Gary,
Damn.... And a buisiness expense too! Way to go! Some how I dont think my
truck is gonna come close to yours... BUT, maybe next time Ill give it a go!
sounds like a blast, especially with a bunch of pissed off sports car owners
moping about!
rightous!
BKB
-----Original Message-----
From: Gary Pinkley [mailto:gapinkley@earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, February 22, 1999 8:16 PM
To: dakota mail
Cc: Brian Young; Doug & Janet Pinkley; Mike Portell; paul c stallman;
HotchkisEmail
Subject: DML: S. Cali SCCA Autocross Results
Sunday turned out to be another excellent day for racing, about 70 and
sunny. I arrived early, even though I new I wouldn't be driving till the
afternoon. Thought I'd just make an entire day out of it. I would be
running in the fairly new STRK class (Sport Truck) popular out here on the
west coast.
I began the day by walking the course. It was readily apparant that the
organizers of the event were corvette owners. The graceful sweepers with
their wide corners promised amazing speeds. But alas, sharp corners and
shicanes were lying in wait for the unwary few who applied the brakes too
deep into the corner.
That afternoon, I moved into the grid to prepare for my runs. Rolling up to
the starting line, many eyes were upon my red truck, not wanting to believe
the rumors they heard about the previous day's times. I launched with a
light spin designed to keep the V-6 in it's powerband. After shifting into
second, I hit the gas. Carving through some smaller s-bends, I accelerated
into the first sweeper into third gear. I succombed to the lure of its
speed, and came to the tight shicane with too much speed and threw the rear
end wide into the corner. With a hollow THUNCK, one cone went down for the
count. I learned from my mistake, and finished with a 62.22 sec run.
Pretty good condsidering prepared cars were running low-to-mid 50's and most
cars with street tires were running low-to-mid 60's, included street tired
corvettes. With the knowledge from my first run, I jumped out with my
pressure gage in hand and hissing the rear tire pressure down four psi to
cut down the oversteer. I then lined up again for my next run. Again, with
the peel-wheel sqealing (I haven't added a LS diff yet) I ripped off on
another run. Screaming into the large sweeper, I nailed the gas and pushed
the truck a little faster, this time, making sure to get on the binders
sooner. Combine the earlier braking with the lower rear tire pressure, the
rear end stayed planted and I traversed the shicane quicker. Zigging and
zagging, using the wide corners to drift the truck into the proper lines, I
ran the rest of the course very well. I new there were a couple of spots I
hadn't gotten quite right, so I thought I'd pick up a little time, but
WHOA.....did I just hear the announcer right......was that a 60.308? While
waiting in the grid for my final run, people just kept walking by either
muttering and shaking their heads or asking me if they heard the time
correctly. I loved the reaction that I got from everybody. My final run
wasn't quite as good as my second, I was off a couple of tenths. I drifted
too wide in two of the corners, losing a little time. I waited patiently
for my run group to finish to find out what my competitors ran. The closest
guy was 3 tenths slower.....WHOOHOO! I just won......on street tires and
with an open diff none the less. The results should be posted soon on the
California Sports Car Club SOLO 2 website www.solo2.com
<http://www.solo2.com> .
If any of you have never been to an autocross, I wholly recommend at least
going to see what you're missing. All of you R/T's now consider yourselves
challenged. You can't let a wimpy little sixer dominate, can you?
-Gary Pinkley
'97 RC V-6, 5 spd
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