My future wife and I went to Topeka and had a blast. Here is a quick report
of how it went.
The drive out was a bit shorter than we expected. Since we were driving a
friend car in the event, we just had Sara's daily driver Sunfire. We only had
to stop for gas once, and got into the site by 1 PM. Less than 9 hours
including a gas and Lunch stop. It was just about 600 miles even.
Our region (Chicago, and Wisconsin friends) had already set up a camp for 40
some parking spaces in the paddock. Pat Washburn had his bus there as a
shelter and gathering area for us. Several of our friends were runing the
warmup and pro. The car we were racing ran the warmup. The morning part was
in the rain and he was doing well. Half the HS cars waited to run dry later
and of course went faster. Walking the courses it was apparent these are
HUGE. Well over 200 cones on each course. Seeing the course map does not do
it justice. You don't really notice the size til you walk it and it takes 20
minutes to get around. We were not running til Thurs/Fri, but we came each
day to chear on our friends. I expected times in the 70's, AND is started
raining both tuesday and wednesday. They were running faster then 70's in
very wet conditions, and I am talking nomal stock classes. Watching the mods
run in the rain was very interesting. AM was an absolute mess as the
conditions started very wet and very slowly dried. After second runs Danielle
Engstrom was the most careful and held the car straight to take a large lead,
but the course was drying fast and everyone put on slicks for the final run.
It was still very slick, but the times fel, if you could keep it on course.
John E. got in a pretty god one, but Danielle washed out and hit a cone but
had a raw time plenty fast to still blow away her stellar wet time. EM was
just as wild with cars sliding all over the place. There were two drivers in
an Audi Quattro EP car runing in EMod. The AWD helped in the wet, but his
power to weight ratio deficite was too much for the drying conditions and
they got blown away. Steve Tamandli had some trouble also with rock hard rain
tires and ended up running faster in the wet on his slicks. It will be a
tough year to figure indexes off of due to the constantly changing
conditions. To give an idea how bad it was, The ST cars would have trophied
BP running in the same heat. The AP Porsche 911 3.8 RSR was the most fun to
watch. No matter the legality of the car, Fordahl just plain out drove
everything in the wet. I have never seen any car run that fast on a wet
surface. He could have hung with CART cars. He totaly deserved the 6 second
win in AP.
When we finally got to run we llucked out and had dry conditions for all runs
both days. I was nervous and in a very tough class HS. I knew about where I
could run with a few of the drivers, but many were unknown to me. I have only
been in this HS car for 2 previous events and took a 4th and a second. But in
both cases I was over 2 seconds back to Jeff Cashmore on the total. After one
run, I was more then that back, but hanging on to fifth place in the
trophies. The greater time back made sence with the length of the course, but
I had hoped to close up. I did, chopping off large chunks of time on my
second and third runs, BUT so did everyone else. I was down to 8th after
second runs, and 12th after the third. So much for trophying my first Nat's.
Looking at the standings I felt a bit better, I was only 1 second out of the
trophies, and hundreths from moving up a few places. On the second day I
chopped off some time each run and passed two cars for 10th out of 18. Mid
pack so I am happy with how I did.
Sara drove in the forth heat in the same car. She only had a field of 5 cars
so there would be only 2 trophies. Sharon Shields laid down a very nice first
run, close to my time in HS, but the rest of the class including Sara (with
a cone on it) was back a ways from there. While the rest of the ladies tried
to get a handle on it, Sara chopped some time and stayed off the cones, and
it was good for second place with Denise hitting a cone on her second run
also. Sharon pulled out even more of a lead, so it was a battle for second.
Sara drove a bit harder and was faster in some places, but washed out in
others, result, .002 slower. Denise with cones on both of her runs had to
take it a bit easy and she got a clean one but a bit over a second back from
Sara.
On the second day, being in second and last trophy spot made Sara a bit
nervous. It showed as she went out and had a shaky first run. It was clean,
but not pretty. Denise went out took a good run and was quick enough to take
over 2nd for the 2 day total. Sara had to put the others out of her mind, I
gave her a few pointers on where she was out of place and all, and she took
good mental notes to drop nearly 1.5 seconds on her second run to retake
second. For her third run she choped off another 1/2 second plus. Denise went
out and countered with her best run yet, taking second time for the day, but
it was not enough for the two day total.
My future wife trophied her first time at nationals with a solid second
place.
We both had a wonderful time and look forward to doing more big events next
year, hopefully nationals again too. I will be taking delivery of the
Champion HS car soon from Jeff Cashmore. I know I can't drive it like he
does, but a full year in the car instead of just 3 events should make a bit
of a difference. If the car does move to ES next year, I should not worry,
Jeff's time beat them all solidly again.
Gary M.
32 HS
Sara C.
132 HSL
White Celica ST
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