Honestly, this new board format drives me crazy so I've mostly just been posting updates in the "original" thread over on GRM, so sorry to leave you guys hanging. If you want to catch up over the pst 6 months, just head over there and catch up: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/fo...5/#post3052217
Cliff notes: I won the season last year / the winter rally was cancelled while they rebuild part of the STPR course / We planned to do Ohio Forest Rally but it got postponed / We planned to do STPR again, but it got cancelled by COVID / I did a rallycross at a new venue early this year and won my class / The first 3 months of DC rallycross got cancelled by COVID / I put a big spoiler on the car / I did a full build of a 1989 Dodge Raider (a full build thread on that is on GRM as well, if you're interested)
Here's a teaser pic of that...
I'll try to make an effort to get this one going again going forward now that DC rallycross is back in action. So here goes (and yes, this is a carbon copy of the GRM build thread, so there are some GRM references that you can ignore):
Finally back to some action. This weekend we had (finally) the first DC rallycross, making up some earlier missed events with a doubleheader (two individual events). Turnout was huge – 75 entires, which may be the most our program has ever had, and a monster entry in MR class as usual, with 16 or 17 drivers signed up. The usual bunch of BMWs, a Miata or two, a couple MR2s, and a couple BR-Zs, including Chris Nonack doing some testing in his BR-Z (er...FR-S) before he cages it for stage rally.
First a socially-distanced driver's meeting..
Then off to grid..
We were back at Summit Point this time and the weather broke dry and fairly hot. Saturday we ran the smaller course (which has no “name” yet), which is really a handling course. I used to love it with the M42 in this car because the more powerful cars couldn't use their power on it. Now I have a powerful car, so no more advantage lol.
As expected, the top 10 or so in the class came out of the box on full “go,” and throughout the day the top half of the class swapped positions repeatedly for the most part. Most of us were out there on Maxsports with others on gravels. Josh Sennett had two studs break/back out while setting up, and since he couldn't use his spacers with the shorter replacements, he had to run on his street tires, which really hurt him in the morning. He went out at lunch to try to find some others and couldn't get back fo rthe PM due to part of summit point being locked down because some gunfire had (hit?) a Porsche on the main circuit at the big PCA track day. IDK if it was hunters or what, didn't hear what they found out.
In any case, we battled it out, but nobody could catch Stephen Nichols, who held on for the win on Saturday, with me taking 2nd. About 5 other e30s followed up, and Nick didn't have a good day in the M3, actually hitting several cones right off the bat (He hit one cone last SEASON and I think none the season before). It was a tight and slippery course for his “big” M3.
Other GRM builds were there....like, about 5 or 6 of them.....
Also fun seeing my old “backup shell” rebuilt into Eric and Neil's new rallycross car (still hasn't had its paint job done, so still has remnants of my old door stripes and stuff). It was less fun when they were both beating me midway through the day, but I managed to pass both of them eventually.
Incidentally, Shawn (the hundred-time MR/PR champion) in his PR Miata running at the same time as MR......beat our entire class by 6 second. Doh. Happy he stayed in PR for the season haha...
Sunday we moved to the huge Barn Course, which is generally high-speed, hard-pack, and favors the powerful cars.
We worked first. It was hot
Pretty much everyond stayed with their setup from the day before (Maxsports), but with the sun baking the clay, I thought my Federal rally gravels might be better, so I swapped them on. During the recce run I felt like things were not that grippy, though. So my first run I was extremely tentative, which is odd since I usually go out of the gate full-blast to try to get a lead. But after the first run.....yikes.....I was slow. 8th place slow. Behind every other BMW in the class, ugh. No time to change tires, so in an effort to get more grip I basically just dumped air. Usually I run the gravels in the mid-20s psi, but I dumped the rears down to 17-18 and the fronts to 22, which is pretty borderline. It gave immediate results (with some improved lines from me) and I got some time back on the 2nd and 3rd runs. On the fourth and final run of the morning I put down the fastest time in the class and jumped into 3rd place, with Nonack (who had been leading the class) getting a couple cones and dropping to 4th – leaving Stephen in the lead....again.
Off to lunch we went. Someone mentioned possible rain in the PM so after lunch I hauled my Maxsports out to grid to do a quick change if needed, and our group went out to work the course. As luck would have it, 2 runs in to the other run group, the skies opened up and the temps plummeted form mid-80s to mid-60 and we all got soaked to the bone, and the wind was cold. Not fun.
Event was put on hold to see how fast it would blow over and we trudged back to the paddock area. After about 20 minutes (with three Stock FWD cars stuck at the now-flooded start area), one of the Mod AWD subies did a course test and was all over the place – so it was decided to call the event. Which kind of sucks, since I'm pretty good in mud and had brand-new Maxsports sitting there, but it is what it is. So I finished 3rd, Stephen 1st, and Neil (in my old shell took 2nd).
After the course was picked up, we got do to some “fun runs” in the mud and giant puddles. About a dozen cars stuck around, only two of us RWD – me and Thomas Helgesen's Volvo. Needless to say, we had a good time:
After I took a couple, I let Brian Battocchi (fellow stage rally driver and the day's MA class winner) take a run in my car since he'd never driven an e30 before, and I ran out to take photos....he seemed to enjoy it
Adam Kimmet in Mike Julian's car chased him down on course and did a bit of tandem drift action before passing him lol...
Packed up and headed home, really muddy, overlooking the track where the Porsches were probably not muddy, lol.
So....as expected, the class is fast AF this year once again, but even deeper in fast cars/drivers. Which is awesome, but is going to be tough to win events. Stephen is already driving great this year.....Nick having a hard time so far, but that won't last. And another half-dozen guys who can win any time.
Takeaways: switching back to the IX rear springs from the e36 M3 springs was probably a good idea. Car felt balanced with nothing in the trunk (but one spare tire in the back seat on the passenger side), so I'm happy with that choice.
The big trunk spoiler, not sure. I mean, I was pretty fast today but hard to say if I was getting any real downforce back there. However, several people said the spoiler was putting up a pretty big “dust vortex” when I was on course, so it's definitely getting some air to it at least. Obviously it's mostly intended to be used in stage rally, whenever we get to do one again.
Speaking of which, there were quite a few stage cars there this weekend besides mine and Brian's Impreza (both regulars). Roberto Moreton (who you may remember from about 7-8 years ago in this thread as the RX-7 driver who beat me my first couple seasons) returned, but with an old SCCA Pro Rally VW Golf, and promptly won a large MF class on Saturday. Anthony Burden, from up in New England (I think) showed up in his old Turbo Jetta (which is an ARA/current rally car) and won MF on Sunday with the more open course. Our buddies Alan Edwards and Baker (who you've seen many times in my recaps at WMWR and STPR, also showed up to test out their new motor in their stage rally Neon. And some old B13 Sentra with CARS markings (Canadian Rally Series) was there too, but not sure what the story with it is (its skidplate fell off on course, so it may need some love lol).
All in all, happy with the car's performance other than the coolant temp a bit higher than I like (it was a hot day, with long runs) and I think if I had the PM session today I might have been able to reel Stevie in. Oh well.
Today I got out the powerwasher......and remembered how sticky Summit's red clay is....
Cliff notes: I won the season last year / the winter rally was cancelled while they rebuild part of the STPR course / We planned to do Ohio Forest Rally but it got postponed / We planned to do STPR again, but it got cancelled by COVID / I did a rallycross at a new venue early this year and won my class / The first 3 months of DC rallycross got cancelled by COVID / I put a big spoiler on the car / I did a full build of a 1989 Dodge Raider (a full build thread on that is on GRM as well, if you're interested)
Here's a teaser pic of that...
I'll try to make an effort to get this one going again going forward now that DC rallycross is back in action. So here goes (and yes, this is a carbon copy of the GRM build thread, so there are some GRM references that you can ignore):
Finally back to some action. This weekend we had (finally) the first DC rallycross, making up some earlier missed events with a doubleheader (two individual events). Turnout was huge – 75 entires, which may be the most our program has ever had, and a monster entry in MR class as usual, with 16 or 17 drivers signed up. The usual bunch of BMWs, a Miata or two, a couple MR2s, and a couple BR-Zs, including Chris Nonack doing some testing in his BR-Z (er...FR-S) before he cages it for stage rally.
First a socially-distanced driver's meeting..
Then off to grid..
We were back at Summit Point this time and the weather broke dry and fairly hot. Saturday we ran the smaller course (which has no “name” yet), which is really a handling course. I used to love it with the M42 in this car because the more powerful cars couldn't use their power on it. Now I have a powerful car, so no more advantage lol.
As expected, the top 10 or so in the class came out of the box on full “go,” and throughout the day the top half of the class swapped positions repeatedly for the most part. Most of us were out there on Maxsports with others on gravels. Josh Sennett had two studs break/back out while setting up, and since he couldn't use his spacers with the shorter replacements, he had to run on his street tires, which really hurt him in the morning. He went out at lunch to try to find some others and couldn't get back fo rthe PM due to part of summit point being locked down because some gunfire had (hit?) a Porsche on the main circuit at the big PCA track day. IDK if it was hunters or what, didn't hear what they found out.
In any case, we battled it out, but nobody could catch Stephen Nichols, who held on for the win on Saturday, with me taking 2nd. About 5 other e30s followed up, and Nick didn't have a good day in the M3, actually hitting several cones right off the bat (He hit one cone last SEASON and I think none the season before). It was a tight and slippery course for his “big” M3.
Other GRM builds were there....like, about 5 or 6 of them.....
Also fun seeing my old “backup shell” rebuilt into Eric and Neil's new rallycross car (still hasn't had its paint job done, so still has remnants of my old door stripes and stuff). It was less fun when they were both beating me midway through the day, but I managed to pass both of them eventually.
Incidentally, Shawn (the hundred-time MR/PR champion) in his PR Miata running at the same time as MR......beat our entire class by 6 second. Doh. Happy he stayed in PR for the season haha...
Sunday we moved to the huge Barn Course, which is generally high-speed, hard-pack, and favors the powerful cars.
We worked first. It was hot
Pretty much everyond stayed with their setup from the day before (Maxsports), but with the sun baking the clay, I thought my Federal rally gravels might be better, so I swapped them on. During the recce run I felt like things were not that grippy, though. So my first run I was extremely tentative, which is odd since I usually go out of the gate full-blast to try to get a lead. But after the first run.....yikes.....I was slow. 8th place slow. Behind every other BMW in the class, ugh. No time to change tires, so in an effort to get more grip I basically just dumped air. Usually I run the gravels in the mid-20s psi, but I dumped the rears down to 17-18 and the fronts to 22, which is pretty borderline. It gave immediate results (with some improved lines from me) and I got some time back on the 2nd and 3rd runs. On the fourth and final run of the morning I put down the fastest time in the class and jumped into 3rd place, with Nonack (who had been leading the class) getting a couple cones and dropping to 4th – leaving Stephen in the lead....again.
Off to lunch we went. Someone mentioned possible rain in the PM so after lunch I hauled my Maxsports out to grid to do a quick change if needed, and our group went out to work the course. As luck would have it, 2 runs in to the other run group, the skies opened up and the temps plummeted form mid-80s to mid-60 and we all got soaked to the bone, and the wind was cold. Not fun.
Event was put on hold to see how fast it would blow over and we trudged back to the paddock area. After about 20 minutes (with three Stock FWD cars stuck at the now-flooded start area), one of the Mod AWD subies did a course test and was all over the place – so it was decided to call the event. Which kind of sucks, since I'm pretty good in mud and had brand-new Maxsports sitting there, but it is what it is. So I finished 3rd, Stephen 1st, and Neil (in my old shell took 2nd).
After the course was picked up, we got do to some “fun runs” in the mud and giant puddles. About a dozen cars stuck around, only two of us RWD – me and Thomas Helgesen's Volvo. Needless to say, we had a good time:
After I took a couple, I let Brian Battocchi (fellow stage rally driver and the day's MA class winner) take a run in my car since he'd never driven an e30 before, and I ran out to take photos....he seemed to enjoy it
Adam Kimmet in Mike Julian's car chased him down on course and did a bit of tandem drift action before passing him lol...
Packed up and headed home, really muddy, overlooking the track where the Porsches were probably not muddy, lol.
So....as expected, the class is fast AF this year once again, but even deeper in fast cars/drivers. Which is awesome, but is going to be tough to win events. Stephen is already driving great this year.....Nick having a hard time so far, but that won't last. And another half-dozen guys who can win any time.
Takeaways: switching back to the IX rear springs from the e36 M3 springs was probably a good idea. Car felt balanced with nothing in the trunk (but one spare tire in the back seat on the passenger side), so I'm happy with that choice.
The big trunk spoiler, not sure. I mean, I was pretty fast today but hard to say if I was getting any real downforce back there. However, several people said the spoiler was putting up a pretty big “dust vortex” when I was on course, so it's definitely getting some air to it at least. Obviously it's mostly intended to be used in stage rally, whenever we get to do one again.
Speaking of which, there were quite a few stage cars there this weekend besides mine and Brian's Impreza (both regulars). Roberto Moreton (who you may remember from about 7-8 years ago in this thread as the RX-7 driver who beat me my first couple seasons) returned, but with an old SCCA Pro Rally VW Golf, and promptly won a large MF class on Saturday. Anthony Burden, from up in New England (I think) showed up in his old Turbo Jetta (which is an ARA/current rally car) and won MF on Sunday with the more open course. Our buddies Alan Edwards and Baker (who you've seen many times in my recaps at WMWR and STPR, also showed up to test out their new motor in their stage rally Neon. And some old B13 Sentra with CARS markings (Canadian Rally Series) was there too, but not sure what the story with it is (its skidplate fell off on course, so it may need some love lol).
All in all, happy with the car's performance other than the coolant temp a bit higher than I like (it was a hot day, with long runs) and I think if I had the PM session today I might have been able to reel Stevie in. Oh well.
Today I got out the powerwasher......and remembered how sticky Summit's red clay is....
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