Greetings from Nashville. Just passing through.
Just completed two days of SCCA autocross at Vermillion County Airport in
Danville, Illinois. Saturday's results were not that great, except it
was nice to be on the road again with a complete car with fresh paint and
chrome. I did take a trophy for First In Class (in a class of 1 car,
whoopie), but the car was a little cranky. I guess it didn't like the
winter tune up and last December's gasoline, couldn't get it past 5500
rpm for all the coughing and sputtering. Also a chance it may have had
some water in the tank. But I did manage to take 4th place on index out
of 14 drivers.
Notable happening for the day was an appearance by Steve Temanly, SCCA
national champ about four times over. He brought out a highly modified
Fiero with a 300 cubic inch V8 running in E-Modified class. That thing
was so fast that he smoked everbody's index time by at least 4 seconds.
It was worth the trip just to see it run.
Then a friend of mine, an F-Stock driver with a Firebird Trans-Am, took
exception to the fact that I beat his scratch time by 0.003 second. He
was implying that I may have tricked out the MGA during its layoff,
figured I couldn't make his car go that fast and offered me a drive for a
fun run. I had a better idea and declined, and instead offered him a
drive in the MGA with an attitude. He accepted, and be it ever so
humble, there's nothing quite like eating crow. He turned in a lap about
20 seconds slower than my best, had some lame excuse about not being able
to downshift into 2nd gear.
On Sunday we had 21 drivers, more than half of which were a single car in
a class and had to be combined into index classes for competition. I got
to run the MGA against a Saturn SC2 with something like 135 horsepower.
The track layout was wide open, looked a lot like a 4-legged drag strip
with long straight sections, so naturally the Saturn had a great time
making the MGA look a little silly, beating my best time by about 3
seconds. Even with that I think I was still 4th on index for the day.
And my friend with the Trans-Am was there again. With a little friendly
coaching on my part, he finally managed to win his class (4 drivers in
F-Stock) by 3/10 second, and also beat my scratch time by 1/10 second
(meaning that I beat the other 3 FS drivers with my MGA). This time I
took him up on his offer to drive his car for a fun run. I took him
along as a passenger (200 pounds of ballast), did just one run, and beat
his best time of the day by 1.6 seconds. I'm pretty sure he won't ever
loan me his car for official competition. (}8^))-V---/ After the
competition the club had a nice picnic in the park in Danville. Then I
headed south and ended up in Nashville before midnight.
Monday I'm heading over to Ocoee, TN (about 3 hours drive east) to do a
little white water rafing in the afternoon on the Ocoee River. In the
evening I think I'll camp out in the rafting company's campground, then
the MGA can have its traditional midnight run up the winding road along
the river (empty road, no Smokeys). 8-O Makes for some nice echos off
the canyon walls in the quiet of the night.
Then on Tuesday it's back over to Chattanooga for GT-23. I'll have a
phone line again for a few days, so I can let you know how it's going.
Back at you later,
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
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