This weekend was the SCCA ProSolo Finale. Hez was coming into the finale tied for the BSP points lead with Anthony Porta from California in his Mazdaspeed Miata and it would be the first time the two cars/drivers would go head to head this year. On Friday I had taken Bumblestook out on the practice course and found her to be a bit too pushy. Normally she should be pushy on the practice course for her to be good on the competition course surface but I felt it was a bit more pushy than normal. I opted to make a some tire pressure changes and she felt a bit more balanced.
BSP Grid - Day 1 Lincoln, NE - 9/3/2016
Saturday started off fairly nicely but with storms looming in the horizon. We got our morning runs done in the dry and Porta was quick out of the gates. Bumblestook was feeling a bit loose which prevented us from putting down a good time. Hez's left side run and my redlight left side run were only about half a second from Porta's time and after reviewing the video we easily left time out there. On the right side Hez got into cone troubles from the car being loose and I was struggling as well. The morning ended with me having no usable left side times and Hez having no usable right side runs and we were stuck in 3rd and 4th position. No worries though since we'd have both afternoon runs and morning runs the next day to make it up.
Changing to Hoosier Wets Lincoln, NE - 9/3/2016
We reset tire pressures back to what we normally run at Lincoln to tighten the car up a bit for the afternoon. Before we got to run, the skies opened up and we found ourselves standing in pools of standing water. There was no way we'd be able to go faster so we switched to our wet weather tires to at least do some rain testing and make the most of it. Thankfully the event was instead suspended until the next day so we'd get nice dry runs in the morning. That didn't work out either since on Sunday morning, the course was still wet from some more overnight rain. The conditions could best be described as "drying". The only thing we could hope for was to clean up our runs on our "dirty" sides and try to put in a decent time. Hez was able to find some time on the right course to move up into 2nd but was still off pace. I found time on both sides and coned away a run that would've bumped me into 3rd so ended up 4th, 0.01 seconds off Lee Piccione after the morning session on day 2. This was decent improvement but in the afternoon once the course fully dried we knew we'd be able to make up the lost time as it was fairly obvious reviewing our videos where we had made mistakes and could extract lots of time on both courses.
Broken driver side axle - 9/4/2016
Unfortunately, in the afternoon runs, the perfect conditions for grip also were perfect conditions for finally causing Bumblestook to fail. On Hez's left side course launch, the driver side axle gave way and that ended the event for us. Thankfully no one else found more time so the positions remained as it was from the morning and Hez was at least able to salvage the 2nd place position for the season.
Hez takes 2nd place in BSP for the ProSolo 2016 Season Lincoln, NE - 9/24/2016
SCCA ProSolo Finale - 9/3-9/4/2016
I always carry spare axles with me to big events so big thanks to Steve Farkas (SJF Performance), Chris Carmenini and Mark Valera for helping us get the axle replace. Bumblestook was back in driving condition and ready for Solo Nationals for this coming Thursday before the day ended. As long as the weather cooperates and we no longer have mechanical issues, I know we can put up a fight this week.