Well, here is the video, this explains for the situation better than I can:
I'm a little bit delayed making this post, but life has been quite busy lately with work and finishing our wedding/honeymoon plans. I autocrossed with Equipe Rapide on March 25th in Mesquite, TX. This was the 2nd Challenge Cup autocross on Equipe Rapide's schedule. As with Challenge Cup # 1, the event was run in the small lots of Resistol Arena. Fast run times were in the 30s range, but unfortunately, I was not able to post a competitive time due to breaking teeth on my ring and pinion gear on my second run. As you can see in the video, I downshifted to 1st gear in a slow hairpin. On the corner exit, when I upshifted 2nd gear, the ring gear broke which invoked some non-so-pleasant noises from the rear end. I had no trouble with the downshift or upshift, so the failure was quite a surprise.
I have a spare GM ring and pinion so I have the parts needed to fix the car (thanks Sam!). The car is up on jackstands and I am in the process of pulling the rear end apart. Hopefully, the car will be driveable again soon.
Here is a quick compilation video from the Texas National Tour put together by Solo Matters. I didn't make the video unfortunately.....maybe next year!
Joe, Stuart, and I were in the shop last night prepping our karts for testing this weekend at Rimrock Raceway in Midland, TX. After getting them fired after a long off-season, we decided to make sure everything was working properly with some good old fashioned donuts.
We are running up to Rimrock Raceway on Friday for a full test day and some practice races. Rimrock will be our home track for the weekend and we'll start running races there starting in June. Joe and I both have our GoPro HD cameras so we should have some onboard action from the testing. It will be good to get back to the kart track!
Event: 2012 SCCA Solo Texas National Tour Date: March 17-18th, 2012 Car: 2001 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 Class: E Street Prepared Tire: Goodyear Eagle RS (AC Compound) Driver (s): Dave Ogburn, David Ogburn (my Father) co-driver
Combined Day 1&2 Results Total Competitors: 162 Class Competitors: 6 Class Finish Overall: P2 (trophy position) Delta to 1st Overall: 3.827s Delta to 1st (raw time, no cones counted) Overall: 2.074 PAX Index Finish Overall: 25th
Day 1 Results Class Finish Day 1: P2 (trophy position) Delta to 1st Day 1: 2.752 Delta to 1st (raw time, no cones counted) Day 1: 0.999s PAX Index Finish Day 1: 62nd
Day 2 Results Class Finish Day 2: P2 (trophy position) Delta to 1st Day 2: 1.075s Delta to 1st (raw time, no cones counted) Day 2: 1.075s PAX Index Finish Day 2: 6th
Lined up on the starting line for Day 1 of the 2012 TX Nat Tour
My Parents, Ali and I traveled to College Station, TX for the 2012 Texas National Tour last weekend. This was my first National Tour event and overall it was a success. My Dad got his first bit of seat time in our Camaro and really enjoyed the car - he is enjoying getting back to RWD! We had 6 competitors in the ESP class for the two-day shootout. Weather was good and luckily the rain stayed away all weekend. On Day 1, I had trouble with the cones and finished up well back from 1st place due to hitting cones on my two fastest runs. My 2nd run was my only clean run of the day and a spat of brake hop near the finish ruined my run and therefore I started Day 2 2.7s back from Mark Madarash and his 1988 Trans Am.
During the Friday test session and Day 1's competition runs, I was struggling with overall braking capacity which was hurting my ability to trail-brake and "point" the car on turn-in. I made a front brake pad compound change before the Day 2 competition runs which made a big difference. Combine that with some better driving and I improved my pace relative to the PAX index results and Mark's times. At day's end, I had a clean 61.1s lap in the bank which was good enough for P6 in PAX out of 162 competitors. However, Mark had another strong day and finished with a 60.0s run that propelled in to Top PAX for Day 2.
For my first National event in the Camaro, I am pleased with the 2nd Place trophy, but finishing 2 seconds in raw pace back from 1st place is strong motivation to improve the car/driver competition as we move toward the Solo Natoinal Championships in September. I have several items to develop on the car that should help me pick up valuable tenths on my ESP class competition. Additionally, the Goodyear Eagle RS tires we are running this year will be a key advantage over my Hoosier-shod compeitors at future National events.
My Dad finished his first ever event in the Camaro in 4th place out of the 6 ESP competitors. He did a great job adapting to the new car and had some fun along the way too! As always, it was great fun racing my family and I am looking forward to our next National Tour event over Memorial Day.
Onboard video from each day's fast runs:
Photos of the variety of cars racing in the Texas Solo scene:
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!
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!
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:
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.
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....
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.
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:
