IT'S ON!!!
NORA / NWOR / SCR / OVR Smackdown!
The pavement has been acquired.
The other autocross chairs have been given fair warning…. : )
The Northern Ohio Racing Association is calling out all the nearby regions for the FIRST ANNUAL 4-club autocross SMACKDOWN.
For those of you that haven’t heard, we’ve been very fortunate to acquire some sizable pavement, and to celebrate our second event on it, we’d like to invite you all to Northfield Park in Northfield Ohio on August 12th.
The basics for the events are as follows:
CHALLENGE DETAILS
CHALLENGE FORMAT
– Normal challenge formats pit equal amounts of cars per class against one another for points. With 4 clubs, that gets tricky, so we’re going to score by LOWEST COMBINED TEAM PAX.
- Using standard SCCA PAX numbers, we’ll take The BEST 15 PAX times for EACH club, add them together, with the lowest combined PAX time winning outright. This will hopefully reward depth of club performance.
REGISTRATION AND PAYMENT
- Pre-reg and pre-pay are REQUIRED. Please visit the following link to register.
- Cost is $25 for NORA members / $30 for non-NORA. If you also complete a NORA membership form, you will pay $25for this event and all future events, versus $35 (we discounted non-NORA members for this event to encourage participation!). Having a NORA membership doesn’t prevent you from maintaining your other affiliations for the challenge event, but will just save you $$ when you run with us in the future!
- At this point, there is no registration cap, so bring the whole club. If necessary, we may cap each club at 50 participants
- The reg form will REQUIRE you to fill out a line stating your club affiliation
- Pre registration and pre-payment are available at AXTime.com. http://www.axtime.com/preregister.php?Club=8
- If mailing a check please include who you are, what you are driving, number and class.
NORA
1057 Greenvale Ave.
Akron, OH 44313
ALL PAYMENTS MUST BE IN-HAND BY 6 AUGUST!!
LOCATION AND SCHEDULE
- Northfield Park is located approximately 15 minutes North of Akron or South of Cleveland on Rt. 8. It has the size to allow us to set it up for a BIG course.
Northfield Park Racetrack
10705 Northfield Road
Northfield, OH 44067
- Information regarding Northfield Park can be found here. http://www.northfieldpark.com
- Schedule is as follows:
7:30 AM - Gates open and course opens for walking shortly after.
8:00 AM - Registration and Tech opens
9:15 AM - Registration Closed
9:30 AM - Tech closed
9:40 AM – Mandatory Driver’s meeting
10:00 AM - First car off!
If you have any questions regarding the event, please contact one of the following NORA contacts:
Paul Magee - NORA / ASCC co-autocross chair – paul.magee@diebold.com
John Wiseman - NORA / ASCC co-autocross chair – lotusman@adelphia.net
Eric Heller – NORA President – angryvette@aol.com
Full Version: NORA / NWOR / SCR / OVR Smackdown!
Here are some pictures of last event there.
Here is a picture of the layout! Yes it is a pretty good size lot!
..and there are elevation changes!
Here is Sam showing everyone how it is done!
Here is a picture of the layout! Yes it is a pretty good size lot!
..and there are elevation changes!
Here is Sam showing everyone how it is done!
Update!
Couple hours left! Registration closing at 5:00pm
There are 163 registered already!
Only 5 Fbodies
Couple hours left! Registration closing at 5:00pm
There are 163 registered already!
Only 5 Fbodies
and the Winners are........
Thanks to all those who attended it was a good time.
Here are some pictures of the event.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jerky55/NORACh...eAugust12th2007
http://picasaweb.google.com/jdavis9881/NORAChallengeEvent
Thanks to all those who attended it was a good time.
Here are some pictures of the event.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jerky55/NORACh...eAugust12th2007
http://picasaweb.google.com/jdavis9881/NORAChallengeEvent
Howdy,
So, ran this event... It was a lot of fun. There were a couple new things on the camaro for this...
* T2R rear diff & 3.73 gears & koni rear shocks (were there for Wilson circuit event, but this was the first autox with them)
* new clutch m/c (now I can shift!)
* new extended accelerator pedal
* prototype front hubs (should handle wear a lot better than stock hubs. Assuming they don't catastrophically fail due to a design/manufacturing flaw or something. :-)
* pimpy 10" tall lexan rear spoiler from Blaine Fab.
* used 315/35-17 A6's, replacing the used 710's I'd been running.
* new parts store paper air filter, as I think the damn K&N was contaminating the MAF sensor.
Anyway, everything on the car seemed to work fine. I especially liked the increased rear downforce in the really slow left hander. :-)
On my first run, the front brakes didn't work particularly well. Maybe ice mode? Maybe something else? The pedal stayed pretty high, and the car didn't stop very well. No cycling though, like ice mode did to me in the z06 years ago. About halfway through the run, the pedal started dropping down to the 'normal' position, and brakes were working fine. Dunno what was up with this... This was the first event for the car since the wilson circuit event and the rotors were a bit discolored / had pad material smeared on them from that event, so maybe something was happening there? Beats me. It was also the first runs on these used A6's I got, and they needed rubber cleaned off, so maybe they had reduced grip that led to ice mode. Dunno.
Anyway, I thought the first part of the course was pretty mickey mouse / lame. After you got through that, it was fun. Lot seemed to have ok grip to me (if you stayed on line), but with me running new tires, that impression is pretty invalid.
I thought I'd be able to run 1st through the first section... That was pretty much totally impossible. I was into the limiter in 1st pretty early on approaching the stupidly slow left hander. I ended up actually getting some good acceleration in 2nd here on later runs, so 1st was a waste. My car is geared shorter than stock a little bit now, so that was also meaning holding 1st was even more useless than normal. The car pulled just fine in 2nd, so no real issues.
Otherwise I was pretty hacktastic. The lot was kinda bumpy, particularly in the slalom. I never felt like I slalomed the car even averagely well once. It was a pretty herkey-jerky affair every time through there. Certainly time to be had.
I did make the corner workers at the end of the slalom run though... This despite them being behind a big pole/concrete base. Got it back under control before I got really nervous, and it set me up pretty good for the finish. Still not the fastest way through there I bet.
On a friend's advice, I switched from taking the inside of the middle 2 cone 'slalom' to taking the outside on the entry... Certainly it made flowing through that section a lot better, and I set my fastest time that way, but I still don't know if it'd really be faster. I never felt like I really nailed any of the runs, so its hard to compare.
The event itself was a lot of fun. I thought launching cars every 15 seconds (faster than nationals, btw) was a bit excessive. As a single car driver it was fine, but the timing trailer was _insane_ and there were a number of close-ish calls with corner workers. Plus any time there was really much of a problem with a car, the whole course got red flagged. Different folks do things different ways... This wasn't blatently unsafe to me or anything, just not something I'd choose to do.
Running all six runs at once certainly makes for a more efficient day, but it also means a pretty long work assignment & no chance for a driver to really reflect on what the car/they are doing. Its certainly more exciting when you're driving that one stint though. Again, different ways of doing things, not better or worse. I like SCR's method, but I'm sure everyone else likes what they're used to as well.
Not having a display really sucked the big one, as did not printing interim results. I didn't know what my fastest time was until the end of the day, since the announcer dyslexia'd it a couple times and I didn't know if it was a 45.4 or a 44.5. It ended up being the 44.5, which was nice enough given what Manfred and Nick (in their AS Solstice) were running (I think in my car I should be beating those guys, but probably not by a huge amount), but it was on the run where I changed from the inside to the outside on the 2 cone slalom and not knowing what the time was didn't help me much. Still though, I kept going that way and I didn't run another 44, so I was just lucky on that one anyway it seems like.
Glad I stayed around for the awards thing at the end. Still can't really believe that SCR won the overall trophy... I figured we were really sunk when Paul said that my time was one of the ones that counted for SCR. Given I was way far back from the winner in SM and that I hadn't seen any 'real' SM cars there anyway, my pax time wasn't anything to be excited about (which, given my choice of ESP++ car, isn't surprising). When I heard that my time would count, I figured we were done. Totally insane that things were that close between all the clubs. Maybe next time Ancas and I should take cars that actually pax well, so that we have a little more breathing room. :-) Good job to the rest of the SCR folks for pulling us through.
In the end, it was an event I'm glad I went to and big thanks to NORA and their officers for putting it together. Its certainly an event that should become a tradition, and will be a neat way to pull all our close by organizations a bit closer together. It was a lot of fun (all the event ops complaints above were minor things to me), and I'm very glad I decided to go even if I did end up needing to jump back in the car right afterwards and head back up to Canada.
So... Where does the SCR crowd need to go next year to get our trophy?
Mark
(As I was loading up the car, it started missing again down low. If I've got another "low voltage on MAF sensor" code or whatever, perhaps I'll be replacing the MAF? I'm also hearing a bit of clunking from the rear end on bumps / other indeterminate times. Checked all the rod ends on the torque arm, panhard, and LCAs and don't see/feel anything. Maybe its normal, but maybe not too... the rear springs still have the rubber top hats/isolators, and are sitting on GC perches so you wouldn't think that'd be the noise. The car _feels_ just fine, but I also don't drive it all that much...)
(edit: and yes, the front hubs are from Mike. And yes, they seem to working as designed so far. :-)
So, ran this event... It was a lot of fun. There were a couple new things on the camaro for this...
* T2R rear diff & 3.73 gears & koni rear shocks (were there for Wilson circuit event, but this was the first autox with them)
* new clutch m/c (now I can shift!)
* new extended accelerator pedal
* prototype front hubs (should handle wear a lot better than stock hubs. Assuming they don't catastrophically fail due to a design/manufacturing flaw or something. :-)
* pimpy 10" tall lexan rear spoiler from Blaine Fab.
* used 315/35-17 A6's, replacing the used 710's I'd been running.
* new parts store paper air filter, as I think the damn K&N was contaminating the MAF sensor.
Anyway, everything on the car seemed to work fine. I especially liked the increased rear downforce in the really slow left hander. :-)
On my first run, the front brakes didn't work particularly well. Maybe ice mode? Maybe something else? The pedal stayed pretty high, and the car didn't stop very well. No cycling though, like ice mode did to me in the z06 years ago. About halfway through the run, the pedal started dropping down to the 'normal' position, and brakes were working fine. Dunno what was up with this... This was the first event for the car since the wilson circuit event and the rotors were a bit discolored / had pad material smeared on them from that event, so maybe something was happening there? Beats me. It was also the first runs on these used A6's I got, and they needed rubber cleaned off, so maybe they had reduced grip that led to ice mode. Dunno.
Anyway, I thought the first part of the course was pretty mickey mouse / lame. After you got through that, it was fun. Lot seemed to have ok grip to me (if you stayed on line), but with me running new tires, that impression is pretty invalid.
I thought I'd be able to run 1st through the first section... That was pretty much totally impossible. I was into the limiter in 1st pretty early on approaching the stupidly slow left hander. I ended up actually getting some good acceleration in 2nd here on later runs, so 1st was a waste. My car is geared shorter than stock a little bit now, so that was also meaning holding 1st was even more useless than normal. The car pulled just fine in 2nd, so no real issues.
Otherwise I was pretty hacktastic. The lot was kinda bumpy, particularly in the slalom. I never felt like I slalomed the car even averagely well once. It was a pretty herkey-jerky affair every time through there. Certainly time to be had.
I did make the corner workers at the end of the slalom run though... This despite them being behind a big pole/concrete base. Got it back under control before I got really nervous, and it set me up pretty good for the finish. Still not the fastest way through there I bet.
On a friend's advice, I switched from taking the inside of the middle 2 cone 'slalom' to taking the outside on the entry... Certainly it made flowing through that section a lot better, and I set my fastest time that way, but I still don't know if it'd really be faster. I never felt like I really nailed any of the runs, so its hard to compare.
The event itself was a lot of fun. I thought launching cars every 15 seconds (faster than nationals, btw) was a bit excessive. As a single car driver it was fine, but the timing trailer was _insane_ and there were a number of close-ish calls with corner workers. Plus any time there was really much of a problem with a car, the whole course got red flagged. Different folks do things different ways... This wasn't blatently unsafe to me or anything, just not something I'd choose to do.
Running all six runs at once certainly makes for a more efficient day, but it also means a pretty long work assignment & no chance for a driver to really reflect on what the car/they are doing. Its certainly more exciting when you're driving that one stint though. Again, different ways of doing things, not better or worse. I like SCR's method, but I'm sure everyone else likes what they're used to as well.
Not having a display really sucked the big one, as did not printing interim results. I didn't know what my fastest time was until the end of the day, since the announcer dyslexia'd it a couple times and I didn't know if it was a 45.4 or a 44.5. It ended up being the 44.5, which was nice enough given what Manfred and Nick (in their AS Solstice) were running (I think in my car I should be beating those guys, but probably not by a huge amount), but it was on the run where I changed from the inside to the outside on the 2 cone slalom and not knowing what the time was didn't help me much. Still though, I kept going that way and I didn't run another 44, so I was just lucky on that one anyway it seems like.
Glad I stayed around for the awards thing at the end. Still can't really believe that SCR won the overall trophy... I figured we were really sunk when Paul said that my time was one of the ones that counted for SCR. Given I was way far back from the winner in SM and that I hadn't seen any 'real' SM cars there anyway, my pax time wasn't anything to be excited about (which, given my choice of ESP++ car, isn't surprising). When I heard that my time would count, I figured we were done. Totally insane that things were that close between all the clubs. Maybe next time Ancas and I should take cars that actually pax well, so that we have a little more breathing room. :-) Good job to the rest of the SCR folks for pulling us through.
In the end, it was an event I'm glad I went to and big thanks to NORA and their officers for putting it together. Its certainly an event that should become a tradition, and will be a neat way to pull all our close by organizations a bit closer together. It was a lot of fun (all the event ops complaints above were minor things to me), and I'm very glad I decided to go even if I did end up needing to jump back in the car right afterwards and head back up to Canada.
So... Where does the SCR crowd need to go next year to get our trophy?
Mark
(As I was loading up the car, it started missing again down low. If I've got another "low voltage on MAF sensor" code or whatever, perhaps I'll be replacing the MAF? I'm also hearing a bit of clunking from the rear end on bumps / other indeterminate times. Checked all the rod ends on the torque arm, panhard, and LCAs and don't see/feel anything. Maybe its normal, but maybe not too... the rear springs still have the rubber top hats/isolators, and are sitting on GC perches so you wouldn't think that'd be the noise. The car _feels_ just fine, but I also don't drive it all that much...)
(edit: and yes, the front hubs are from Mike. And yes, they seem to working as designed so far. :-)
The event was a lot of fun. The first part of the course was slow, and as soon as you got out of the S curves it was very bumpy. Even with all my HP I didn't have a lot of power in 2nd to be able to pull out of the corners well. My last run I left it in 1st the whole time ( I shift at 6600 ) and never hit the limiter. Didn't get the time yet, I have to wait for it to be posted. The lot was like ice for me the first run too.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.