Dead-nuts reliable? Another autocross without a hiccup!

 

First run maneuvering the "long" slalom in the middle of the
course. Did I hit the cone?
(Photo by Perry Aidelbaum of autox4u.com) 

After autocross No. 4 (not counting the PCA practice) and the car is ... like ... I'm scared to say it ...

Dead-nuts reliable.

It's made 25 runs this year without any major issues. It fires up with one click of the key and goes like the reliable appliance it was in the old ESP days.

The only real issue is that it's a 41-year-old F-Body that doesn't handle like any modern car.
But that's half the fun.

Anyway, I trekked up to Ripken Stadium for an autocross with Brandywine Motorsport Club. I've never autocrossed with this club, and oddly I've never even driven this car at this site. By the time I got the car in 2008, autocrossing had ceased to exist at Ripken for whatever reason and only restarted a couple years ago.

The lot is good sized but is plagued by bumpy areas. A couple sections are like ski jumps. This is a picture from 2007 or so of me almost catching air in Dave MacDougall's STX Mazdaspeed Protege:

Ski-jumping a Mazdaspeed Protege circa 2007 at Ripken Stadium.

Back to the future, the weather was miserable Saturday. Temps in the 90s with unbearable humidity. One of those days where you're pounding water from the time you arrive on site until you're 30 minutes down the road with the AC blasting after leaving.

First picture cropped showing the heat radiating off the asphalt.

The course was a little more wide open than the WDCR course at Waldorf and made the PCA autocross look like a gymkhanna. There were two or three sections where my car -- which handles really well in a straight line -- could stretch its LegS (Get it? LS.)

I clocked a 44.3 on my first run but knew there was more time there. A mid- or even low-43 seemed doable. 

My second run was a little crossed up in one section and turned a 45-something. My third run was a 44.1. My fourth run was a 44.0 but a cone was tacked on for some reason.

We were getting six runs, and I elected to skip my fifth run to cool the car and cool me. I sat in the truck with the AC going while everybody took their fifth runs.

I felt better before my final run and was hoping to smooth out a few sections. That 43.X should be easy, right?

Wrong. 

I throttled away from the start, shifted to second then got into the OPR and pebbles offline in arguably the fastest part of the course, which was just after tripping the start beam. I did a nice half spin, and it was game over, man.

There weren't any other drivers in C-Prepared again, so I took the "win." I finished 10th in raw time and 25th in PAX. My goal -- if nobody else is in CP -- is to get a top 10 in raw time. I used to finish top 10 in PAX when the car was in ESP, but it's a little more difficult to accomplish with the CP PAX.

Next up is a WDCR autocross at Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf. Again it looks like I'll be the only one in CP.

In case you've come this far ...

Yes, it was clean! Although I did hit a cone somewhere else on this run.
(Photo by Perry Aidelbaum of autox4u.com)

As I mentioned, it was the first time autocrossing my Camaro at Ripken, which got me thinking ... what other cars had I driven before at the site? I came up with 11, which is pretty amazing considering the site was active for only four or five years in the early 2000s.

Those cars were:

My STX (and probably ESP) 1990 Firebird Formula WS6
My last B13 Sentra SE-R
Lee Piccione's BSP E36 M3
Dave's Mazdaspeed Protege (pictured above)
Karen's black F-Stock 1996 LT1 Camaro
KENNY SORENSEN's F-Stock LS1 Camaro
Jason Burns' F-Stock Shelby Mustang
Big Mike Snyder's Street Modified-ish E36 M3
Eric Kriemelmeyer's STS Subaru 2.5 RS
Ian's or Little Mike's STS CRX
Some random dude's Subaru STi (winning the Subaru Challenge)

Here's video with SoloStorm data from my fastest run: