While sitting down in late December and doing my racing budget for this year, it became clear that I was going to be staring down the barrel of yet another year in autocross purgatory due to the economic hit I was going to take from competing in an east coast time trial tour. My Corolla, while functional regionally, is absurdly under-built for it's current class (Street Mod) and still needs quite a bit of money to lower it down to a class it can be competitive in (F Street Prepared). There is nothing wrong with regional competition, but I'm always trying to push myself further and national level competition is what I'm aiming for, and as evidenced by the shredding I took at the DC Pro Solo tour stop last year (http://sololive.scca.com/2010DCPro/SM.html), attempting to do so in the Corolla in it's current trim is a total waste of time/money.
Competing in the 2010 Washington DC Pro Solo Tour stop
Head in hands, I began making my 2011 motorsports season schedule (http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?sr ... a/New_York) and looking at all the national level events I was going to miss this year. I came to September, looked at the dates for the SCCA National Championship and thought, "Well, another year of watching everyone else go to Nationals while treading water regionally." Little did I know that my luck was about to change.
January came around and it was time for my winter test. Some changes to the Corolla's rear suspension meant that I had to get it properly dialed in before the start of the season, luckily NASA (http://www.nasaracing.net/) has recently been hosting an event in late January down in the Richmond area, which is about a three hour drive for me. The previous year I did it by myself and was fairly bored, so this year I invited a few of the DC regional folk, among them was local DC F125 driver Danny Kao.
Danny Kao
Danny had just bought a new Mazdaspeed 3 that he was dying to try out, so we set out for Richmond where the North would invade the South again.
SCCA DC region driver, Justin Neal, on his way to a class victory
SCCA DC region driver, Danny Kao, on his way to a class victory
SCCA DC region driver, James Newman, on his way to a class victory
SCCA Philly region driver and NICO resident, Christine Warren (skydragoness), choking... Booooooooooo =P She did take awesome photos though as most of the ones I have of this event were done by her.
With pre-season testing in the bag, Danny began talking about running the Mazdaspeed3 in D-Stock this year. He tossed around the idea for a couple weeks and it was at that moment that I threw a bid to co-drive with him and buy half the tires. After mulling it over for a bit longer, the Kao/Newman show began.
Danny began sourcing parts for the Stock build, I ordered by set of tires, another set of wheels and tire blankets for grid. We talked about what national level events we'll hit along the way to the National Championship. Danny sourced outside help to try to sort out the car as it's a rather blank canvas in terms of tire pressures and shock settings. We began gearing up for what will hopefully be one hell of a ride this year.
Our car for 2011: Danny's D-Stock Mazdaspeed3
Upcoming....
-First test in D Stock trim on March 5th
-First real event, the Dixie National Tour stop on the weekend of the 12th/13th of March.
