Slapping tanks in 40-degree weather, AKA recap of the first autocross of the year

Eleven runs in the season opener, and the car made it through unscathed.

My first autocross of 2024 is in the books, and the car made it through 11 runs -- five in the morning session and six in the afternoon -- on Saturday without any issues. 

Sort of. 

When I got home and was taking the car off the trailer, I noticed power steering fluid leaking. After I had installed a fancy Turn One power steering pump. It turned out the O-ring for the hardline gave up for some reason. It made it through some street miles, all the runs on Saturday but for some reason didn't fail until getting home. I guess that's better than doing it at the event and getting some "DNS" notations in the results.

Back in October, I returned to Virginia Motorsports Park with Tidewater Sports Car Club, the first club I had ever autocrossed with. On Saturday it was another homecoming -- again at VMP but this time with NASA Mid-Atlantic. A brief history: NASA Mid-Atlantic started in the late 1900s as NASA Virginia, and I was actually the assistant regional director. Mike Garner was the director, and he was actually there on Saturday autocrossing his Volkswagen GTi. Jon Felton was kind enough to point Mike and I out in the driver's meeting if you can call it "kind" to recall events from 25-plus years ago!

Back to the future ... It was cold on Saturday. 

Did I mention it was cold? It was cold. This was actually a makeup autocross from January that got canceled because of snow and cold weather. I actually towed down Friday after work because it was going to snow here in Maryland.

Temps in the morning may have hit 40, but it was impossible getting heat in the Hoosiers. I had a nice spin on my fourth run in the morning. About the ideal time Hoosiers would be nice and hot and sticky under normal conditions.

In grid for the afternoon heat, although there wasn't much heat.

I finished second (out of two) in the CR3 class (2.5+ liters, 400+ horsepower, rear-wheel drive) in both the morning and afternoon sessions. After running mostly by myself in class last year, it was still good to have some competition. I was 12th in raw time (46.131) in the morning and I was seventh in raw time (37.707) when the course was reversed and slightly shortened in the afternoon.

See final results: AM by class and raw time, and PM by class and raw time.

Other than the leaking power steering line, the new power steering pump was great. No cavitating and spewing fluid from the cap at all after 11 autocross runs.

Here are the fast runs from the morning and afternoon sessions:

I have a saying, "If you can't be fast, be entertaining." That rang true on my fourth run in the morning where I decided to give the car a little more gas coming out of the first 180, and it spun right around.

The car also drew a lot more attention than usual, I guess because a lot of people there had never seen it before. One guy said he used to have a 1983 Camaro and gave me his business card because he wanted to be first in line if I ever wanted to sell the car. Another guy asked me if the car had an Instagram. I told him, "Sort of, but there's also stuff about smallmouth bass." (Shout-out to my sister blog In Reel Time Fishing!) 

Another time in between runs with the hood popped, there were four or five people peering in the engine bay, and I jokingly asked, "Is something on fire?"

The SoloLOL content actually occurred on Friday night. Because it was supposed to snow in Maryland and northern Virginia, I decided to tow down after work on Friday. I had made a reservation with a Motel 6 (because they have an SCCA discount) in Petersburg, which was about 10 miles from VMP.

I got to the hotel around 8 p.m. and immediately started getting the heebie jeebies. It was just off I-95, but the neighborhood didn't give good vibes. The hotel had lighting in front but none in back, where I was likely going to have to park the truck and trailer.

As I was walking in, some guy outside was smoking a cigarette. And our interaction went a little like this:

Guy: "I like your car."
Me: "Thanks."

I walked inside and he put out his cigarette and followed.

Guy: "Are you selling it?"
Me: "No."
Guy: "Well if you were going to sell it, how much would you want for it?"
Me: [thought for about five seconds] "Fifteen thousand!"
Guy: "Whoa! I don't have that much! I'm going to have to save for awhile!"

Then he wandered down the hallway and was out of sight for a couple minutes. I still had not checked in because there was a customer at the desk who apparently couldn't get his card payment to work. More red flags.

Then the guy came back and started talking to me, and I couldn't understand a word he said. Just gibberish. Like he disappeared to go take a hit of crack or meth or shoot up (or all three). 

I was texting Karen during all this asking if she remembered if there was a hotel down the road from VMP, and said she thought so. Googled and, yes, there was a Holiday Inn Express. I walked out and got in my truck to get a room there, and I figured my chances of getting murdered for my truck and car went down by 99 percent.

I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express Friday night and my chances of getting murdered drastically decreased.

This might be the only autocross I go to until April. There really isn't anything close to me unless I want to run with a club I don't like running with. Otherwise, I'll probably be doing the D.C. Region test and tune on April 20 and their first event the next weekend.