So, you watched Travis Pastrana in his Subaru at the X Games and now you’re convinced that you can get your Mom’s Outback at least six feet off the ground if you were just given a dirt jump and the chance. Well, it’s time to put down your PS3 game controller, turn off MotorStorm, and borrow a helmet. Rallycross is the closest thing you’re probably going to get to the X games without any money or talent.
Rallycross is similar to the more popular autocross, based on the fact that there is one car out on the course at a time racing against the clock. The course is delineated by cones in a large empty area. The important difference is that Rallycross is a race on dirt. Yes, you and your car will get dirty. The other main difference between the two sports is your autocross time is based on your single fastest lap around the track (like qualifying), whereas Rallycross is set up like a stage rally. Each lap is a separate stage, and each stage counts toward your total and final time.
As a total newb, I made the mistake of blowing a muddy corner at a Rallycross and sliding off the racecourse. I had to go into reverse (once I finally found it, Goddamn Volkswagen!) to get back on the track. I lost a crap load of time farting with the tranny, but since I was a seasoned autocrosser, I really didn’t care. “I’ll get ‘em on the next lap,” I said -wrong! That was when I learned the all important lesson about Rallycross, every lap/stage counts. Just like in the bigs, like in the WRC.
Just because there can never be too much video of an Enzo running around a race track, here’s one more video from my weekend visit to MSR Houston. The Enzo was run quite a bit harder during this session than in the first video, as evidenced by the helmets bouncing around. Once again, turn it up and enjoy the ride!
A few months back, we ran a story about the famous Ferrari Enzo that was featured in the movie Redline, and later crashed by actor Eddie Griffin. Friend of S:S:L, Matt Groner, picked up the wrecked Ferrari and promptly proceeded to put the sacred Enzo back together. This weekend we headed down to MSR Houston to hang out with friend of S:S:L, Michael Mills, who asked us if we wanted to go for a spin. Uh, Fluck yes! Enjoy the video and turn up the volume!
Please welcome a new writer to the Speed:Sport:Life, Rob Krider. Rob was the staff writer for NASA NorCal last year, and has been published in AutoWeek and MotoRacing Magazine. Rob currently is a columnist for the Santa Maria Sun but wants to share his adventures and knowledge with a great group of car guys such as the readers of Speed:Sport:Life. His column, Racer Boy, will be running bi-weekly and will cover every type of racing that us normal guys can possibly get involved in…from Pinewood Derby to the Demolition Derby. This week Rob covers Solo 2 Autocross. Please welcome Rob to the S:S:L team! — Zerin
One of the easiest/cheapest/safest ways to get into some type of motorsports is Autocrossing, otherwise known as Solo 2. Autocrossing is a timed event where an individual car maneuvers around a coned off twisty racecourse which is usually located in a large parking lot or abandoned air field. Each entrant gets three to five shots at going around the course as fast as possible and the fastest time wins. Motorsports glory is yours to be had.
Story by Jack Baruth, race photography by Dave Everest
It’s been a hell of an off-season. We’d ended 2008 with a reasonably fast car, finishing 5th out of 23 in both of the NASA National Champioship Qualifying Races and winning a lightly-attended season finale at Putnam Park, but we also knew that time doesn’t stand still. Our rivals had every intention of building and developing new cars, so we rolled the Green Baron Motorsports #187 Performance Touring “E” Plymouth Neon into the warehouse last October intending to carry out a host of winter upgrades ranging from a new DOHC engine to a comprehensive shock-revalving.
And then my wife informed me that we were going to have our first child, and that we needed to get our act together for impending parenthood. And then she had an emergency, premature C-section on April 19th, delivering a three-pound little fellow who observed us patiently every day from behind the Lexan of an incubator. And the Neon sat alone in the warehouse, untouched, gathering dust and forgotten by the world.
While our competition posted on their blogs about “dyno days” and “tuning sessions”, I sat in the infant care unit, reading Iain M. Banks books and occasionally hopping up out of my seat when little John forgot to breathe or experienced a “spell” of decreased heart rate. The Mid-Ohio season opener happened without us. After five weeks, my son was to the point where I could go racing without worrying that I would miss his last day on Earth… so racing we went.
Story by Byron Hurd. Photos by the author, Dave Everest, and an uncredited S:S:L team member.
Ayrton Senna once said he had no idols. He admired only the three things mentioned in the title of this piece. As human beings, we prove time and again that adversity can more quickly extract them from us than any other condition. If you ask me though, adversity, at least as an abstract, is incredibly played-out. Go watch a college football game this weekend and you’ll see what I mean. A freshman quarterback has to prove his merit in the face of adversity. Every third athlete has come from a background of adversity. The 24-year-old, super-super-senior wide receiver is more mature than his teammates because he’s encountered ‘adversity.’ Here’s a hint: He’s more mature because he’s 24, and not passing his Chem 200 final because he was out banging cheerleaders until 4:00 a.m. is not evidence of overcoming adversity. Now that I think about it, aspiring sports journos: Please stop using that damned word. Either buy a thesaurus or bite the bullet on that sports management degree. We all know it’s your backup, anyway.
The point? **** happens. And when it happens, you either step up or piss off. That’s the standard by which the real world measures character, and the real world came a-knocking many times this year for Green Baron Motor Sports. This season wasn’t glamorous — Hell, at times, it was barely dignified — but it was a test of personality and commitment.
The good news from today’s NASA National Championships can all be seen in the photo: I’m alive and the #187 Neon doesn’t have a scratch on it. That’s the end of the good news.
The bad news can also be seen in the photo. Notice the front wheel; it’s different. That’s because, during the pace car “out lap” of the championship race, a fifty-cent tire valve failed and deflated our left front tire. We had no choice but to dash into the pits - but this ain’t NASCAR, and we don’t change tires in the pits. While the race started for the other seventeen cars in the “Performance Touring E” class, I drove to the garage where the crew performed a thirty-second tire change. I rejoined the race two and a half laps down.
Imagine the heartbreak, then, to find out that I could easily keep pace with the class leaders as they battled for position ahead. We’d have had solid heat for the front-runners today, but instead I was stuck trying to unlap myself. When a twenty-minute Safety Car period occurred just short of the halfway point, allowing the leaders to come back around to my back bumper, I realized that we were done for the year.
With ten minutes left to go in the race, I decided to push the car to its limits - but the limit can be a tricky thing with mismatched tires, and I soon found myself sailing off-track into the grass and losing all the time I’d gained in my charge. We finished seventeenth of eighteen cars.
Our friends in the Pakistan Express team finished a respectable fourth despite blowing a head gasket on the final lap, and Michael Mills finished third in the German Touring Series race. So the news wasn’t bad all-around. We returned home to find that Hurricane Ike had basically shut off the power - so once my laptop’s battery winds down, we’ll have nothing to do but sit in the dark.
On days like this, Formula One drivers always say “For sure, it was a day to forget.” So there you have it. We showed our pace over the course of the week in both wet and dry conditions, but when it mattered we were defeated by a fifty-cent tire valve. What can you do? A day to forget, for sure.
Quick update: Today was the first of two qualifying race days for Sunday’s championship race. The Green Baron Motorsports Neon qualified in fourth place out of 14 thanks to my remarkably light and deft touch in the rain. The competition had Hoosier Rains; we had Toyo R888s, but with a little luck we were still able to get a decent qualifying run.
In the race, we fell back to seventh place after four hard-fought laps. I literally couldn’t figure out how my competition was carrying so much speed into Turn Six… but when two of the cars ahead of me went off the track at full speed, hitting each other and tossing bodywork into the air, as the guy behind me brake-locked right into my rear bumper, I realized that nobody could carry that much speed. A little bit of luck allowed me to make the turn safely in full Tokyo Drift mode while the guy behind me ran off into “China Beach” as well.
That put us in fifth… but wait! It turns out that the fellow who made a stirring run from eighth place to victory did it mostly by passing other cars under yellow-flag conditions. That’s a no-no. So we’re probably in fourth place as of tonight.
The two cars which hit in China Beach, piloted by Kevin Fandozzi and our friend/garagemate Faisal Ahmad, are on the way to emergency sessions on frame racks. They’ll be back in time to race tomorrow, as crazy as that sounds!
The good news: it’s going to keep raining. We don’t have the power to win this Championship - but in the rain, we might have the luck. Keep your fingers crossed!
We’ll make this quick: It’s time for the 2008 NASA National Championships, and your Speed:Sport:Life team is there to provide the appropriate amount of schadenfreude for our readers and fans. Live timing and scoring can be found throughout the day at
http://drivenasa.com/liveresults/
so if you’re bored beyond belief, why not check it out? This year, the site is represented by the #187 PTE car run by yours truly, a Lapis Blue 1995 Plymouth Neon Sport, and the #416 GTS-5 BMW M3 of MSR Houston Director of Track Operations Michael Mills.
Today’s been a tough, but interesting, day. During the morning session, I was on the way to our fastest-ever time, predicted by my on-board Traqmate as a 1:44.7, when I went off backwards at Turn 11 and thoroughly dusted-up our valiant little Plymouth. (As opposed to our little Plymouth Valiant. Get it?) The second session started off nearly as discouragingly when I ruined our Hankook race tires by flat-spotting them at the entrance to Mid-Ohio’s Carousel turn. Luckily we had a brand-new set of Hoosier R6es from Phil’s Tire Service, so we spent the last session of the day carefully scrubbing them in. Despite my inability to put together a really top-notch lap in any of these sessions, we’re still hovering around the middle of the timesheets. At the end of the evening, we discovered that my “off” had reset our rear camber to zero. If we can fix that tomorrow and realign the car, we should be able to ride our new Hoosiers into the 1:44 range - not enough to win, but enough to see the edge of the podium if our luck holds.
Friday and Saturday are the qualifying races. These six-lap scrambles will determine where we start for Sunday’s championship race, which should run about eighteen laps or forty minutes, whichever comes first. There’s rain on the horizon, which could reshuffle the competitive deck as thoroughly as it did for this past weekend’s F1 race.
Meanwhile, Michael Mills has been learning Mid-Ohio. He’s not yet where he wants to be, time-wise, but he’s seeing high speeds on the back straight and we expect he’ll pull within sniffing distance of the leaders tomorrow. It would be unwise to count him out of the running just yet.
More details as we have them. In the meantime, cross your fingers!
By 1999, productivity improvements at Chrysler’s Neon assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois had reduced build time to slightly above twenty-three hours per car. One would think, therefore, that building a Neon racecar from a bare shell in just under thirty days wouldn’t be too tough, right? I mean, that’s way longer than twenty-three hours. Of course, we’d also have to weld in a full Grand-Am spec cage, perform some tricky relocation of the driver seat and controls, and paint it by hand. Still, how tough could it be?
The answer is - plenty tough. Our prep crew, now numbering more than a dozen part-time workers in addition to prep chief Matt “Tinman” Johnston and “Neon” Dave Everest, has been cranking well past midnight for the past few weeks getting the car squared away, but until this morning it wasn’t certain that we would even be able to show up for our tech inspection tomorrow.
The good news is that we are going to make it. We’ve gone from zero to Neon in under a month, a feat that would be too much for many Grand-Am teams to accomplish - and with a total cost well under ten grand. Even with the three-thousand-dollar fee from Mid-Ohio for damage incurred to the track during the July 13 crash, it was still slightly cheaper to build our Neon than it would have been to buy a new Neon ACR in 1995. Well, that’s the positive manner in which we’ve chosen to look at it, anyway.
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