Someday I want to grow up and race a car on the track like Matthew but for now I have to Auto-X. Last event was at Bellingham WA at the Port Shipping terminal which is rather crude for a auto-x area. Sort of flat, sort of dirty and sort of scary. The minimum clearance is 25 feet for obsticles and the course setters definately use every bit of it. Buildings look awful close when you're on three wheels. Luckily there were no BEES.
Anyway it was fun and the car with new suspension is working wonderfully. I have been getting a fair amount of seat time (6 events this season) and am actually starting to figure some stuff out. I was actually competitive in the Novice class this time and finished third behind a WRX (only by .180 sec) and a turbo Miata (sandbagger -3.0sec). I had second all day until the WRX's last run. I guess 100 more horses and 4wd might have something to do with him going a little faster-duh. Also had the opportunity to talk to a guy next to me in the pit with an S2000. Amazingly refined car. I sat in it and played with the gear shifter like it was my - you know... Very very nice positive "click-click-click" as opposed to my "oof-ouch-shit" shifting mechanism. New shift kit on the horizon, soon. Nice thing about my car though, it was faster than the S2000 all day long. GTi likes it tight and slow. The suspension definately made a huge difference, but another thing that worked well is going through every subframe and suspension bolt and re-torqueing to spec. I was suprised at the amount of hardware I found that was loose. I'm sure this is a no-brainer for a regular racer but us that drive our cars on the road also may overlook this kind of stuff. Needs to be checked periodically. Rich Blake 88 Gti
