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Old 06-04-2016, 10:01 PM   #12
IROCZman15
10 Second Club / Meet Coordinator
 
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Roxbury, NJ
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Ok, now for the LONG VERSION.. if anyone cares!

So initially when I had found out that the Optima USCA event was coming to NJ for the first time in the event's short history, I knew I had to go.. and planned on just spectating. After a while, I figured this would be a whole lot funner to compete in it. I got registered months beforehand and spent a lot of time getting the car ready for the 2016 car show season as well as bolting up a whole bunch of speed parts like I do every winter. Before you know it, the event weekend was here.

Since I am low budget and do not have a enclosed trailer, I had decided to drive the car to the event (3hrs south to the bottom of south-western NJ). I had loaded up all sorts of tools, floor jack, jack stands, tent, sleeping bag, clothes, some food, more gear, a full tank of Nitrous-oxide, a spare wheel, etc. Made the drive to the track without a problem. When I pulled in around 3:30pm on Friday, it hit me; how awesome this was going to be. (I had just been down to NJMP the previous weekend for the 24 hours of LeMons event, but this was going to be very different). I unloaded the gear from the car, setup my tent, sorted out my gear and then brought the car over to the tech area where it passed. I was given the required event sponsor decals, so I spent about an hour putting them on the car, and talking to a a bunch of the other drivers who had arrived Friday. I took photos too, see the link to the flickr album. Also.. this weekend (Fri and Saturday) we shared the track/paddock with some NASA racers and with teams from the Champ Tuck world series. NASA cars are purpose built racecars, and champ trucks are big 12,000 pound diesel rigs converted to race. It is a blast to watch these huge machines tearing up the track!

Woke up Saturday morning for the driver's meeting where Jimi Day went over the weekend's schedule and the rules. My car was classed in the GTV class which is for any car 1989 and older which weigh in at 3,200 pounds or more. The other classes are GT, GTS, and GTL. GT is for any 3200 pound or heavier car 1989-present. GTS is for any car with 2 seats (corvettes, vipers, porche, etc). GTL is for any car lighter than 3,200 pounds. I weighed my car while I was there to find out that it weighs in at 3,467 pounds without me in it. So, despite my being a brand new novice driver, the way the points work, is simply by where you place against the cars in your Class,,, and not your driving level.

Saturday was the autocross in the infield, since the champ-truck and NASA cars were running heats on the actual track all day. We were lined up in the staging grid by class and one by one we rolled out, staged, and hit the course. Since the infield paddock at NJMP lightning course is somewhat small, the course was quick, tight, and we had to do two laps on it instead of the normal 1 lap. Having never autocrossed before, I had walked the course with some of the other experienced drivers and they explained a lot about turn-in cones, shifting the weight of the car before a turn, braking points, and driving lines. Learned a ton. After running the first pass and concentrating on not getting lost or missing a turn, I ran 2 more passes and was definitely getting better and was planning on really starting to lean on the car upcoming for the next few. However, it started to rain.. and by rain... I mean it was freakin raining and was not about to stop for hours. All of the cars continued to run in the rain, as did I... and I started getting much more comfortable with throwing the cars weight around in a controlled manner. In the videos the car seems slow, but I was focusing on hitting all the turn-in points etc, rather than just blasting the hell out of the course all out of control. At one point after lunch, Bill, the driver of the black 1979 camaro(with the 1970 front grill on it) took me for a ride in his car. I can't tell you how much I learned from that, and what he showed me. As a matter of fact, right after he took me out, I did another pass in my car and cut down my wet pass time by almost 2 full seconds. as it turns out, Bill and the black camaro took 1st place in the GTV class autocross... that car worked real well. good experienced driver too. Lots of the other super high horsepower cars had some difficulty trying to get the power down with the rain, standing water, and tricky conditions..so it was a real thrill to watch.

Also Saturday all the cars had to be brought through the "Design and Engineering" Judges panel, where a trio of judges look over your car and evaluate it for modifications, parts choices, aesthetics, streetability etc. They take 10 minutes per car and each driver is given a maximum of two minutes to tell them anything/everything important about the car to help the judges opinions.

At around 4:00 they shut the autocross down and there was another drivers meeting. At this point we learned the destination of our "mystery road rally", which is basically a cannon-ball run type part of the event. We learned that we would have to drive about 40 miles or so over to the beach at Wildwood NJ and have our photo taken to prove that the car made it, within a certain amount of time. Cars left at 5pm and we were not allowed to use any trailers, support teams, etc or else we would get a DNF for this portion of the event. The ride took a little over an hour, down wet streets, potholes, etc but I made it. Stopped for dinner with a few of the guys and was convinced to forgo the night in the tent because of extreme rain. Split a cheap hotel room with Buddy, (owner of the green/teal 4th gen camaro).

Got to the track early on Sunday and had another drivers meeting. We were informed that there would be three separate run groups on the track today, all at separate times. I was in the Novice class, which there is a NO PASSING rule. The intermediate and expert classes could pass eachother on the course. Each group was told to go out on the track for a few familiarization laps to learn the turns and layout, and I was lucky enough to have one of the pro drivers come with me. I forget his name but he taught me a ton about braking points, turn-in cones, apex markers, and how to use the whole width of the track. I was still freaking out being nervous, but when it came time to make a few laps under "hot track" green flag start, I spent the first half of the first heat making sure I wasn't going balls out full throttle and was paying attention to the turns and distances. What a rush! Each run group got 5 20 minute sessions on the track. I did session 1, 2, and 4. Session 2 I got on it a little more, but had an issue with the knock sensor falsely triggering the SES light when I would get into 4th gear and downshift to 3rd gear. This causes the computer to pull 20deg ignition timing and go into limp-mode.. which is not what you want when you are hot lap racing on a track. I was able to reset it by pulling into pit lane, turning the car off and back on and getting back out there. This false engine light caused me to drive differently and some laps I would just keep the trans in D (4th gear) and slug around the track. other laps I tried leaving it out of 4th and I ran out of rpms in 3rd gear. Regardless I had a blast each and every second of every lap. If I only had a few hundred more horsepower and a non auto-transmission I would be ecstatic.

I opted out of Session 3 on the track in order to do a few laps in the other event of the day: the speed-stop competition. Basically a marked off course where you launch from the start box, navigate the course and have to come to a complete stop in the stop box..for time. I made a few decent dry runs and on my last dry run I used a 2 second blast of the nitrous, which helped cut about .4 seconds off my dry time. I was really hoping to get into the 11's and I am sure I definitely could have; had it not started to rain again. I switched back to the race track and ran session #4 where there was some rain coming down, but not enough to slop up the whole track though. A mustang spun off and hit the tire wall towards the end of the 20 minute session and then the heat was black-flagged. It was raining more, and I did some more speed-stop passes, actually a bunch just one after the other. Some I didn't even record a time on, just went out there to flog on the car harder and push it more and more.

Since it was apparent the rain was not going to let up, I skipped session 5 and took down my tent, loaded up all the wet gear into bags and loaded stuff into the camaro. around 4:30 we had the awards ceremony, where the first place finisher in each class (GT, GTV, GTL, GTS) is awarded the honor of being invited to the 2016 championship event in Las Vegas. As I said, Bill with the black camaro won the GTV class, and the other class winners were definitely some great drivers with great cars. I hit the road and drove the 3 hours home, despite some areas of heavy traffic and rain even more. Parked the car, unloaded as much as i could; leaving the rest for tomorrow.

I could go on and on and on about how much fun I had and how much I learned and the cool people I met. What a phenomenal experience. I was hoping more people from NJFBOA would attend, but it was cool to hangout with Bill(BTK) and Scott (Bonzo) on saturday. Also, it was very awesome of polar bear, his son (whoops, I meant his nephew my bad!) , and a few buddies to volunteer their time to help out all weekend, running the timing booth and shagging comes... Way to go guys!!! There were some seriously well built cars there, almost all running race tires with roll cages, big horsepower engines and power adders, and hardcore suspension/chassis work to the max. Really cool stuff. Enjoy the photos and links above. Check for coverage on MAV tv in a few months time too.
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1987 IROC-Z - modified


Last edited by IROCZman15; 03-22-2017 at 09:42 AM.
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