Well, I wish I could say that I trounced a Type-R or laid waste to the scoobie that schmeared all comers last time out. Regretfully, or perhaps, thankfully, neither one showed. There were 3 WRXs all told, a fast Probe, a Shadow convertible, a Grand Am and a couple others. For the most part, the WRXs were in the hands of newcomers, so I was at a bit of an advantage, though they did get within a second of me. The Probe was up there as well...1.5 seconds off the pace. I think the margin was a tick over half a second on a 30 second course.
The course was not at all what you might think of as optimal for the SVT. It was small, tight, and doubled back on itself to make the most of the the limited square footage. It was new pavement, and the recently sealed surface makes it one of the slipperiest courses to date. Let me put it this way, one of the fastest times of the day was by the HStock winner in a Honda Civic DX (circa 96), and eclipsed my time by half a second or so...that usually doesn't happen around here. My advantage was mostly experience with the surface. I tried to play catchup last time we were there, and my first time was my fastest. This was uncommon for me, and I walked away from that meet with a greater understanding of the the phrase "You have to slow down to go fast". It is just so hard to swallow that when you are looking at a 1-2 second deficit like I am used to. I gridded first, and set the bar high on my first run. A minor improvement on the second. Then I got caught up in fiddling with tire pressures, went too low and understeered my way to slower times on the final two runs. My goal, though, was to be quick out of the gate, and have everyone try to push hard to catch me. The trick was that in order to go fast, you had to be slow and smooth.
In a way, I got lucky that the top WRX in the region did not show today, as he is astoundingly fast. But I will take the trophy with no hestitation
