I drove well on Saturday and blew my last run on Sunday. I ended up 6th of 25, codriving with Matt Grainger who ended up 2nd behind the Mack-Daddio himself. We ran 205's on the front on Saturday. Woops. They're worth a half second. Now we know. Might-have-beens aside, I'm pretty happy with my trophy for never having driven the car before. DS is a fun class. I was ahead of Matt after saturday and he beat my by .452 on Sunday, which was enough to vault 4 spots ahead of me. I was .007 out of 5th, and a bunch of other small decimal places out of the other spots except for Daddio who had me by 1.2.

Toledo Express Airport is an incredible venue.

 

sweet!

I must say I didn't think Daddio could do it. I wonder how long until the "SRT-4 best for DS" talk begins

 

Well, you probably had a better weekend than I did. I noticed the car started smoking a little Saturday. Sunday morning while warming it up, I could hear a rattle when I reved the motor. I made my first run and it was obvious that one of the spinny-around bits inside the motor was doing it's best to join me in the passenger compartment. The entire car was shaking from the motor knock. I still manged to get a run that put me only .2sec out of the trophies in SM. I tore into it last night and found a spun rod bearing:


Hopefully I'l have it running again for the Peru tour.

-Chris

 

Try knocking over the damn cone right before the finish on a run that would have given you a .4 second win, where instead you lose by .3. Especially when you lead after every run the entire weekend.

I'm still pissed at myself about that one and I learned a huge lesson. Call it celebrating too early and getting sloppy 20 ft. before the finish.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Todd00 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Try knocking over the damn cone right before the finish on a run that would have given you a .4 second win, where instead you lose by .3. Especially when you lead after every run the entire weekend.

I'm still pissed at myself about that one and I learned a huge lesson. Call it celebrating too early and getting sloppy 20 ft. before the finish.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Todd, I was shocked to see that happen, but it looked like STX was a close battle between you, West and the WRX guy. Whatever else happens though, you have the sweetest show kaa in all of STX.

Chris: Good kill on the bearing. Did the pickup get damaged somehow? I can't figure out why it's in the picture.

Know why I threw away my last run? I let the announcers psyche me out. After 2nd runs I was sitting in 3rd, but the bastard announcer or his calculator monkey announced Matt in 3rd instead of me! So I thought I must have missed the cone call for my 2nd run and had to put up a flaming fast run with no cones or was finished, out of the trophies, an embarassment to my family. Well, I didn't cone my 2nd run, but I sure as hell did my third.

I may yet be driving in DS in the same car for Peru, but if not I'll be in DSP.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Todd00 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I'm still pissed at myself....</TD></TR></TABLE>

Typical Todd!!!

Sweetest Show kaa!! Hahaha good one.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Eee Pee &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

Typical Todd!!!

Sweetest Show kaa!! Hahaha good one.</TD></TR></TABLE>Yup. Every time I see Todd's car in person I'm nearly blinded by the JDM bling. It's bright, y0!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by carl_aka_carlos &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">sweet!

I must say I didn't think Daddio could do it. I wonder how long until the "SRT-4 best for DS" talk begins </TD></TR></TABLE>

Heheh. Seriously though, how did the car look out there? I've seen a few locally but they were never driven well enough to even get a glimpse at any actual potential. Did the car "look" as if it could be a true DS contender? I don't know if that's a legit question considering who was driving, but I wondered if y'all had any observations about the car specifically.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by fsp31 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">...... but I wondered if y'all had any observations about the car specifically.</TD></TR></TABLE>

The alien cranked in positive camber and toe-out in the rear, besides airing up the tires on that end of the car to 62 psi (!). All just to get the car to rotate.

Theoretically, with the power to weight the car has, along with the slip, if it can be made to handle halfway decently, it would be a pretty good car for DS.

 

Yup, it looks like it'd be a fast car in DS. Not necessarily a "good" car because it sounds like it'd be a huge pain in the *** to drive, but fast. I'll take the easy way out in an ITR any day.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by TeamSlowdotOrg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> I'll take the easy way out in an ITR any day. </TD></TR></TABLE>

That'd be the first time I've heard an ITR described as "easy".

 

Easy like carl_aka_carlos' mom. For me, driving a DS ITR relatively quickly wasn't too difficult in that I didn't have to deal with anything funky except having a steering rack that didn't suck. Of course I had to work out there. For me, autocross is a few short bursts of really hard work behind the wheel, and what I'm working at is being as fast as possible while input-ing as smoothly as possible. Daddio pretty much epitomizes this. What I mean is that communicating with the ITR is easy.

Daddio sound-bite:

"Driving the SRT4 is like driving a car with electronic steering that has a random number generator for determining steering angle."

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by TeamSlowdotOrg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Daddio sound-bite:

"Driving the SRT4 is like driving a car with electronic steering that has a random number generator for determining steering angle."</TD></TR></TABLE>

Hahahaha! I liked that so much:

 

Considering some of the top competitors in DS Daddio beat up on. I would say It is a capable car. The real question is whether a normal, (read human), driver can make it handle anywhere near that well. Some of the picks of it from the event look like he is going to do a tuck-n-roll maneuver with it. Major body roll.

 

That's exactly what I think. Non-aliens will have a very very steep learning curve to claw their ways up because most of the things it did looked weird on course. Per, who is by all accounts a human being, was having a hell of a time with it. I'm sure he'll be a bunch faster relative to Daddio in Peru now that he has had a chance to get the driver bugs out.