Final event before "Summer Break"

It's only my second event of the season and well it's already the last event before what I'll call "summer break". I'm missing the NJ ProSolo next weekend because of work obligations and there aren't really any events I want to go to locally until maybe mid-June so going to focus on other things and finish up Bumblestook.

NNJR SCCA Autox - 4-29-2018

The day didn't start off too well. I went to get Lupa and found she had a flat passenger rear tire. I was about to call the day quits but Rad convinced me to go jack the car up, grab the wheel and take it to a local tire shop. Thankfully we found one open on a Sunday and they were able to patch it up so I was able to get my runs in today. The size of the bolt that found its way into the tire was quite impressive.

Flat causing bolt - 4-29-2018

I drove the car yesterday just fine so I must've somehow picked it up near my garage since it definitely wasn't flat when I was done driving. It was stuffed in there pretty good so it ended up being a slow leak but was bad enough for the tire to have no pressure at all in the morning.  As for the event itself. I always have fun autocrossing but man am I really slow. If I keep up this rate of decline in my driving I might as well pick up knitting as a hobby instead. Didn't help of course that the clouds blocked the sun and the constant wind kept cooling my tires so I never got any kind of grip that gave me confidence. Not going to blame the tire though. I didn't string the corners together smoothly enough to extract the most time. Oh well, there's always a next time. You can't ever be unhappy driving an S2000 so that's always a big positive.

Steguis - NNJR SCCA - 4-29-2018

Kicking off the season

After what oddly seemed like a short winter to me thanks to all the work we were doing on Bumblestook, it was finally time for me to do the first autocross of the season. Pretty much everyone has already had a few events already but it turned out to not be a bad day for a first event for me as we were blessed with perfect weather.  It was warm, but not uncomfortable, sunny, but breezy.

NNJR SCCA Autocross - 4-14-2018

This is the first event with the new power setup and also switching from RE71Rs to BFG Rival S. I was very pleasantly surprised to note that without really touching the suspension setup from last year, she felt really good today after setting the tires pressures to 28/25psi hot. I think the setup suits the RivalS much better than the REs. Gone is the hyperactive rear and the tires seemed to be much more foregiving. I put down a decent midpack time, certainly nothing to write home about but I was glad with the progress.

Lupa in action - 4-14-2018
Photo by: Alex Meramo

Each run I was getting back into the comfort zone and dropping time. Improvement is always something to be happy about even if it's in tiny increments. There was plenty more time to be had on course but for now I'm just glad to be out there having fun again. The good thing is nothing really needs to be done to the car and the time can be made up with improving the driver (me) which is exactly what I wanted. Get back to the basics and focus on the driving without all the other distractions.

Steguis - NNJR SCCA - 4-14-2018

Seems I was having weird datalogging issues today. The GPS position is quite a bit off and so is the video sync. Oh well, not really important stuff to worry about for now.