When I arrived at the host hotel, Duster yelled hello across the parking lot, and Sam, who I didn't know yet, yelled "The FUCC is here!" I felt welcome. That feeling would continue over the weekend. Everybody I met over the weekend was already a friend, even if I had never met them in person before.
After eating at the hotel restaurant, I cut out my class numbers and just crashed out. I'd heard about folks hanging out down by the pool and such late into the night, but twelve hours of driving, pre-event nerves, the last bit of thrashing on the car- all of it just caught up with me. I was out before 10 PM.
On the first day, we arrived and unloaded the car, went through tech and all that jazz. Everything looked good (spoiler- it was NOT) so we started getting ready to drive. I realized I had left the pro driver tickets back at the hotel, so I sent the my other team member, Aiden, back to get them. I started putting on the required decals and our ant stickers. Given how amped up I was, about everything, I think they turned out fairly well as long as you don't look at the differences between the two sides of the car.
Aiden arrived with the tickets. I had not done *any* testing on the car at all since we were chasing late problems. The original plan had been to run a rallycross to shake it out last weekend, but I was replacing a differential instead. My first time driving the car was my first autocross lap at the event. The first lap was just to put down a time. I have no idea what that time was, but I did get a time. I turned things up the second lap, and went a bit faster. The car was awful. I could hear the crusty rear anti-sway bar binding in the bushing and popping loose, despite having greased and it up. It was just to rough from the rust to pivot smoothly in the bushings. The suspension was floppy. I wasn't surprised- it came off of a rallycross car and was beyond done. The high tread wear Continentals I was using were alright, but didn't really have much grip at all before they started to slip.
As I was coming out of the braking area, I saw my temp was high, approaching the dangerous area. I parked and shut off the engine. It was quickly evident that the coolant had escaped sometime between last weekend and the event. I was a dumbass and didn't check oil or coolant prior to running- a nearly catastrophic oversight. Hell, I check those at local events. The atmosphere and nerves of the Challenge had obviously short-circuted my brain.
Aiden ran to the concession stand to grab two takeout cups of water, while I searched the pit area for a hose. Bill C. knew where one was, but it turned out it had a hole in it. I grabbed an empty Gatorade bottle and started filling it back up. Aiden arrived with the cups, and we dumped those in, too. We headed back to our pit area and let things cool down. All told, we probably put more than half a gallon in there.
The reason was soon clear- the lower radiator hose was leaking very slowly. It's been rainy in Raleigh, so over the past week the coolant just leaked out and I never saw a puddle under the car because everything was wet. We tightened the hose and did some shakedown runs down the back of the parking lot and everything held together, even at drag speeds. This attracted an event Marshall, who came out on a pit bike. I rolled down my window and approached.
"Let me guess, don't do that?" I asked.
"Yes, please don't do that," he responded.
We quit doing that. The temp was staying where it was supposed to, and I didn't want to break anything new, anyhow.
The afternoon runs arrived. I went out and did my third run and set my best time by trying to be smooth and work within the limits of the tires. I was confident the car wasn't going to break down, so I handed the keys to a Pro driver and they went out and beat my best time handily. I expected that, but it's still always nuts to see how much better I can get.
Best run in Autocross: 45.598 , Pro Driver. My best run? Somewhere north of 50 seconds.
We spectated until it was drag race time. Once again, the first run was just to get a time down. I didn't try to launch the car, and didn't floor it, but did more down the strip at a good pace. The car didn't overheat or wander at speed. Good. Time to get serious. I'm not sure how many runs I wound up doing, but it seemed ALL of them were within a second of each other. I was sitting on a 16.109 trying everything I could do to get into the 15s without going back to the pits and removing parts of the car, but nothing helped, and the runs started getting slower. I gave up... and then sent it one more time, because how often do you get unlimited drag runs?
Best drag time: 16.109
Duster asked if he could use the FUCC for the detailing demo/tutorial. I said sure. We both agreed the paint couldn't get much worse, I gave him the keys and told him to go nuts. This meant didn't have to get the car into the Concours area early in the morning, since he needed it there for the detailing demo, front and center. The paint that Duster worked on looked much better when he was done with the demo, too.
I crashed early again, and slept like the dead until it was time for breakfast.
We were going to just take 12 in the Concours, but I decided at the last minute to go through judging, know it was probably going to hurt my score very badly. I didn't care. I wanted the full experience. I got some pointers from event veterans on how to present the car. I don't think they helped, since I hadn't been planning on presenting and just winged it since I didn't have anything prepared.
We stuck around for the award ceremony, even though we didn't have a chance of winning anything. Aiden and I made up and agreed that we had won the "Yellowest Car At The Event" category while we loaded up the car. We drove back up to Raleigh. I think Aiden went into work operating on whatever sleep he got on the drive back, but he's just 21 and can handle it. Me? I have today off to recover from the event.
Lessons learned:
- Get the car done early and test it as much as possible before the event. My project wasn't even that ambitious, but so much went wrong that it took way longer than I thought. You know, like it does EVERY TIME.
- Bring chairs.
- Check the car out before you run in the morning, dumb-ass. Use the same checklist you have for rallycross.
- Prepare a presentation for the councours in advance or take 12. Don't try to wing it.
- Use better tires.
- Bring fewer tools, but bring oil, antifreeze, etc.Z
- No, really. Test more than that. So much was still wrong with the car when we showed up. Some of it would've just been "put in the time and effort to make it better" fixes, but we also had a bit of budget left to improve things.
- I could've gotten some recoup on some items, but I didn't bother with it this time. After driving the car, I should've used every dollar I had to spend. Once you're out of the under $1000 class, it doesn't make any sense from a competition standpoint not to, if you can afford it.
- Document every expense/purchase/etc. as you go along. I did that to some degree, but keeping a running total on the spreadsheet in addition to the build thread would've made things a bit easier.
- Get the livery, numbers and class cut out and on the car well ahead of time.
All in all: Prepare way better than I did.
Congrats to all of the winners!
