Phil may have already filed a report on this but I will add my spin.
MOWOG 3 was held Sunday. This is the third autocross of the year
sponsored by the Minnesota Autosports Club. MG listers were in
abundance with Phil Vanner and I upholding the list honor while Mike
Hirschman was there to crew on son Anthony's 944 P wagon and the
one and only Bob Allen showed up to chew the fat and spectate. Bob
felt that discretion was the better part of valor as his Camaro had to get
him home.
Four MG's were running including the A, Phil's Mk 1 Midget, and 2 B's.
This is up from last year when only 1 B typically showed. Good news
for MG fans. Phil and I had the two oldest cars there. Other British Iron
included a Lotus Esprit and a Europa, One TR-6 with some serious mods
but still running street tires, and a Dutton which is a Lotus 7 knock off. For
the weekend, there were three on track breakdowns. The Esprit belched
coolant on the course and the Dutton lost it's clutch. The British were
looking pretty bad until an almost new twin turbo Porsche quit on the track
and had to be pushed out of the way. Luckily these cars come equipped
with handy push bars on the back (this one had a wicked looking biplane
wing). The MG's performed flawlessly all day. As an aside, I was
following the Esprit home when it pulled off to the side- an intermittent
recurring electrical problem. Also the other regular Esprit hot shoe was
absent due to the shift mechanism self destructing and his inability to
figure out how to take it apart without destroying the car. I told Mike that
if I ever talked about buying a Lotus he should whack me up side the
head with a 2 X 4.
The course was set up using various parts of a police training course. It
was a true road course in that if you fell off the road you were on gravel
or grass. There were a few corners with fences very close to them.
Not surprisingly, very few cones were hit all day. It was a fun drive but
one that favored a powerful car. Still it had many widely varied,
challenging corners to keep the interest up and separate the skilled from
the brutal. A fast time was 1:03 to 1:10. Phil and I were turning in times
around 1:20 with his superior handling (front antiroll bar and better tires)
offset by the A's superior power output (how often do you get to say
that?). In an earlier post I had voiced my desire to blow the doors off a
Geo Metro. Alas this was not to happen since the only Geo Metro there
(a convertible, obviously with all of the Metro hot bits attached) beat me
by about 3 seconds if he was telling the truth :-( I think I toasted the
Karman Ghia though. I didn't really pay attention to the times that much
other than Phil's and mine so maybe there were others slower than us
but I wouldn't bet on it. The results will be posted on the MAC site shortly
so we'll see.
I improved about 1 second each of my four runs. The trick seems to be
slow in, fast out since, without a front antiroll bar, throwing the A around
too much unloads the inside rear tire and you can't accelerate out of the
corner. Working the course helped a lot because it gave me a chance to
see how others approached the various turns. Most of my time
improvement came from entering the corners a little slower and leaving
faster along with realizing which corners were real corners and which
ones were "curved straight aways" for the cars with lower power to
weight ratios. There was one fast uphill right hander that you
approached blind on a long straight (I was well into 3rd gear) and was
bordered by a fence and then a ravine that, no matter how much I told
myself to power through, I lifted just before the corner came into view. I
guess I am just a coward. Another fun corner was a 100 degree sharp
right followed by a 200 degree "carousel" left then another 100 degree
right- think of it as going around an English traffic circle backwards. On
my fastest run I had trouble finding second entering this and hit the first
corner slower. Because of this I exited the first corner and got through
the carousel faster and so improved my overall time. Slow in fast out.
In any case a good time was had by all except those who tagged their
cars. I won the "snow tires and no antiroll bars" class as well as the
"vehicles built before 1 Jan 1961" class but pretty much sucked the hind
one otherwise. I have been told, however, that the A looks really good
going around the course with its tail hanging out and leaning from side to
side. My arms get plenty of exercise that's for sure. The tires sound like I
am torturing a cat and that's just an added bonus.
Regards,
Bill Eastman
61 MGA adding a front antiroll bar to its Christmas list. Then we'll go kick
some Geo Metro butt!
|