2009 SCCA National National Tour - South Georgia Motorsports Park

I finally have a video from the F500 that I can show... I actually have 4, two of me, and two of Jim. Not only did the car break on my last two runs on Saturday, but the camera broke too, so no 3rd run videos and no videos from Sunday. I also had the camera aimed too low and you can't see as far ahead as you should. It'll get better. If you can, try to watch them in HQ format, they are much better quality.

My first run
First video, my first run on Saturday. Unfortunately, I carried too much speed into the slalom and (driving tip: you don't brake while turning in one of these ) spun. You can't get a lot of steering lock out of these so once it goes just a little too far, it's gone. In hindsight, I should have just made the attempt at driving around the cone (with no hope of that happening) and hoped for a cone call and not a DNF. The spin didn't really upset me too much, I like to see what the car will, or in this case, will not do on the first run. But had I known how the rest of my runs were going to go, I would have been a little more conservative. The rest of the run was better but I noticed after watching that I was behind on the throttle, and especially the first half of the run. Probably typical of most first runs.

Jim's First Run

My second run
The second video started great. I had the camera re-aimed and was ready to go. And then it broke shortly into the run. The run felt great and was clean all the way. You can actually see stuff when I'm not at full throttle, but after the chain breaks (if you listen carefully, you can hear the car rev but it's not going anywhere), you can see (and hear) how far I coasted to get to the finish line. 50.298 My only time for the day. We discovered too much slack in the chain due to a worn aluminum sprocket. But it back on and tightened it up and it was fixed. For Jim.

Jim's second run

I felt like I had another really good run on my third run the throttle stuck open twice, once after the turn around where I ran through a wall of cones, and again somewhere before the sweeper at the finish, where I just turned it off. We discovered that one carb lid had come unscrewed and caused the throttle to go wide-ass open. Screwed the lid back on and it was fixed. Too late for me. I ended the day 3.524 seconds back.

Sunday was better. No camera but the car worked. I mean really well. Started off with a 44.784 and 2.209 seconds faster than Murphy while Vern had a cone. Just needed to knock off 1.315 seconds! Second run felt great. The car did exactly what I wanted, when I wanted. 43.473, Murphy slowed while Vern had a clean 45.623. Damn, now I need 1.374 seconds. So, with nothing to lose, I made a kamakazi run (which is a little different than a banzi run for obvious reasons). Spun twice. Oh well. I did manage to have 3rd FTD on Saturday, .197 seconds back from the 2nd place AM car. And I also managed to PAX 8th (Sunday only) behind some really fast people (including Mr. Glagola!) so there was some redemption.

I've found another camera and some more cushioning for the mount so the next videos should be better. I hope. Maybe the camera caused all the problems with the car???