You probably think that all I do is sit around and watch the weather. If you asked my wife, she'd might even agree with you. But I do have a few other hobbies and there is one I've had pretty much all my life. It's called autocross.
In SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) terms, it used to be called Solo2, now it's just called Solo. Basically it involves one car at a time running a course that consist of cones. Sounds easy enough? The goal is to drive the course as quickly as you can while staying on the course and not hitting any cones. See ... it starts to get a little tougher. Here locally you get four runs and there is no practice. No practice ... you get to walk the course to get familiar with it, but that's it. And the fast guys are battling for hundredths or thousandths or a second. Each run last 40-70 seconds depending on the course size and speed and I can guarantee it will be the quickest 40-70 seconds you've ever had in a car.
All of this probably sounds very easy, and it really is. Anyone with a car that can pass a basic safety inspection can drive. The Atlanta Region of the SCCA has a very active Solo program, with more than a few National Champions in the bunch. Along with that, they also have a very strong Novice driver program to help you learn the ropes about autocrossing. I could go on and on but here is a link to a documentary called "Sea of Cones" that was done by a college kid named Stephen Chiang for his cinematography class. It's very well done and is only about nine minutes long. He does a great job explaining what an autocross is and how they work and talking to people that run them. At the end (and scattered throughout the video) you'll see a green Bugeye Sprite. That car is and has been the current National Champion car in my class for the last several years.
I leave Thursday for a trip to Blytheville, Ark. for the SCCA Tri-State Championship National Tour being held this weekend. All National events are held over two days, driving a different course each day. You only get three runs to go as fast as possible with no mistakes and the courses are never the same so no one has any home course advantage. They take your fastest time from each day and that becomes your final time that the results are based on.
But I'm really excited because I get to drive a car I've never driven before. For the last six years I've been renting a ride from a gentleman named Jim Murphy. It was a F500, a very small (800 pounds with me in it) open wheel car that could really move. I got to drive it at the National Championships five times, managed a fourth, two fifth place finishes, and a seventh. Keep in mind, the fourth place finish was .139 seconds out of third and another .743 seconds out of second. 2010 was the last year I drove it at the Nationals and it rained. I went from fourth place after the first day, to dead last, to fifth at the end of the second day. I was .243 seconds out of fourth, which was .030 out of third, which was .181 seconds out of second. You see how close and competitive it is. And that's your two fastest runs over two days. Here's a link to one of the videos I took from the nose of the car about 1 foot off the ground.
Oh yes, the new car. It's a Jeep! Well, not really but it was built to look like one! The car started life as an Allison Legacy -- a scale tube-frame stock car. A gentleman named Del Long acquired the car, without the body, and began the build in October 2010. He fit a 2.0-liter Chevrolet Cobalt SS turbo motor to the right and forward of the driver’s legs, dropped in a Ford 8” rear end in the back and mated the two with a two-speed Doug Nash transmission. The car initially didn’t have power steering and the steering was pretty hard to manage so Del dropped an electric power steering unit in out of a Toyota Yaris.
It weighs right at 1,800 pounds with me in it and is making about 350 hp and 375 ft lbs of torque running on E85. The tires and sizes are straight off of a Formula Atlantic car and are 13x10 in the front and 13x14 in the rear. Yes, that's 14" wide wheels in the rear. The wheelbase of the car is only 80".
The car has only run about three events since it was built (this is the eighth car Del has built) and one of those being the SCCA Solo National Championships. The car was co-driven to second and third place in the EM (E Modified) class. A little fine tuning and who knows!