2017 Solo Nationals is in the books. The car and both drivers are home safe. As many of you know Hurricane Irma almost put a huge damper on the Co-Driver’s trip. Luckily/Unluckily they couldn’t get back to FL, so Ben and Lauren stayed at nationals and competed. I want to give a huge shout out to all of the friends that took the time to chat and help over the week, it’s crazy how much time you have all week yet everything still seems rushed.
The trip to 2017 Solo Nationals started on Monday morning in Iowa. It was a smooth ride west for 300 or so miles and we ended up pulling into Lincoln mid day on Monday. In true Drew fashion I managed to block the entrance to the site accidentally while we got our wrist bands and waivers. Eric (my co pilot in “Tealy Dan”) immediately updated his Tinder profile requesting to meet women with larger size 2017 Tire Rack Solo Nationals wrist bands in exchange for his small one that was a bit snug on his wrist.
If you’ve never been to nationals it’s a treat to see how big it is and how many people are already there on Monday. The paddock spaces were all pre-assigned by the SCCA. The directions to the Iowa Region paddock were to head north towards Canada and keep going, once your compass turns back south again you’ve made it, hang a right and find your spot. The Canada paddock is always a happening spot with their copious amounts of beer, a pool, and grills. It was a good marker all week long to know we still had a bit to go before getting back to our paddock spots.
The T3hClap.com STi wasn’t racing till Thursday/Friday so we had some time to kill. We spent a good portion of Monday helping Eric in KM get ready for his runs on Tuesday/Wednesday and we chatted up with some friends I only get to see once a year.
Rule #1 and Rule #2 of Solo Nats prep. #1 bring good shoes #2 bring some food to eat. I failed at both of these this year. haha. My shoes were a tattered mess and I only filled my cooler with beer and water. oops. This isn’t my first nationals but I felt like a newbie after these two mixups. I lucked out and my Co-Pilot Eric was prepared and let me borrow a pair of shoes.
Eric’s racing on Tuesday/Wednesday was awesome, i’m going to try and get him to do a little write-up of his experience and his runs so stay tuned for that!
On Wednesday my Co-Driver Ben took the STi out on to the practice course, he hadn’t driven the STi with big aero or r-comps so he was coming into nats kinda blind. I’ve been battling power steering problems all year and I was hoping my most recent fixes took care of it all. We were in luck! Ben’s practice runs only had one little dead spot, and after that it was working 100%!! I was beyond excited to hear that news. Power Steering problems are nerve wracking. T3hClap.com will have a write-up in the near future with the Power Steering troubles/fixes as it’s a bit too long to talk about here. On the practice course we also worked on getting the SoloStorm setup running, turns out I mis-configured the accelerometer so it was off all week. oops.
With the car “ready” we swapped the Volk Racing ZE40s and nearly fresh Hoosier 315/30 A7s onto the STi and began the wait for Thursday mornings runs.
Nationals is a local event on steroids. There are 2 Grids, 100’s and 200’s. This way there is no delay in starting the next heat. Workers are hot swapped, as one heat is ending the workers for the next heat roll in. With 5 run groups per day you’ve got plenty of time to get the car ready and work without much rushing around. After you’re done with your 3 runs you go get weighed (if your class has a minimum weight), here they also perform some standardized tests to all cars to make sure they are legal. In SM this year they checked wing height above the roofline, the rule states the wing can’t be more that 6″ above the roof line. After scales you head to impound (your grid spot) where everyone gets an opportunity to check each others cars to make sure no funny business is happening.
Anyway, Ben and I were 176 and 76 respectively which put us in the 11th grid spot for our heat. I got first hit on the East course on Thursday and the car felt great, as usual I was a bit timid first run and wasn’t on the gas as much as I should’ve been. First run was a 55.788 plenty of time to make up as we go. Ben went out and ran a 55.764 but hit a cone giving him a 2 second penalty.
I kept getting quicker, my 2nd run was a 55.364 and my final run was 54.910, a .8xx second improvement over the day. Ben got a 55.547 but clipped 2 cones on his 2nd run. With 2 dirty runs under his belt and only one more shot at a clean run for day 1 Ben made the final hit of the day. He clocked in a clean 55.853! I know he wanted it to be faster, but clean is just as important as fast. To give everyone a little scope on how fast SM is, 1st place on Thursday clocked a 51.559!! That’s flying.
Onto day 2, we were part of the lucky ones in SM that didn’t have any failures or tweaks to make for Friday. Multiple people had failures throughout the day on Thursday, some got the cars back up and others didn’t. The west course for day 2 was a bit more transitional and had a really nice flow to it. There were a couple spots that surprised me but it drove great. Run 1 for me felt alright but it wasn’t anything spectacular, clocked a 61.980. The west course had a few more bumps than the east course and the stiffly sprung car was a little too stiff for Lincoln’s lot. While preparing the car for Ben’s first runs I was spraying down the intercooler and manifold. I noticed the vacuum line that goes to the boost gauge was unhooked. That’d explain the lack of “spectacular” I was missing in run 1! I hooked it back up and slapped a zip tie on for good measure and Ben went out for his 1st run of day 2. Ben bested my first time by over a second clocking a 60.782! I checked the boost gauge peak/hold feature to confirm we have a functioning boost gauge (and no vacuum leak) and we were good to go!
Time for 2nd and 3rd runs. Ben and I both were clean on all our runs for day 2. I knock nearly 2 seconds off my first run with a 60.041, Ben shaved a little under 2 tenths down to a 60.599. Ben and I were a ways out of the trophies (3 seconds total behind Peter in 7th) but we still pushed to improve on our final runs. I took Ben’s advice of “We’ve got all winter to fix it if you break it, hammer down”. I managed to shave another 4 tenths off my time to get down to a 54.910, as you watch my run you’ll see a few HUGE mistakes. It goes to show there is more time out there with more driver skill. Ben pushed a bit too hard and slowed down a little to clock a 61.041.
Ben got the car weighed and then back to impound. Car weighed right around 3120 on the Nats scales, minimum weight is 2970 for my engine/tire setup in SM.
With everyone in impound hanging out, waiting for unofficial times to be approved by everyone there was some anticipation brewing. You could see a few guys pacing slowly waiting for the results. Shortly after everything was approved two guys pounced on David White and dumped two big coolers of water all over him!! ahaha. I think he knew it was gonna happen, but he sure didn’t know when! The SM grid is a blast to hang out in. Love seeing all the epic cars and the friendships that exists between all the competitors.
With Friday coming to a close we loaded up the car, go kart, bikes, gear, clothing and everything that some how managed to fit in the truck/car/trailer on Monday all over again. It was both harder and easier this time somehow.
We hit up the Friday night banquet. Everyone enjoyed the award ceremony and some much needed burritos and churros. Our plan was to head back on Friday night after the banquet but we opt’d to stay one more night in Lincoln and head east in the morning. This proved to be the right decision as Eric, Derek and I passed the hell out in our borrowed hotel room.
What happens after Nationals? In Iowa we have a couple more events in ’17 then it’s time to prepare for the ’18 season. Below is a quick break down of what we’re thinking for the ’18 season. the “Needs” will get sorted and the “Wants” will get prioritized based on budget and availability. We’ll see how it goes.
Needs:
- stronger clutch
- more diff lockup
- some more suspension tuning
- more seat time (Evo School already scheduled)
- more free weight reduction
- underhood heat management
Wants:
- Power!! Power!! Power!!
- E85
- Header/Uppipe
- Improved intercooling
- Better fueling (both starve fix and supply)
- bigger turbo
- Expensive weight reduction
- 2 piece rear rotors
- carbon driveshaft
- carbon/alumalite splitter
- carbon hood
- Expensive underhood heat management
- rear mounted radiator
- rotated turbo
- custom FMIC
- properly duct’d ancillary coolers
- Expensive drivelive reinforcement/upgrades
- OSGiken Front Diff 1 Way
- Custom final drive
- DSS 800hp rear axles
How much will get done? Will the car have a single color of wheel in ’18? Maybe the bumper will be white finally, maybe the trunk too. hahaha. My car is a mess, visually.
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