Best Times Yet...

The national tour has come and gone, but the NER season continues.  Going into Points Event #6, I was 1 point in the lead for season points. I had had several days on which I had been close to Don in his CRX before, but the only day I beat him head to head was the first race of the season and, on that day his car puked power steering fluid in the grid half way through the race and his sway-bar was maladjusted. Yet another win by reliability rather than speed.

Don's been gaining on me ever since, only hampered by the appearance of super-star drivers at the tour, and his inability to make an event early in the season. This event was a put-up or shut up day, and as you can see in my progress chart below I put in what was arguably my best performance ever...



Here's some stats...

• 5 runs, 3rd run fastest.
• In the top 30 raw times of 166 cars
• 70th percentile in pax
• 78th percentile using the SS pax which is closer to my car's actual level
• Still consistently 2% slower than Russ... but now my tires are older by a few runs than his. 
• 92.3 season pax score, locking in a minimum season score of over 457, more than 7 points ahead of last year, and enough to break into the top 50 season pax scores based on last year.

And the result... 3rd place. Brian Kuehl took first and Don Kuehl took second, so Now I am 1 point behind Don in the standings... I did my best but they brought out a secret weapon... they got a wing. And it helped. The car is actually eligible for SMF class which has a much softer PAX, and Brian's time was good enough for 3rd place among all drivers if he had raced as SMF instead of SSM. Don would have been 10th. I had one of my best days, but so did they.

Frustratingly, they, with thier big-budget for improvements found a stupendous deal on the wing too. Me with the tiny budget can't find one under $1000, and nothing over half the allowed wing area under $2000. They got theirs for... wel lets just say a lot less. Apparently the last of it's kind too. Figures.

However, I did my best, got a good time and made em put on their new tires for the second half of the day... so I'm satisfied. Can't be disappointed with that.

So what am I to do about it... Well, keep working on my setup, and keep driving. I have an appointment for a corner balance at Kaizen Tuning next tuesday, and then there's this thing lurking in my basement waiting for me to find some time to finish it...