Hey guys. Been a while. Well the wife forced me to give up the SVT in favor of a new Mustang GT last fall. And we are now divorced!
Anyway, finally got my track car done a couple months ago (1986 ITS RX7) and made my on track debut at Gateway in St. Louis a couple weeks ago. I've been lurking this board since I lost the SVT and decided to touch base. OK maybe brag a bit too!
We had a great weekend!
We went to Gateway International in St. Louis a couple weekends ago for a drivers school on Friday and Saturday and our first regional race on Sunday. The school was great. Got about 80 laps in between the two days which allowed me to learn the track very well. By the end of Saturday we were turning consistent 1:15 lap times. The track record for my class is a 1:10. I was VERY pleased with the car. Very neutral, some understeer under throttle, VERY stable under braking. My junk yard motor was performing remarkably well despite an uncooperative fuel pressure regulator. Got my liscense with flying colors and didn't put a scratch on the car.
Sunday we hit the track for the 25 minute practice/qualifying session with alot of confidence. We were the fastest ITS car there by far (there were about 6 or 8 cars in the class and they were all novices like myself, guess the Easter holiday kept the regulars away?). On one of my first laps a couple cars had a bit of a moment in front of me and I got on the brakes real hard to make sure I didn't get collected. As it turns out I flatspotted the left front VERY badly. Even with a bad vibration we went on to qualify at a 1:13. We took the 4th grid position. We sat 4th overall out of 37 total cars in our run group. Only 3 ITE cars out qualified us. We out qualified all the V8 AS cars in our group! Only three seconds off a track record on our first weekend with a new car, new driver and zero wrench turning all weekend. We were VERY pleased. Next closest ITS car was 18th overall and qualified at a 1:21.
We had to mount a set of sticker tires for the race on the front because of the flatspot. Wasn't too happy about that but it was my fault. Anyway at the start I dropped back to about 8th. Just playing it safe because we had such an advantage in class at the start. Ended up racing a well driven Miata for about 3 laps before making the pass stick and ending up 6th overall and 1st in class. Turns out we were moved up to 5th when the overall winner was penalized post-race.
My overall impressions of a race prepped 2nd gen RX7 are very high! Very predictable handling, decent power though the chassis could certainly handle more than the stock NA we're allowed can make. AWESOME brakes. We were killing alot of the big AS cars (Camaros and Mustangs) under braking coming off the oval. I've got a couple adjustments in mind for May when we go back to Gateway. Maybe we can go after the track record? I know we can get into the 1:12s at least.
Gotta thank my guys, Mike and Joe, for helping me out. Luckily we didn't have to turn a single wrench all weekend except to rotate tires and then to change a couple. We're heading to IRP on the 19-21st. Wish us luck!
Chris
http://community.webshots.com/user/rrxp689
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