RMSolo Event #9

Hey sorry it took so long to get this one up, its been a busy couple of days.

Anyway I really think I was more excited about this race than the first one I ever did. The reason... I got some race tires! Kumho V700s, a bit used but still have the rest of the season left in them. They are 265/45/16's! How does that work? Well they are mounted on ~14lb FD RX-7 wheels! My friend (Clark Peach, 95GSTpeach), who also has a 98 GSX, bought the wheels, I got the 25mm spacers that we need to run the wheels and so we share the wheels, when I autocross, and when he drags/shows.

Now on to the race, we showed up in the lot at Dicks Sporting Goods Park in Denver, CO around 7. Clark got going on the wheel changing while I ran over to regestration. I picked up a map of the course and just looked at it like . After getting the wheels all setup and just being in aw of how cool they look, I went over to walk the course. This was the first one where I got out on the course and actually had to stop and watch someone else do it. You see the course started out with a little right-left jog over start an then a right turn into a 4 cone slalom. after that there was a right hand loop that confused everyone in the walk. But we figured it out. You basically drove halfway up the straight right turn around this looping slalom and then proceed to go all the way through the straight into a long right had sweeper, into a two cone slalom, sharp righthand into a 3 cone slalom into a 180* turn that was a slalom, into a 120* right turn over finish. Overall as you can see the theme of the day was slaloms.

My first run I went out there with some cold tires and started drifting around the slalom loop and happened to miss a gate, DNF. The second one out I ran a 46.705 which would have been my fastest time but I hit a cone, and for whatever reason it was scored a DNF. Well I was really upset they messed that one up and ran around trying to get it fixed and kind of lost my focus. My thrid run I ran a CLEAN 47.337, which was good but not great. On the final run I ran 46.909, good enough for 8th place out of 18. The good news is I beat 2 of the 3 guys I wanted to beat and was only .150 off of the other guys time. I got a 869 points score which is 29 more than my previous best.

I have a lot to work on with these race tires. My brake points were still pretty conservative as if I was still on the street tires. But I did realize I also made a few mistakes that the race tires were able to bail me out of, which is nice but I know I could have been faster with out the mistakes. Also the race tires overshadowed the new Fidanza short shifter I put in the night before which really helped but I was still getting used to it and kind of threw me off when racing.

I had Clark order some Super Blue Brake fluid that we'll put in before the next race in the brakes and clutch and hopefully that will help the braking points. I'm going to shoot for a 900 point day and a top 3 finish, which shouldn't be to far off this next race.

If I can say anything to new autocrossers it is that, yes tires make all the difference in the world! But it was good to start on streets so I could easily see here I messed up. On the R-compounds I really had to think about what I did wrong.

- Jordan Butterfield

Heres some Pic's but they were taken on my really bad camera, so sorry for the low quality.

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