4 or 5 runs in the Z06 in the morning, as well as an additional 4 or 5 in the afternoon. I was able to improve in the morning, but by the afternoon I actually wasn't able to repeat my morning performance.
Nick took some runs with his group, his first run he went out and just drove the car semi slowly around, as I had requested him to do to get a feel for the power. His later runs he started pushing it and even spun it around a few times.
I'm proud to say I kept the proper end pointing forward the whole day, even though I could have easily spun the car around like i did to Krek's Vette at the last event last year.
At the end of the day, my team was sitting in 5th. I'm not sure where Nick's team was, but I do know he was slower than I was in the car, so that made me happy. I'm sure that won't last for long once he gets some more seat time in 2008.
I've posted two videos from Sunday, and hopefully will have some time to get more posted when i get back from Vegas next week.