I had a blast these last two days meeting other 1.8t enthusiasts and the people who make European car happen. We had an oppertunity to spend a full day at GIAC in Irvine yesterday to see a full spectrum of cars get dyno'd ranging from James Enright and myself with stock k03 a4's all the way up to a supercharged 1.8 corrado which you guys will be reading a lot about in the DEC issue. I got a chance to meet with the other competitors in both the Tuner and Enthusiast class and finally put faces to a few audi enthusiasts I've seen post on the forums. Numerous tuners were on hand to witness and assist in the running of the event. Much thanks to Garrett, Andrew, and the rest of the folks at GIAC for their great hospitality.
Thursday night was capped off with a dinner at Eibach Springs' new facility in Corona. The food was great and the setting very relaxed. I think everyone was pretty tired from the long day at GIAC and were just dying to get some rest. We got a chance to meet Kevin Beard of Piloti shoes and each competitor was given a set of Piloti shoes of our choosing. Btw we all were drooling, they're really nice racing/pit shoes. We also were given a chance to meet Gary Sheehan (pro-driver for the event) and he went through his story on how he became a pro Grand Am series driver for Don Istook and his career with Subaru. At the end of the introductions and festivities, Eibach employees took us for a tour of their facilities which I need to add is very large and very impressive.
Post dinner our group of 4 misfits made our way to the lovely ramada inn to play some Halo on the x-box so generously provided by Alan Robles. Suffice it to say he got schooled by James, I got schooled by both of them and Lon... well he gave up too.
Friday Morning rise and shine... by 7:30 we were on the road to wonderful fontucky.. that's fontana for those of you wondering. We made it to the track in good time and were directed towards the infield Nascar garages. When we arrived shortly before 8AM there were only a handful of participants and vendors on scene but this soon changed. The garages went from 5 cars deep to 13 or 14 cars total. Most of us quickly unloaded our cars in our respective garages and prepped the tuned and groomed rides for the road course. When all of the competitors had arrived, we were pulled into a drivers meeting and informed that the morning would start off with a "Parade" lap or 2. Let me just say that when you let die hard motorsport fans out on the track it's hard to get them off. The 2 laps quickly became 4, or 5 for some folks. It was a great way to get the blood pumping.
After a few minor delays the first of the 2wd entrants made its way to the track with Gary Sheehan at the wheels. The track we were running at the speedway was the 15 turn 1.5 mile infield and the road course portion of the event was strictly a time trial. Fastest time of any of your 6 laps was used for scoring. Most people let Gary drive myself included. As the minutes continued to tick away the quattro group was finally called up. (Quattros ran first yesterday at the dyno.) We all drew #'s and as luck would have it, bugzy (lon Mok) was first, James E. 2nd, myself 3rd, and Del Rios TT(you guys will want to read about this car!) fourth and so on. Lon's car was driven by Gary Sheehan until an unfortunate vac-hose blew off. This was quickly remediated by Dave of Ecode Tuning and Lon placed his car back in grid. James soon followed after lon and Gary returned with good words to say about his car.
I handed the keys over to the man in the suit and hoped that the car would hold together for the 6 laps and perform well. The first 3 laps of the 6 are considered warm up, simply put they were throw away laps for gary to get comfortable with the handling, braking, and acceleration characteristics of each car. By the 2nd lap Gary was flogging the car hard through the course and by the third he was pitching the car through the turns at his whim. After the cool down lap Gary returned the car back to staging and meets with the editors to provide his comments for the article to come. I got a chance to speak with Gary for a brief moment and he had some great things to say about the car. Handling was good although there was a slight understeer to it when under constant power. He said that to get the car to pivot he would simply lift and then stop the rotation by getting back onto the gas which is no different than when I am trying to not kill a cone in the local Solo2 Autox. I was shocked to hear that the car was his favorite as far as being fun to drive up to that point. He mentioned that there were no braking issues on the car, and that he was able to brake deeper than most of the other cars that had gone before (which included a few of the tuners). He had pushed the car to it's absolute limit and it just didn't have anymore to give, the k03 can only go so far. So I suppose besides me getting more seat time on regional tracks, the car will be in search of a bit more power.
Drag racing... hmmm Mike dominated... nuff said. =) I was just glad to break into the 15's. The weather was horrible today for racing, muggy and obviously hot. We ended up racing into a 5mph headwind. I ran only 3 times (6 was the limit) and called it quits. We all gathered after the drag racing for a group photo and individual vehicle photos and driver photos. After that was all done the results for the event were announced. I won't say what the final results were but I will say that the prize given to the winners of the Enthusiast and Tuner class is a trip for 2 to Wolfsburg Germany provided by VWoA. Other special awards were handed out and that concluded the event. I'm beat right now and can't wait to get the write up on the car and to read what the editors and Gary Sheehan has to say about my stocker. :) Pictures will come later right now I'm hungry!
Also huge thanks to those at European Car that made this possible!
Rob Mullner, Rob Hutchinson, Sherrie(sp?), Les, Rob, Moya(sp?), and anyone else that I know I am forgetting.
And huge thanks to my sponsors and supportors at PureMotorsports, AMS, H-Sport and TopSpin Design and of course all you european car freaks on the forums I frequent.
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