As some of you may know, H-T's own Karen Kraus has been running open class at local and national level autocrosses for several years. Although she regularly trounces most of her class competition locally, she had not trophied in the open class at a national level event. That was, until this weekend. This weekend Karen earned a well-deserved 4th place trophy at the Ft. Meyers ProSolo. Let's all congratulate Karen on her great accomplishment. Good job, Karen!

(Karen....I felt you deserved some praise since I'm usually razzing you for one reason or another! )


[Modified by Conemasher, 12:22 PM 2/18/2002]

 

Karen 0wNz j00! Nice work Karen.

 

And she drove her own car too!!

 

That's the most amazing part of it, too!! I bet she could sum the mileage of the top 10 F-stock cars and still not surpass hers...

Congrats, Karen! That rocks!

Andy

 

Top 10? Maybe if you add the ESP camarobirds... and the v6 camarobirds... maybe...

And the sad thing is? It doesnt break at events lik my saturn does... d'oh

 

Nice job Karen!

Even more impressive since your car got spanked by a Celica GTS the other night on the highway!

Don't even go there with that fly-by you did after the fact!

Scott

 

Hey Scott,

Shouldn't this go in the "Kills Forum"?....J/K

 

Kozlak's (sp?) 89 IROC that won FS at Nats last year and is rather old too (13 years). Any chance it might have about the same or possibly more mileage than Karen's?

 

IIRC, the Kozlak's car is under 100K.

Karen's car has 213,838 miles (as I type this ). Oh and she was on Kumhos at Fort Myers.

 

Woa!!! That's a lot of miles for a Camaro! Which engine is this? 2nd, 3rd? hehehehehe. j/k of course.

 

Original engine. Top end and bottom end all original. No blue smoke.

 

I don't remember who exactly it was... maybe Strano that said something to the effect of "I've said it before but I'll say it again... there's something special about your car. Must be a wednesday car"

At least... one that still runs strong after all those miles and is capable enough for Karen to flog it into 4th in FS! I'm thinkin those Bullitt guys might have another thing coming at Petersburg.

I believe our own Crosser grabbed 4th in STS behind his much-photographed co-driver EK, Richard West and the younger of the GW Hahn's. Didn't catch how RacerMike made out in DSP. Yours truly dropped the ball a little by smacking cones/being overanxious at the lights which kept me from knocking Jean Kinser-Dana out of 3rd, the final trophy position in my class... but I'll take a 4th. Grr... until next time!

 

The beauty about Karen's win...I will quote her from Saturday morning as she changes tires, " I should not have come here...I am just really not into to running today." Needless to say that thought changed by the end of the day...hehehe . Karen you did an awesome job.

Neary (RacerMike) did great as well. He came back to win DSP.

BTW, Thanks for the kudos Chris...STS was a lot of fun down there. VERY tough competition...BTW, that was the first time since I started running the Subaru with Eric that I was ahead of him starting the runs on Sunday. Talk about cutting it loose on the last runs... Eric K came out and ran two of the most spectacular runs of the event on the last two class runs to take the win...not only take the win...but beat DS (Larry Fine WRX), GS (Rick Cone Celica GT and Rob Carpenter CRX), and nearly match ES (Doug Newhard and Lee Picone NA MR2).

That course was one of the most challenging, fastest, and most fun Pro Solo course I have run. Nothing like threading the needle through offsets flat out in third gear...hehehe

Eric Carman


[Modified by Crosser, 5:16 PM 2/18/2002]

 

LOL, apparently it changed from "I should not have come here...I am just really not into running today" to "I'm beating Dean Sapp! I'm beating Dean Sapp!" at the end of saturday when I think she was behind Junior Johnson and Lindbergh.

Yeah umm... as a driver in that aforementioned DS class, I'm trying to figure out what happened. I know I left time out there between lack of seat time on race tires and just my own mistakes where I could've shaved some time and get a little closer to Larry... but um, there wasn't anything I thought up in my head that could've gotten me close to EK on those runs. Maybe I need to get out of my car and start jumping around.

I wish Petersburg could set up a fast course like that... I LIKE going fast b/c at least then I'll have had some fun even if I get whooped up on!

 

Congrats to all the locals who placed well.

 

Petersburg should be interesting this year...Lee Picone is setting the course and his are always good.

 

Thanks, everyone.

Crosser speaks the truth -- when I arrived in Florida late Friday night, I was still wondering just why I drove 15 hours. I wasn't in any better mood Saturday morning while I was changing tires, and hadn't really committed to even driving my own car until 8:00, when it was too late to change my mind (yes, Ryan, I had other offers -- namely Matthew Grainger's newest toy, an Olds Achieva SCX, and Jon Johle's 1.6L Miata).

Running late, I'd only had the chance to walk each course once, and then changed tires.... and then we sat, and waited, and waited, and waited through timing and other problems, and I didn't actually run until about noon. My first runs weren't anything great, but they were clean. My second left side run wasn't any better than the first (both were 37.3s), but my second right side run was a 36.4 -- the only clean 36 second run, and the fastest FS run on that side after Saturday's runs. I was shocked.

Most of us had to work Saturday afternoon during the longest heat of the day (thanks to a CSP RX7 driver who thought three threads was enough, and so lost a wheel, and a C3 Corvette that threw down coolant on both courses), and timing issues throughout Saturday meant that we reported to our work assignments without knowing the standings. During one of the downtimes, however, Roger Johnson announced the FS results, starting with Dean Sapp in fourth... then Chris Lindberg leading, Mike (Junior) Johnson in second.... and me in third! I wasn't so psyched about being ahead of Dean -- I beat him at Oscoda last year, and he hasn't really been driving well of late -- as I was about being only 0.331 out of first!! I knew I had to go faster on Sunday though, because those three all had faster raw times than me, and I knew they could run those times clean.

The trash talking on Sunday was unbelievable. Yes, my car was getting picked on for being the beater... 213,7xx at the event, and, yes, I think you could have added the mileage of the other FS cars and not beat it. I was also getting ragged on for being on Kumhos, and have 245s up front and 265s in the rear. But, I was dishing out the talk too -- if you can't take it, you don't need to be in FS, right?

I went out and evidently promptly coned 3 of my 4 morning runs, and didn't go any faster. My last run, left side, I finally managed a clean 36.9 -- a 0.4 improvement to keep me in fourth (by 0.4!!). I'd been matched up against Dean for Sunday morning, behind Chris who was running against Junior. I don't do well paired against Dean, because I psyche myself out -- he's very good at the lights, and while I am too, usually, I wasn't yesterday morning. Since reaction times are again counted in your total time, this didn't help me any. I was able to stay with Dean all the way until the turnaround, and it was on the way back that I was messing up. I had the offsets nailed going out -- but I was too tentative on the way back.

Anyway, when I realized that we had 4 trophies in class, I couldn't believe I'd just come home with a trophy... yeah, it was only 4th place, but, honestly, it means more to me than the L1 wins I got in Eric Kriemelmyer's Subaru. It's been a long time coming.... now, I feel torn about driving FS for the rest of the year. I have been working on lining up an STX ride, but.... well, everyone knows that no matter what else I drive, I always end up going back to the Camaro....

Karen

ps. I can't believe Pat went outside just to check the mileage on the car!

 

Congrats again Karen Great job! See you @ VMP next month

-Ryan

 

Great Job!!!

 

Results are up ...
http://www.scca.org/amateur/solo2/pr...s/results.html

Hmm, probably could have driven the Lightning in FS and not finished last ...

 

Damn STS was fast! You guys are setting the bar way too high and are gonna make us STX guys look very slow lol. Very impressive time!!! Congrats Eric C & Eric K!

 

Hopefully the STX gals won't be in the same boat as you STX guys!

Karen
did I say STX??

 

lol. Been there, done that Kathy Fitzpatrick got me at the Peru Tour last year (GS) and I'm hoping the trend doesn't continue in STX. No offense of course

 

Thanks Jeff. It was definitely one of those courses that suited the STS group. I have to say...Larry Fine was not happy to find out STX bumped to DS. Kiko had some raw time runs that would have had him a ways ahead of Larry. I think Larry is pushing for a lot or no STX people to come out from here on out...hahahaha. STX is going to be interesting, that is for sure. I am looking forward to seeing how you guys run out in Peru.

On another note...I was able to get the first 1.9 sec 60' time that the Eric K's car has run over the weekend. Woo Hoo. Got to love that Scooby launch. I believe it was 1.94 time.

 

What 60' are the other STS cars seing?

Have eiher of you ever taken the car to the strip to see what it'll do? I'd be curious to see what 60' it can do on sticky pavement and with 5-6 runs to practice.