2012 SCCA Texas National Tour This Weekend

Satellite View of the Texas A&M Riverside Campus 

My Parents, Ali and I made traveled to College Station, TX for a fun weekend of family and racing.  My Dad and I are racing our E Street Prepared Camaro Z28 in the SCCA Texas National Tour at the Texas A&M Riverside Campus. The A&M Riverside Campus (seen in photo above) is a huge X-shaped intersection of old concrete runways and taxiways that is capable of hosting 90+ second courses.  This is our first National event in the Camaro and actually my Dad's first time to autocross it. He ran an EVO Advantage school this morning to get some base seat time and feedback from myself and EVO instructors. He did a great job and took to the new car nicely especially considering his normal ride is a FWD Mini Cooper on street tires.

Paddock Setup for the TX Nationl Tour - weather was a little gloomy this morning!

There are 170+ cars registered for the event and hopefully the weather will stay dry. Either way, we run in the first heat tomorrow with the first car off at 9AM. As always, it will be a three run shootout for the win!

E Street Prepared Entry List:


Here are some links:

Event Homepage

Live Timing & Scoring

Live Radio Broadcast

Updated 2012 Racing Calendar

Here is my updated 2012 Racing Calendar

You can also view it in the calendar tab above. Basically, I only have SCCA Solo events scheduled for the ESP Camaro. We are trying to run three National Tour events in addition to the Solo National Championships in September and a full season of local autocrossing with Equipe Rapide Sports Car Club . Clearly, the focus for this year is developing and racing the Camaro. Unfortunately, I had several conflicts that are forcing me to choose between several large evens throughout the year. The SCCA Texas ProSolo event in Mineral Wells, TX is one of two National SCCA autocrosses in Texas this year, but it is the same weekend as my wedding - not much compromise here! Also this weekend, the SCCA Texas National Tour conflicts with the Lone Star Grand Prix - epic karting street race being run on part of the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix Formula 1 street course.

However, 2012 is still shaping up to be an exciting in and out of racing. I am looking forward to continue competing Nationally with the SCCA and hoping to get back in the shifter kart soon. Stay tuned for race results and onboard video as the season progresses!

Leo Parente of Drive TV with the Palatov D4

The Palatov D4 is a project I've been following since college when a couple of buddies and I were looking into building our own A-Mod SCCA racer. Our Miata-based open-wheeler powered by a Yamaha YZR-1000 engine never panned out, but the Palatov is looking pretty good now. 

The video below is part of the Shakedown series on Drive TV which is one of my favorite online racing/car shows. Leo Parente does a great job breaking their test session down and comparing it to the Sim Raceway version of the car. Check it out below:

New Race Wheels for the ESP Camaro

I got some shiny new wheels for the ESP Camaro in the mail yesterday. There are CCW Classic Race wheels and will be our second set of dry-tire race wheels along with the Forgeline Competition RS wheels that we currently have. These CCW wheels are a 3-piece design which allow us to more easily  make offset and rim width adjustments. 

LG Motorsports ZR1 Hillclimb car

LG Motorsports ZR1 Hillclimb Racecar

I saw this beast on a lift in the LG Motorsports shop when I dynoed the Camaro last weekend. After talking to one of the LG employees, I looked up the YouTube video of their ZR1 with Lou Gigliotti driving the Spectre 341 Challenge hillclimb in Nevada. The video is pretty impressive especially since this course is known as a widowmaker...check it out below.

This looks like an awesome event. Growing up on the East Coast, I became a big fan of hillclimbing and really wanted to race our Crossle Formula Ford on some of the famouns Pennsylvania and North Carolina hillclimb runs. I never got the chance so I think I just added a new race to my bucket list with the extra goal of making this elite club - 3:41 Club. I think the ESP Camaro with some sticky Goodyear DOT tires could do it....

Equipe Rapide Challenge Cup # 1

I raced with the Equipe Rapide Sports Car Club in Dallas, TX this past weekend for their 1st Challenge Cup autocross of the season. I competed in X-class which is basically their "Pro" class and is PAX index based. We had 10 competitors on Sunday ranging from FM Formula 500s to STS Honda CRXs and a few Street Prepared cars in between.

The autocross was held Resistol Arena in Mesquite, TX which is an active Rodeo arena. We raced in a side-lot that is sloped concrete. Personally, I thought not a great lot for autocrossing (too small, surrounded by curbs), but beggars can't be choosers and there was some good National racers their to compete with. As you can see from the results, runs were in the 23 to 30s range which is the shortest course I have ever competed on.

Here are full results

With the Equipe Rapide club, racers generally get 6 runs - the first 4 runs are your regular class competition runs, but you can buy 2 more runs for $10 to compete in the Rapide Pax class which is basically a PAX index-based shootout for open to all cometitors. It pays a small amount of money and is a fun way to get some extra cracks at the course. As you can see above, I finished 2nd in X class by 0.032s behind 7-time ESP National Champion Mark Madarash. We were both on new tires for this event it was a pretty even match despite the fact that the course was very different from the larger National event courses. This was my first event on the Goodyear Eagle RS tire while Madarash was on Hoosier A6 tires. The Goodyear tire performed very well against Mark and the Hoosier tires. With some more seat time on the Goodyear tire on larger courses, I think it was very capable of taking home National Tour victories. In the Rapide Pax shootout, I picked up 0.3s to improve to a 24.5s run, but it seemed a lot of the fast competitors picked up significant time also so I finished 5th out of 73 competitors and took home $20. I gave the $20 to my faithful crew member Ali for all of her hard work.....high paying job, right!

Here is some onboard video (driver view and wheel view) from the event:

New Truck and Trailer Added to the Fleet

Ali and I made some new acquisitions in the racecar towing department this off-season. We knew going into the Winter that our 2003 Dodge Dakota was not going to cut it for long-distance towing with a full-size racecar....it worked for the kart, but the Camaro is just "slightly" heavier.

Here is the new rig:

The new tow vehicle and Ali's daily driver is a 2012 Ford F-150 Ecoboost SuperCrew 4x4. The Ecoboost engine is a 3.5L direct-injection twin-turbo V6 monster that sports big power (365HP @ 5000 RPM, 420ft-lb @2,500 RPM), V8-beating fuel economy, and great towing capacity (9,800 pounds). The torque delivery on this truck is very very smooth and it really does pull hard when get into the loud pedal. We towed with the new truck for the first time this past weekend and it performed very well especially in the hilly sections between Abilene and San Angelo (yes, there are hills in Texas).

Here is the ESP Camaro's new chariot:

My new trailer was made by The Trailer Shop in Dallas, TX. It was custom made to order and they have great customer service....they even served Ali and I fajitas at their friend's cookout when we went to pick the trailer up! The trailer is 18' long by 83" wide and fits the Camaro very nicely. The toolbox on the front runs the full width of the trailer and is 2' deep and 3' tall. It has locking doors on both ends which makes for easy loading. It's great for storing spare parts, tools, ratchet straps....you name it. With the 4' dovetail on the end of the trailer, the lowered Camaro and it's very low front air dam load with no problem.

Busy Weekend Starting with Baseline Dyno Run on Saturday

Ali and I had a busy weekend this past Saturday. We left at 5AM from San Angelo driving the truck and the Camaro up to Dallas. I went straight to LG Motorsports in Wylie, TX for 3 baseline dyno pulls on the ESP Camaro before wedding meetings, picking up my new trailer (more details/pictures to come), and then autocrossing the Camaro on Sunday. As for the dyno, I wanted to run a quick check on the Camaro pre-season to make sure the car was making adequate power and that there were no engine issues apparent from the horsepower/torque curves.

LG uses a Dynojet brand dyno. The Camaro's peak numbers were 340whp and 355wtq.  This peak values don't mean a whole lot since every dyno will read differently but the curves looked good and stacked up well to other LS1-powered cars that LG Motorsports had tested. Here is some GoPro video that I shot of two dyno pulls. For this video, I attached the suction cup GoPro mount to the shop so I didn't have to hold the camera....this mount has many uses!

Update on the ESP Camaro

I've been putting some work in on the ESP Camaro and planning the 2012 Season over the past few weeks. 

Here are some photos of the progress:

 I put on new vinyl number plates made by SPS. The car will have an Orange/White theme as it develops so this should work nicely. I also have my Goodyear contingency sticks and some other various sponsor decals placed on the car now. Starting to look like racecar!

I installed 2-point UMI Performance sub-frame connectors courtesy of Strano Performance Parts.  

I also mounted up the 315/35ZR17 Goodyear Eagle RS sneakers that I will be running this year. This first set will be used at local events and for testing. 

After these changes, I removed the trailer hitch finally (because I bought at trailer, more on this later) which removed a hefty 31.4 off the back end of the car. I also changed the engine and transmission oil with some quality Red Line products. The car is ready for it's first race this weekend of 2012! Before my first SCCA National Tour event in March, the main goal will be tire testing, suspension tuning, and weight reduction through an aftermarket battery, removing the A/C unit, and removing the radio/speakers. Got to keep making this car faster because you never know how things will shake out at the Solo Nationals this year.

Tires Tires Tires.....

I will be running Goodyear Eagle RS tires on my ESP Camaro Z28 this year. I just a received a shipment of 315/35ZR17 tires that should last me the full season. Hopefully, I can help put Goodyear on the top step at this year's Solo Nationals in Lincoln, Nebraska. I can't wait to put some laps on the fresh sneakers!