Summer of 2010, and yet another update!
Again, a lot has been happening since the last update. Mark Johnson once again took the Fall Series 2009, and we stretched our tires as far as they would go, but to no avail, as the "other guy" simply kicked our butts! Okay, not totally. I won the last two events and ended up just a couple of points off Mark this time. Still, second place is first LOSER!
For the Spring series 2010, we have been running Steve's car, since mine "done blowed up." We put it down to oil starvation and a long continuous sweeper that ended up with a spun bearing in #3 cylinder. I'll rebuild it one day. Previous Champion Mark ran in a different class, so it was Steve and I against Kevin V, who now owns my first Miata, though it is highly modified for the C Street Prepared class these days. He had a co-driver, and Kevin and I tied at the first event, but I took the next one, Steve the third, and also the last! With the drop one scoring system used, I ended up just a smidge ahead of Steve, with two wins each, and my second place was a little better than his for the third event added in. So be it! I'll take the trophy, thank you very much!
Steve's car is really fun! We set it up differently than he had it, and it probably still could be better, but it worked. We bought another set of tires, and so did Kevin. It was a lot of fun, with a lot of smack talk, but in the end, it is what it is; a Win! And you bet I will take it! I have too many second place trophies, which are pretty much worthless, so another into the collection is looking a lot better!
This car might look familiar. It was Matt's car, and I drove it down in Tucson a couple of times in C Stock class form. There is a new class in SCCA called STR (Street Tire Roadster), in which a lot of the local guys have been running this year. Matt had set up this car to do that, but then, had a little incident:
He bought another '99 Miata, and took all the go-fast goodies off of it, and then started to part out the Sport. "BLASPHEMY!" I cried, and then decided to restore it to its former glory. Obviously, there was a lot to do, since there were parts missing, bent, and broken. I took on the task, and after a new fender, front bumper, front subframe, upper and lower control arms on the driver side, headlights, and some other things, got it running, and painted by my friend Carl! The Stripes were an idea that he and his dad had. Something to make it look a little different than the two other green '99 Miatas out there, and an idea I liked! When I have some more dough, one day, we'll do the same on the back of the car, but for now, it's only the hood.
The fix took a lot more money than I had planned, and I bought a set of the "hot ticket" tire for the job; the Hankook RS-3s, and we went up to Taylor for a shakedown in July. Almost 50 people signed up, and it was a great group! It rained HARD for a bit on Saturday, which made for some interesting runs, but I got all dry runs in my run group. Sunday was sunny all day, and the whole weekend was just wonderful! The car did okay, but will take a lot more money and effort to be really competitive with the other guys. I am trying to decide what to do with it, honestly, as it is my daily driver, which is fine, but having no money to build it into a "Great" car, it may just stay that way. It isn't much fun scraping the bottom rungs with a car that can't compete. We'll see what happens there, but for now, I am just happy running car with working AC !!!
More to come as events occur ... (July 18th, 2010)