Road to the SCCA Solo National Championship

[skydragoness]

Right on! I knew that car would be so much better with r-comps.
What street tires were you guys running in the earlier runs? The ones that were on the OEM 18's?

[jdrop]

Beware of the VW R32 as well!

Good luck this weekend. Due to unforseen circumstances we are 100% definitely not going. One of the biggest complaints I've heard is that the MS3 is pushy. It takes a LOT more patience than I have. I hope you get some decent weather.

Shame on you guys for using a school for novices as practice :P

[flohtingPoint]

Shame on you guys for using a school for novices as practice :P

We were novices, at driving mazdaspeed 3's.
MINI UPDATE


The MS3 blocking traffic during the Evolution School. If nobody runs, no one can be faster than us!

Friday practice/testing is in the bag here at the Dixie National Tour. Danny and I are still within .2 seconds of each other with me clocking in a 23.4 and Danny with a 23.6 on the mini "slalom up and back" course.

The food here in Georgia is fairly terrible. Everything is fried and sloppy. If I lived here I'd be 600 lbs or dead from a heart condition.

[sbird1]

You must not be eating at the right places... or maybe you are. Everything is better fried. Happy testing is going well.

Who's excited for F1 this year? KERS is back, adjustable rear wing, Pirelli tires... can't wait.

[flohtingPoint]

It's been a while, so there needs to be an update on this

Episode 3: Revenge of the S***: the all anal final chapter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_n3O4sIvJQ

F you mother f'er's indeed, or at least that's what Danny and I said to the makers of the MazdaSpeed 3. Aside from being the least rewarding car I've ever driven, it eats tires worse than the drifters with IHateStickers crap all over their car. Side by side, on the left is a front tire with 12'ish runs on it, on the right is a rear tire.



R-compounds are not cheap and when you have that type of exacerbated tire wear coupled with the fact that the car was 3-4 seconds off the pace, the vehicle because something only the foolish (or deep pocketed) would drive.

DIXIE TOUR RECAP

Danny and I arrived at the Dixie Tour in high spirits. The season had finally begun and we were ready to get the show on the road (honestly, picture Charlie Murphy saying "WRONG! WRONG!" right now, as that's how it plays out later). We got on site in time to change tires and attend the Evo School. Sam Strano (multi-time National Champion) sat with us and gave us instruction on how not to suck. It's too bad he didn't give me any advice on how not to choke (just wait...).


The MS3 at it's only National Tour appearance this year. A month later it would be sold. It's also been so damned long since I updated this thread that my dumbass forgot that I used this picture already.


Hand me a pencil and paper and I can draw you every single course I drove last year (which is about 30) from memory. Now ask me to draw Day 1 of Dixie and I'm drawing a blank. Nerves crushed me in Georgia that weekend... I've driven in a lot of autocrosses but no National Tour stops. I wanted to do well and got too caught up in everything. When I sat at the line and tired to unravel the course, the only thing that unravled was me. Uh huh. So that's an average day for you then? You chop your balls off and die? Hell yea...




To say that I overdrove the car would be an understatement. Homer Simpson was fired that day because I took the job of Mr. Plow when I was pushing all over the course. Every time I came back to the grid I was more infuriated that the last; red mist was settling in and my co-driver may as well have been talking to a brick wall. When the timesheet came out, I was dead last in my class, beaten by folks who had no clue what they were doing, to include one guy who swears that he doesn't even check his tire pressure. Worst of all, I beat myself, which I'm sure is illegal in public in Georgia and in the SCCA.


Mr. "Wutz tyre pressure" and I looking at Day 1's timesheet, he also beat my co-driver, finishing 3rd on day 1


When Day 1 came to a close, I walked the next day's course until the sunset and even then I walked a bit more. Danny and I went out to eat with two fellow DC region folk, I dont think I said a single word for about an hour and a half. You ask anyone that's spent time around me and really gotten to know me, I'm far from a sore loser, I'll be the first to shake someone's hand who has defeated me. On the other end of the spectrum, I'm massively hard on myself (also illegal in public in Georgia, giggity). I spent the better part of the night kicking my own a** while trying not to show it.

The next morning I awoke with a fairly large hangover and a reminder that I was dead last in the standings in the form of some soap on my bathroom mirror spelling out "SUCK BE YOU!" I got some coffee, met Danny downstairs and began pulling myself together. It was time to get focused. A trophy spot was out of the question, but I was determined to dig myself of the mess and not finish last. I was .2 away from the next person...



Day two I drove much better. I knew the course, was a bit more calm and was not going down without a fight. I hated the car I was driving but I knew I had to make it work and work it did. After finishing with the worst time on Day 1, I finished with the 4th best time on Day 2. Two times were massively out of reach, they belonged to an overdog of the class, the Integra Type R, and the other time was my co-driver and car owner.


A buddy of mine once asked me why I dont smile at the track. I told him I smile when I think I deserve it.

Danny finished with a trophy (3rd place out of 7) and I dug out of the cellar to claim 5th overall (http://www.scca.com/popup/raceresult.as ... &file=1277). I was a combination of massively happy for my co-driver and very relieved that my first National Tour experience was over.

My road to the National Championship isn't over, it's just taken another form. That's a story for another time though. Collini out! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH7tnT5z7Vg)

[LongBeachCoupe]

A buddy of mine once asked me why I dont smile at the track. I told him I smile when I think I deserve it.
Tough crowd!

As long as we have fun out there and are safe! You will win one day!

[Bubba1]

A buddy of mine once asked me why I dont smile at the track. I told him I smile when I think I deserve it.

Danny finished with a trophy (3rd place out of 7) and I dug out of the cellar to claim 5th overall (http://www.scca.com/popup/raceresult.as ... &file=1277). I was a combination of massively happy for my co-driver and very relieved that my first National Tour experience was over.

My road to the National Championship isn't over, it's just taken another form. That's a story for another time though. Collini out! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH7tnT5z7Vg)

5th ain't bad for a first tour experience. I'm sure you'll do better next tour. Though the hat is stylish.

[sbird1]

Sorry things didn't work out as well as hoped. There's always next year! But seriously, those tire issues are a little ridiculous. Maybe a different car will make a world of difference.

[flohtingPoint]

Sorry things didn't work out as well as hoped. There's always next year! But seriously, those tire issues are a little ridiculous. Maybe a different car will make a world of difference.

Next year? There is still more tour stops and then the National Championship to compete in. Plenty of more chances for me to choke =P

Honestly, in my new ride I'm in since Danny and I abandoned the notion of running the MS3, I dont have a chance to contend for a trophy. The learning curve is massive for this vehicle, so mid pack is a realistic goal.

[flohtingPoint]

A buddy of mine once asked me why I dont smile at the track. I told him I smile when I think I deserve it.

Danny finished with a trophy (3rd place out of 7) and I dug out of the cellar to claim 5th overall (http://www.scca.com/popup/raceresult.as ... &file=1277). I was a combination of massively happy for my co-driver and very relieved that my first National Tour experience was over.

My road to the National Championship isn't over, it's just taken another form. That's a story for another time though. Collini out! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH7tnT5z7Vg)

5th ain't bad for a first tour experience. I'm sure you'll do better next tour. Though the hat is stylish.

LOL, thanks Joel. I bought that hat at the gas station across the street from the hotel. It literally feels like it's made out of stale paper towels sewn together, but hey, it keeps the sun out of my face.

[flohtingPoint]

Episode 4: Fernando is faster than you...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ1ux9ysAjU

With the bank bleeding experience of Dixie over, Danny and I retreated back north and began formulating what we were to do with the rest of the season. Running the D-Stock car was not an option, as it's not on pace and it was far too hard on tires. Running my Corolla anywhere but locally is a waste of time and it looked like Danny would return to shifters.

This year, one of the SCCA National Tour stops happens to be in Delaware at The Monster Mile. While building our season calendars, we noticed that the Philly SCCA region also hosted an early season event there. With a chance to check out the surface and see what the lot is like, we gave the D-Stock car one final thrashing. Simmons (a Philly region member) wanted to see how quick his new WRX was compared to how quick Feinberg destroyed us by anyway.





On the way home from Delaware, Danny was fairly distraught over the day. He ran fine, but he spent money taking his truck up to Delaware with a kart in the back of it that he was supposed to sell that day, but the prospective buyer chickened out, so it was a massive waste of fuel and time. To try to forget about the lack of sale, we chatted about what the future held for both of us that year. I had already been contacting a motor builder with plans to dump an emergency amount of money into the Corolla to put it into F Street Prepared and Danny was on the lookout for a MX5 MSR to run in C-Stock. The Mazdaspeed was a total failure and waste of money, but it wasn't going to ruin our seasons.

A couple of weeks pass and while beginning to finalize my parts collection for the Corolla, I found myself in a massive fight over the telephone. The idiot who took my order for my Spinwerkes wheels lost my order and now I wasn't going to have them for the start of the season. After a good sized dose of cursing and making sure the person on the phone knew how big of a moron I thought they were, I hung up and immediately developed a "F*** it" attitude.

Old cars are fine for collectors, they're a monstrous pain in the a** for someone who actually beats on the car. Nothing is easily sourced nor can it be here on rush delivery for that car and this was just another one of those instances. Nothing makes me more infuriated than downtime (well, maybe dips**ts that lose my phone orders). I look forward all winter to competing and being unable to because I'm a dummy who uses a 25 year old, slightly rare car is also stupid on my part. I called up Danny and said, "You still have that kart for sale?" 2 hours later...



Upon coming home with my new chariot, my Corolla went up for sale immediately. A month later it was sold and I couldn't be happier. Actually that's a massive lie, Christina Hendricks could knock on my hotel room door right now, that would definitely be about 70x better than unloading a stupid Toyota.

Growing up in Italy, Formula 1 is religion (well, one of them... I mean we do have the Vatican too). I only watch two forms of racing, whatever amateur rank I'm competing in and F1, everything in the middle I genuinely do not care about. DTM, WRC, ALMS, BTCC, ABCDEFG, all of it is of very little interest to me. All of my motorsports heroes my whole life, from Patrese to Prost to Raikkonen and Alonso, all F1 drivers, all started with karting. Why it took me until I was 30 to jump headfirst into it is beyond me. After my first real test run with the kart, I honestly wondered why I had even bothered with cars in the first place.







[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woE7Inaw1ho[/youtube]

[flohtingPoint]

Episode 4.1: And I shall call him... Mini-Update...

http://www.scca.com/event.aspx?hub=3&event=17360

Flying out tomorrow morning to Atlanta for the SCCA National Tour stop there. Danny just passed Charlotte a little while ago towing his Vette and my Shifter. This will be my second National Tour stop this year and my first in the kart.



Dropping off the kart in King Yang's Garage


Tomorrow will consist of helping Danny get his Super Stock car out to the Evo School and then doing basic work on the kart to prep it. Registration later that day, perhaps a few practice runs if they let karts and then course walking.



New livery for the kart, courtesy of King Yang himself.

[jdrop]

Nice to see you in NJ....even if you ignored me ::sniff sniff::

Just kidding! I'll catch you in Dover