Win eighth place on Sunday, sell on Friday

The battle for fourth place in CAM at the DC Pro Solo.

On paper, it might look like my finishing position at this year's DC Pro Solo was the same as last year. I finished eighth in CAM and 143rd in PAX this year, and last year I was eighth in CAM and 147th in PAX. A deeper dive shows it was actually very different.

As usual, I had cone issues the whole weekend, but my raw time (coned three runs faster than my clean time on the left side) this year would have put me in fourth and just inside the top 100 in PAX. While the new Penskes are making the car better, it was the improvements in reliability that made the biggest difference, mainly by ensuring the temperature gauge didn't creep past 210.

At last year's Pro, I aborted my final run in the morning session on Saturday and again in the e afternoon session because of climbing coolant temps. I fabricoddled The Shroud of Turnin after that to minimize heat transfer from engine onto the radiator, and it seemed to work at all the autocrosses the rest of the year. However, I was still worried it wouldn't be enough for a Pro Solo where the car is running for more time than a typical autocross. Four runs back-to-back-to-back-to-back with no downtime for cooling or anything.

On Saturday morning, I watched the gauge needle creep up to 210 during Saturday morning runs, but then the needle hovered there. Not having to monitor coolant temps between runs allows for more focus on driving!

The event wasn't without drama, though. On Friday, I attempted practice starts and only completed one because the clutch pedal was going to the floor, and the trans was difficult to even engage first gear. At the "practice" autocross two weeks ago, the clutch was doing this on my final two runs, but I bled the system when I got home (I didn't do it during the offseason) and figured that was the fix. So I thought it was really odd that it started doing it again almost immediately!

I had used Motul 600, but it was from a bottle I opened late last year. I've really never had issues with using "old" fluid for brakes and the clutch beyond normal bleeding. It's not like I found a bottle of brake fluid in my garage with unknown origin. However, after a snow/ice storm in January, there was a period where temperatures didn't get above freezing for almost 10 days, which is extremely rare here in this part of Maryland. I have a detached garage, and I think that brutal stretch might have been too extreme for even the best brake fluid.

Sam Strano recommended AP Racing R4 brake fluid, which has a slightly higher boiling point than the Motul, and Mike Snyder happened to have an unopened bottle that he gave to me (it might have actually been Sam's ... neither of them could remember true ownership!)

I bled the clutch with that fluid -- problem solved! The clutch was fine the rest of the weekend. I did bleed it again Sunday morning just in case, because I figured if I didn't, I would somehow regret it. Like when you forget to pack your rain gear and it rains. But if you pack rain gear, it doesn't rain.

Yay! No more drama!

[RonHowardNarratorVoice]There was more drama.[/RonHowardNarratorVoice]

Because I didn't do but one practice start, I felt like I was leaving conservatively on the tree. The Pro Solo lights -- this is THE ELITE OF AMATEUR MOTORSPORTS -- for some dumb reason show a green no matter what. But if you redlight, there is a slight delay for that bulb to illuminate. For me, if I start moving on the last yellow and then see a green light, I assume it's a good start and shift my attention to the fucking course.

First run, red light. Second run, red light. Karen was helping me with tire pressures and told me I had red-lit those runs. WTF? On my last two runs, I sat there for a heartbeat when the last yellow came on, and those lights were fine, although with .9XX reaction times. I could hear by drag-racing mom and dad chastising me from the beyond.

At the DC Pro in 2012, I was having similar issues the whole weekend on one side. The next year, I made a flapper -- a piece of cardboard taped to the bottom of the front bumper -- and didn't have any issues. For the Pro Solo last year, I didn't use a flapper but didn't have any issues with mysterious red lights, so I thought the issue was non-existence (the Pro Solo "Christmas tree" is much different now than what it was through 2014, the last time I ran a Pro before 2025).

Flapper installed before Saturday afternoon runs, and the problem was solved! But because I had a red-light and a DNF on the left side, and a red light and a run with three cones on the right, so I was DFL heading into afternoon runs.

I moved up to seventh on Saturday afternoon just be getting a clean run on each of my first two runs, BUT I coned the final two runs, which were significantly faster -- 1.3 seconds combined. Still, it was comforting to know those woulda-coulda-shoulda dirty runs would have put me in the trophies. The car fuel starved in a few areas, too, but that's just a form of poor-man's traction control, right?

Last year, my plan for Sunday was to lay it up like Cheech Marin suggested to Kevin Costner in "Tin Cup" because I had been dirty all of Saturday and was DFL. This time, I had OK clean runs and really wasn't in danger of falling to DFL, and a trophy was a possibility if I could duplicate those fast raw times from Saturday afternoon.

I started off on the right side on Sunday morning, lining up with Chris Haydu in The Nova.

Gridded next to THE NOVA for Sunday.

He was fifth, and since his co-driver, Chris Janusz, was sixth, it meant we would be squaring off. I'm pretty sure nobody cared about the four drivers in front of us -- they wanted to see the 1965 Nova against the 1982 Camaro!

The first right-side run was a DNF for me as the car kind of pushed out in one section, and I didn't feel like fighting it back to mow over a line of cones. 

Nope!

On the left side, I was sitting on a clean 31.1 but had a dirty 30.8, both from Saturday. Switching to that side for the first time Sunday, I dropped a full second -- 29.8! -- but hit a cone somewhere on the opening part of the course.

The pressure was on -- only one more try on each side. Switching back to the right, I took it conservative on the lights -- .8XX reaction time -- but really pushed it after that. On the bottom of the course, there were a series of offsets running parallel to the sidewalk, and at the end was a tight 90-degree right-hander to head back uphill toward the finish. 

Walking the course that morning, I happened to run into Marshall Cone right about there, and he said, "How do you get your car through here?" I actually thought I had taken it too conservatively on Saturday and could really hammer it if I set it up properly. I DNF'ed just before that on my first Sunday run, so now was the only time I could see if it worked.

Hold my 17 bottles of Gatorade -- I got this.

And I nailed it. The cones remained upright, and I turned and got on the gas a little earlier to blast uphill for a tight left-right before the finish. But I didn't compensate that I was going a little faster and overshot the left kink before the finish and hamfisted my way through the right kink before the finish. I looked in the mirror and thought I saw a finish cone fall over and was super pissed! The time was a 39.5 -- I was sitting on a clean 40.6 from Saturday.

Oh well, maybe I could get a fast, clean time on my final run on the left. This time, I pushed a little harder on the light (.655 reaction time -- still my mom and dad wouldn't approve*), and the run felt really good. I clocked a 30.0, which was slower than my dirty times but was 1.1 seconds faster than my only other clean time on that side.

Karen said I wobbled a cone at the finish but it didn't fall over.

I drove to impound, and as I was idling in line waiting to get on the scales, Pete Johnson and Justin Rest sauntered over. Justin poked his head in the car and said, "What happened?"

I was confused. "What do you mean?"

"They said you are in third!"

I figured there was no way that was right because I was pretty sure I hit a cone on my last right-side run, so I said, "There is no way that was right because I am pretty sure I hit a cone on my last right-side run."

After I weighed, I parked in impound, and Mike Snyder came over. "It looks like you got me." He had been in fourth. I was in disbelief. I was almost certain that cone fell over.

A few minutes later checking Sololive, results showed me in seventh. But that cone I thought I hit on my last run on the right side wasn't there! But there was a cone on the 30.0 from my left-side run, where Karen was certain the cone I hit at the finish didn't fall over or get knocked out of the box. At National Tours, corner captains track cones and DNFs on audit sheets so competitors can later verify which station(s) called in cones, but it's not that way at a Pro Solo. There were some weird issues from people working the left-side course that weekend. I spun in the finish on one run on Saturday, didn't go off course, and I was marked as a DNF. I watched Lee Piccione spin in the same spot on Sunday, and he also didn't go off course but was marked as a DNF. 

I have watched my video from that run and didn't see where a cone was hit, at least on the driver's side of the car. It's really weird that I was pretty sure I coned my fastest run on the right course but I thought the left was clean, and Karen has video of me coming through the finish with the cone just wobbling. Unless I hit it somewhere else. Again, no way to verify like at a Tour.

But I don't need another $5 trophy, so who cares, right? The important thing is that the car made all 12 runs, no DNS, no push start, drove onto the trailer, and I had the times to be competitive whereas last year, I wasn't even close to trophying.

I actually dropped down to eighth because social media influencer Justin Peachey didn't have a clean run on the right side, but he managed to get fast times and run clean to move from ninth to second, which bumped me back a spot.

A synopsis of the weekend, I went from 14th to seventh, to third, to seventh, to eighth.

I had an issue with my external microphone not picking up any sound on Sunday, so here are my fast coned runs from Saturday with sound:

Someone joked that since the car made it through unscathed that I shouldn't sell it now, but now is the perfect time to sell because there's nothing wrong with it!

And as I'm typing this, the new owner is somewhere on his way to home.

Yup, the Camaro is sold.