Daily Coverage – SCCA Runoffs ’20 Road America

10/11 – The Big Day

Quoting my brother BJ H – “Not the race we wanted but props to >this guy< for bringing it home in one piece and winning the breakthrough performance award. Proud of my baby brother.” – Overall the weather today sucked. It was supposed to be warm and sunny and it’s cold, overcast, and windy. I wasn’t setting any personal bests in this weather. Also had to swap visors (below). I added .5lbs more air to tires. Removed one .072″ camber shim from RR and fuel was full to filler neck in case we’re green the whole race.

Either way, the 2020 Runoffs are in the books I’m not sure what happened today. In Q3 I had so much grip and was looking forward to the race. Today it was a little cooler, but I couldn’t get any front end grip. Using the bar didn’t do anything, just lots of understeer.

I still got the Sunono Hard Charger Award and Hawk Brakes Breakthrough Performance Award. Congrats to Liam Synder (below) for winning the FE2 National Championship and my paddock neighbor Owen McAllister for grabbing a great P4 and fastest lap!

10/10 – Race Day 2

• 0919 – Runoffs are live. Tune in right now to cheer on my friends Beth and Amy in AS! – Mustangs running 1-2-3
• 0938 – Holy $#1T! this race is nuts, drift city. These dude are burning up their tires bad. Sliding a ton. Beth is all over John Heinricy.
• 0943 – Ohhhh nooo! Andy’s car broke going into T1!  Amy got her pass done! This race is cray.
• 0944 – New leader just broke!!! Top 2 Mustangs are out
• 0945 – Amy up top P4 and catching P3
• 0957 – Holy $#1T!  Amy got P3 on a drag race across the finish line!!!!!!! Hell yes!!!!

Broadcast and Timing/Scoring: https://www.scca.com/events/1995744-2020-scca-national-championship-runoffs/event_sessions/latest

I don’t race until Sunday afternoon. I’ll have a bunch of stuff to dump later today. Coverage same as last year. CBS Sports coverage for live stream and later TV broadcast. Stay tuned! and don’t forget to use Paddock-Pal to follow the schedule of events. My paddock neighbor made up 21 places in the SM race and still finished in the 40’s

Meanwhile, the weather is gorgeous here

10/8 – Hurry up and Wait!

OK! Qualifying is in the books and it didn’t go as well as it should have.This was my first time at Road America and this track is really challenging, it’s very high speed and it’s a car destroyer when you get it wrong. The course is 4 miles long so if you make a mistake it takes a while to recoup from it. I signed up for only the last test day which was three sessions of combined FE2, FC, FX, FA, P1, P2. So it was a lot of cars and of course a lot of crashing.

All three of my test sessions were black flagged before I could get some laps together, not ideal for dialing into a new track. Q1 was the same. A multiple car crash at Canada Corner that brought out black flags and an ambulance. Q2 we had a FCY from a car that blew an engine. Q3 was mostly clear I was able to get some rhythm going, but my best lap I had to slow in the carousel for a car that spun a stuck in the sand. My pace was basically a day behind everyone else from the lack of testing and never being here before. I start a fighting P22, but it’s not a big deal since we are all bunched up and I think there will be at least 2 FCY and some carnage, probably into T5. We have more pace than the Q3 time showed. I was just getting comfortable car and track. Hopefully I can continue the momentum Sunday.

I think we have put a decent setup on the car. I added more preload before Q3 and trimmed rear wing. I will trim some more to get some more speed on the straights, I need the rear to be just loose enough that I don’t die when the rear steps out at high speed. Some positive takeaways are the field is pretty damn tight from front to back. My S1 and S3 and Trap Speeds were decent enough, but man I am slow as hell in S2. If I could have figured out S2 I would have been top 10. I was faster each session and each lap so I am nowhere near my ceiling around this track whereas everyone is dialed in and that’s pretty much as fast as they’ll get. I made though testing and qualifying without hurting the car and I had some close calls so that’s positive and I didn’t flat spot any of my stickers while scrubbing them in, which is nice. Attached is my qualifying lap and the Q3 lap sheet that SCCA publishes. It shows the times, speeds, sector times for everyone. It’s pretty neat.

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10/6 – Qualifying 1

Qualifying starts today and I’m waaaaaaaay off the pace. This is a tough and fast track with little margin for error. Only got in 10 practice laps yesterday. Every session was black flagged for crashes. That doesn’t count all the hot pulls they do here. I need way more laps to figure this place out, but I won’t have them . The track is super bumpy and the kerbs are brutal and slick. Forza didn’t prepare me for that.

The guys paddocked by me pulled and rebuilt their RX7 motor last night and made it out to qualifying today. Meanwhile, my buddy Eric helped me do toe and camber after I decided to explore the T14 gravel trap. His MK stuff is super nice and we have toe bars that mount to the car. Below: This was my from my second lap ever at RA when I was trying to find braking points. I didn’t find it that lap.

We got black flagged in Q1 for a multi car crash in Canada Corner. I got two “hot” laps if you can call them that. We won’t have any cars left at this rate. Sabre Cook has already crashed her car pretty hard twice, but Alliance keeps fixing her up. To be fair, second crash wasn’t her fault. A P2 crashed in front of her at the kink.

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Making some adjustments – More Testing

We spent some time checking my setup on the scales and we discovered that my rake and corner balance were not great…

Next we added gurney’s to the rear wing lower element and on the front wing.

Some solid advice! – I need to remember that.

…and the LED rope light wrapped around the canopy works great! Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

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Test Day 1

It’s 44 deg for the first test day

It’s been raining here all day. Only one FE2 went out for this test session. Only four cars total.

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10/4 – I have arrived!

I made it to Road America and I’ll be racing next Sunday the 11th. I’ll keep everyone posted for the race broadcast schedule. CBS Sports does live stream and later rebroadcasts on cable. So far my class is 25 cars and loaded with past champs, pro drivers, up and coming teenagers…and me

 

I’m pretty excited, but I need to learn the track very quickly. It’s going to be a tough race. These guys and gals are crazy fast. If you wanted to follow me throughout the next 2 weeks, the schedule is available through GTM’s app Paddock-Pal. Stay tuned for more updates with links to the live streams, etc.

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More photos available in the Vault!

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