Wednesday, June 13, 2007

'07 devens tour STU recap

first off, jay rocks! kickass driving and some well thought out tweaks makes the driver/car combination lethal! top overall pax, faster than daddio on saturday.. jay is on fire! kev was right on jay’s heels with a less prepped car and no longer has a penchant for cones, jan’s driving is really coming together, and aaron is having fun in dsp with his underprepped car (but still nearly trophied). it’s great to see everyone having fun and kicking ass this past weekend.

for those of you that haven’t been to one, a national tour/divisional/prosolo event is a totally different level of autox. 3 runs per day forces you to be on your game and usually you’re going against the very best. not only does your driving have to be spot-on, but your car setup knowledge has to be on-point if you want to do well. the vibe at these events is awesome. great drivers, fast/challenging courses, cool atmosphere.

here’s how STU panned out for me. saturday was wet. the rain had just about stopped but the course was still wet with low grip. i’ve never driven my current setup in the wet so i was stabbing in the dark with settings. turns out it was way loose on the first run so that run was out the window. dialed it back, the course was slowly drying, and the car felt much better but not great. 3rd run, i wasn’t paying enough attention to the nearly dry course and took a run with my wet settings. not good. we had one shot with the dry run and corey took advantage. he was maybe 1.5 seconds ahead, adil was 1 second behind at the end of the day.

sunday was bone dry and the course was very fast and required at least 3 shifts into 3rd gear. carris was shifting into 3rd 4 times in his AS sti. i’m pretty good when it comes to heel-toe.. but the combination of high avg mph and switching back and forth between heel-toe and left foot braking… i was flat-out overwhelmed. i definitely need to work on these high speed courses and shifting seamlessly. chris said if it weren’t for his practice at the plainfield events, he wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. i need to do the same.

adopted holunfie’er, adil, was on a mission on sunday and edged me out by 4 hundredths overall. he was absolutely flying on sunday and put a big lead on the class. adil deserved the spot and i’m glad his evo is getting dialed because i may have to jump ship from sti to evo at the next fast event!

when it comes to stu, corey is the man! he is very experienced and a top-notch competitor. corey really put the hurt on us saturday, making it nearly impossible to catch up. he took advantage of the one opportunity to lay down a fast time, and remained quick enough sunday for the win. all this with a stock tune! damn!

stu is panning out to be a great class to be in.. with adil up to speed, corey getting comfortable with his evo, and me hopefully getting my head out of my ass… we’re all looking forward to seeing how the year progresses. it’s great driving with you guys.. let’s kick some ass in dc.

-dan

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