Two weeks ago, we traveled to the Central Kentucky Region SCCA’s autocross at their new site in Lexington, and scored a second place finish in CAM-T. This was a really encouraging result. The car has been giving me fits since the end of last season, when a bad oil report led to the engine coming out and being rebuilt over the winter.
Since then, it’s been a long litany of small issues sorting out the car. New rear axle bearing assemblies, electrical issues requiring repairs to the computer and the fan wiring. Oil and coolant leaks from the rebuild. Nothing seemed to line up, until that event in Lexington. All that remained after that event was a couple valve cover oil leaks, which we attempted to address.
Yesterday, we hit up the Kentucky Region SCCA’s last points event of the year at Salem Motorsports Park and everything came up aces. We got there on time and the weather was beautiful. Got the car unloaded and parked next to a really pretty C5 Corvette and our friend’s XB Miata.
The course was typical of Salem. Salem motorsports park is an old airstrip that’s been converted for arm-drop no-time drag racing. Recently, the owners have paved some bendy bits on either side at the far end to support drift events, and those bendy bits make for some really enjoyable autocross courses.
To make a long story short, the car was flawless and the course was awesome.
The first three runs were fun, the fourth was a flyer, nearly a second faster than the third, and planted me firmly in first place in CAM-T. My last two runs I tried to push and made mistakes, so we rested on the fourth.
It was good for the class win, by over 0.8s!
Additionally, I finished 26 out of 52 in raw time, and 17th in the PAX index results. This is huge. We’ve moved up from the top of the bottom third to the halfway point overall. This is irrespective of my position in the class. These results are also consistent with our outing in Lexington two weeks ago.
Once I got it home, I did find a problem with the car: the ratchet strap I was using to hold the battery down snapped. Given the car was pulling almost 1.6G in spots on the course and almost a G laterally in the slaloms, this is hilarious but not surprising. I will have to figure out a better way to secure the battery.
Some review of the datalogs from the computer also revealed a few spots in the fuel map that needed a tweak, and those tweaks have been done.
Looking forward, I have the inaugural Shamrock Mountain Hillclimb in two weeks, driving my friend’s MazdaSpeed Miata, and then Barber Motorsports Park with the Ultimate Street Car Association a week after that. I haven’t been to Barber since 2018, and I broke at that event. I am looking forward to running that event with a completely healthy car. Fingers crossed and knock on wood we get through to the end with no major issues!
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