[Absolut Speed]

That anyone who autocrosses with Trackbird takes his or her life out of their own hands. :leaving:

I'll just throw out some random words and you can make your own story because I'm not one to tattle.

two-seventy
grass
timing station
scatter
cones
flatten

Well, that's enough randomizing for now.

[trackbird]

Well, since Scott seems to be absent, I'll try to explain more fully.

The course started and ended with the same slalom (single entrance/exit). The slalom was about 55-60 mph at the beginning of the course, followed by a "wall" of cones (non slalom) and then a 90 degree corner with a bunch of pointer cones, etc. So, the slalom was reasonably fast. This course was setup on part of the road course and on the return to the same slalom, you "could" use the curbing from the inside of the road course corner (6-8" high, smooth curbing) to make a faster/straighter entrance onto the straight (you only had 1/2 of the lane due to the "wall of cones") and into the slalom. The problem is, my car made enough grip that I could "drive through the grass" at the top of the curbing (just make a straight line out of it) while being wide open in 2nd gear. Because of this, I was carrying considerable speed onto the straight (and into the slalom). On a couple occasions, I seemed to be carrying just a bit too much speed to effectively get through that slalom. I spun (or nearly spun) the car on 3 out of 7 runs (on day one) and one of those was a "huge" spin at roughly 70 mph. I stuck both feet in (hard) and watched the world go by 1 1/2 times (540 degrees and a few extra). I stopped, pointing backwards with my rear bumper facing the timing and scoring table (and the GTA he had parked there) and about 50 feet or so from that car/scoring table. I'm guessing the slide covered about 150 feet (or so). If you figure that 150 feet is a "decent" stopping distance from 70, and I was doing it with lots of sliding, I don't think it's unreasonable to slide that far (I didn't measure the marks, but they went a long way).

The good news is, I was 1.5 seconds behind Brian Burdette and his wicked ESP car (not to mention that Brian is a phenominal driver, he is amazing to watch). He was on Fikse FM5's and 315 V710's (I ran what used to be Sgarnetts old, dead, 275 Nittos that were from last season). We did a 2 second penalty for race tires which put me in 3rd or 4th (I was about 1.8 seconds faster than the next two cars). Overall, I had a blast and would do it again. That was possibly the most fun I've ever had reeking complete destruction on what was left of a set of tires (they are complete toast now, right down to the 4 flat spots and the 2 tape weights that came off).

So, the scoring guys moved the GTA, changed their shorts (sorry Dean and company) and resumed running the course.