4 of us out of Pittsburgh went to the rally cross nationals, and 3 came back with money.
in the awd m4 class, Pittsburgh swept the class with a 1-2-3 finish. this class was probably the most contested–and smithton rally cross racers went 1-2-3 goes to show the caliber of racing we do have here locally. mind you, m4 pits modified from stock awd cars against each other. so turbo and all motor cars are in same class. all 3 Pittsburgh drivers are all motor cars too!
first went out to Jon Kramar (pit crew on the board), 2nd went to Matt Berkible (Berk) and 3rd went to J Smith (dirty)
i ran my civic in the 2wd class for stock fwd cars (sf). i placed 4th. i was disappointed in my driving, but gained much needed experienced. Now i know where i need to have my car set up at to run (i.e. interpretation of “stock”) --and more importantly i know where i have to have to be at mentally to drive.
edit-- i took 4th, not 5th. “official” results were posted today. go figure. i was 2 seconds out of 3rd, 7 out of 2nd ging into my last 3 runs before i self destructed.
SCCA’s idea of stock is always a little tweaked lol. I kinda understand what you mean by the mental thing & driving. Thats awesome you guys hit up a bigger event, nice job on the wins!
very true. stock in my class was supposed to be full interior, all oem stuff. i know one car was less interior–which i wont bitch about b/c i know that wasnt going to make a difference. As for all oem stuff-- i see you can play w/ springs and struts…
basically, i need to replace bushings, redo my suspension and get rid of the 200k stock units.
mentally-- i had a run that felt good, but was not timed/timer error. so i had to hot lap it. that played w/ my head–i was pissed off from them missing my time. ended up going off course in 2 spots due to over driving. That left me pushing on my other runs to make up time. At the end of the am session (5 runs), i was in 5th-- 10 seconds back of 3rd. Then i pushed even harder in the pm and f’d up. If i were to have run “normal” on all my runs plus my f’d up run i probably would have battled for 2nd/3rd.
i dont think i could have caught 1st place guy no matter what. good driver and good car. 2008 civic si, and the guy could drive.
thats awsome salor. Was this is dirt? was the track like smithton? was it tight or opened up? what would i race in the turbo car? at that type of event?
this track was nothing like we have run on. it was elevation changes, dirt, gravel, clay, mud. think of a field w/ tall ass grass, and roads cut out in it. kinda like riding a quad off road but in a car. it seemed like it was atleast 5 miles long. dont know actual distance. figure how much land you can cover in 2nd gear pinned for 2:25 seconds…
joe, you would have been in modifed 2wd class. nissan sentra ser’s were the hot car. guy was running fastest laps of the day at like 2:15. Him and Kramar were battling for ftd.
next race at summit point is in august or september, im deffinitely going!
i’ll try to find a video of the track to give you an ideal.
here is a video of the course. this is an older course design from the race right before the nationals. However, alot of the sections were similar to this past race. past race had a more sections in it as well.
How many runs do you guys get? Are their practice runs or do you just go out and do it? Your experience sounds sort of like some of the national tours I’ve done. Where you only get 3 runs to get it right and thats it. My very first one I got red flagged on my last run due to the timer malfunctioning. It was hard to keep my head in it after that for the final run, plus the tires had got too hot. Usually I try and get a battle plan in my head, like just get the first run down clean and go for speed on the next two. I could spend some time ranting about the mental prep side of it, but nobody wants to read that lol. Nice video too looked like a pretty long course.
anyone who is going with a vehicle thats able to tow that isnt running? id split fuel costs with you. i have access to a trailer but nothing to tow it with(my car gets 13mpg and i dont feel like driving it the whole way down there)
oh i have a few more questions and these are more specifically for cabby or those who ran in m4
do you know what times the guys in m4 were running?
atleast the 4 of us who went to nationals will go to the normal race. more the merrier. we all drive our cars down.
not sure what mod 4 was running time wise, but definitely running fastest times of the day. top 3 were all from smithton, and they were running older body imprezzas 93 body styles. all were all motor w/ either a 2.2 or 2.5 in them w/ normal bolt ons-- being exhaust, headers, normal bolt ons. not hp monsters but good useable power. also had good tires. most of their class was turbo cars.
as for smithton, classes are split the following
na fwd
forced induction fwd
na rwd
forced induction rwd
na awd
forced induction awd.
rental car class (rental car is a fwd non turbo 1st gen dsm)
3 cars make a class, if not enough cars in your class you get grouped in w/ an other class-- example, if only 1 rwd car shows up, it will run w/ fwd guys. or if 1 awd t shows up, will run w/ awd n/a guys.
definitely different class structure than scca to keep it simple and fun. only $20 to run, and the rental class is going to be $35 since you are beating on a car we have to maintain. so if it breaks, we gotta fix it and money from that class goes back toward the car.