...even if my tires hated it. Oh well, Rangers arent for autocross anyway Big thanks (again) to Chris and his SM2 CRX who let me beat up his new Azenis so I could finish my runs. Also, thanks to all who came and braved the rain.

I'm sure glad I had a chance to run before it got too wet.

yup, morning groups got nearly all dry runs. C and D, not so lucky.

agreed, the course was awesome, except for that Mickey Mouse start (IMO). other than that, fun times! we tortured the Azenis...

i'm sure glad i had a chance to run in the rain!... it was way fun..

Today was one of the most fun events I've run in quite some time.. just flat out fun. I loved running in Group C&D in the rain (ableit AWD and turbocharging were helpers ). We seldom get to run in the rain and it was a blast. Thanks so much to Chris Groppi for letting me run his car. His car did everything well and in the short time he's been AutoX'ing, he's a force to reckon with in STU. I am so glad I came down to run this event - excellent job to the Sierra Vista group.

So just how wet did it get? We left right at the start of the third run group........ We saw Mark Huffman
taking his car to grid in the (at that time) light drizzle. He has no top for that car. What dedication.

Also,

What was Mark's best raw time; also Larry Petrucci's? Anyone else there who had a chance at setting Top Pax?
The Fiero?

I'm trying to do a quick Pax for cars in my class (until the results surface....)

it drizzled for the first run through, then rained more and more until it was just too wet to go fast. well, unless you were in an AWD/Turbo car! check out Ty's pics. they show the mighty rooster tails in the later runs. awesome!

Ty Holland's SV Pics - Aug 5, 2007

You didn't try out your new Yokohama "rains" ? i used to love those things in the rain, really closed the gap between me and the Hoosier guys.

I too love to run in the rain! It was awesome. Never mind competition at that point, fun and learning take over.

Don the course was another good one, nice mix of challenges. Thanks to the SV crew for another fun event.

I too took a zillion photos of run groups A and B. The lighting at times was surreal and resulted in some interesting shots. Ty covered all run groups.

August 5, 2007 - Photos by Rob

Thanks Jay!

I had a great time as well. That course was a lot of fun - Thanks to everyone in SV for a great event!

This was an excellent event. Thanks to everyone in SV for hosting it.

Nice pics, both Rob and Ty. Rob caught a really nice shot of all of that pesky black stuff coming off my rear tires while the car is going sideways

Could not resist posting this shot. Notice the state of passenger side front wheel/tire!

Thanks to all that came down.
Don's course design provided some challenges at the start that punished little cars as much if not more than the big cars.
I loved the course, once I got through the first 3 offsets.

Course designers are reminded that the big start off sets are tough on tall tippy cars on skinny tires with the full marshmallow suspension. Car never takes a set, can never apply full power without pushing wide. Yuck.
Guess I need those 235/40's for offsets like these. See the photo at the link below, and you'll see what I mean...thanks Rob for showing it so clearly.

http://www.pbase.com/rsrock/image/83418503

I truly wasted a full second sloshing back and forth on those first three, playing catchup on the rest of the course except for the occasional carrying too much into the bottom right pivot to the left.
Scott, I watched you and the other early gen Miatae slither and change direction through those with ease. Yes, I was jealous.

I worked Group C and things went from sprinkly to full wet. Mark H was mired in the 48's on his full slicks.
There was enough water to prevent him from turning or accelerating quickly.
The interesting thing was that just about everyone in the group got their fastest run on run 4 when things were truly wet.

FTD raw was Keith Lensch in the kart in the 43-44 second range.
Chris and Ben showed some fast AWD times in the 49s (STU)(AS) respectively, I think, in the full wet.
Rob in the S2000 was running 50-51 in the wet.
I think fast PAX is probably between Dave in the M3 and the STU Subie and Larry in the ESP car.

Kudos to both Photogs, those pics with the "Thunder" Mountains are off the hook special.

I managed a 49.1XX (STU=0.821), but that was in the dry.

Larry's best in ESP was (I think) 47.8xx; Dave Y (SM-M3) was 47's dirty with one clean 48.xxx on his first run.

Thanks for the great pics guys!!!!!

nope. decided that putting 200 miles each way on them would be too much. besides, we only caught a little rain in the morning runs, barely sprinkles by Oregon standards. but hey, it was a ton o' fun!

Teresa Clement dug it too:



okay, maybe not as fun as that EVO, but still, you go girl !

oh, and thanks for the thrash in the EVO for me! i could get used to that...

and ditto to what Scott said: excellent pics! especially the sequence shots. "bitchin', dudes!"

I had an absolute blast running in the rain today! The SVMP had much better grip even drenched than I thought it would, worked well with the new RT615s. Thanks to Don for an excellent course, and the whole SV Crew for an event to remember. Check thr new avatar!

And here are the results...
SV 08/07 Draft Results

Thanks to all who braved the elements, and the photographers who caught the action.

There is something wrong with the results, very skewed. Did it rain or something! Thanks for getting making them available so fast.

Here are two in car videos. The first from run group C is for my third and fastest run (50.4s) when rain was increasing. If you watch to the end you can hear the rain on the roof. The second is from run group D and has some hydroplaning evident. Water build up was greater. Just watch my head bounce back and forth on the way out as grip is lost and gained.

Fun, fun, fun!!!

VIDEO-running in the rain RG C

VIDEO-running in the rain RG D - hydroplaning action!

You guys are quick these days, t-shirts for 07 summer series already handed out, and results up the day after! Kudos!

On the results side of things my rain PAX wasn't figured in (.724) j/k!

But Jason Smith running my FS Stang was a novice first timer, could he be switched to novice class from street? I think he did quite well considering all his runs were on the wet track in C and D along with mine.

Rob, that was some cool hydro action! I ran right after you (saw my car going in as you were headed down the back stretch in your video) I guess my car was too heavy combined with street tires so I didn't have that effect.

Great videos.. It must be me, but each time I see AutoX videos, it looks like like the car hits cones quite a bit.. it would be neat to be like World Rally Championship camera coverage where they have cameras on the feet and all sides of the car. The rain was so much fun and amazingly, the more it rained, the faster I got 50.872 1st run a little wet, to 48.210 time only in pouring rain.. weird.. Maybe I need it to rain more often

Rob,

What format and resolution do you upload to Google Videos? I tried to host some in-car stuff on Google and the quality was so bad it was like looking at a blur with some motion and noise.

Also, I guarantee that even if it was pouring rain, you couldn't hear the rain on the roof in my in-car videos

It comes out of the camera as 640x480 AVI and that's what gets uploaded. I usually just trim off the beginning and end as required. They down size to 320x240 and the quality goes way down. I'm sure the source video compression format must have something to do with the resulting on line video. I think mine look like S compared to the originals.

If you can hear the rain over your engine then it would be in the video! Once over 6k my engine sound is louder than everything else including exhaust. Although you can hear the shift ringing, it needs to be pulled out greased again, did it three years ago. First year S2000s makes interesting sounds, nothing is hidden.

That's just the thing, I have no doubts that if you were driving Brian's car in the rain, you would not hear the rain at all (until you inevitably spin and stall it). I think the engine/exhaust is louder at idle than most cars are at redline.

I've been using Windows Movie Maker to trim the beginning and ends of the clips, which means that they end up getting saved to .wmv format. It's the same resolution though, 640x480, but apparently Google doesn't handle the .wmv files as well as .avi's when resizing, as your video looks absolutely stunning compared to mine when uploaded to google.

For some reason the .avi files from my camera do not work in Sony Vegas, which is my preferred video editing tool. Maybe I'll see if Vegas can read the .wmv's and convert them back to .avi and try it that way.

Do you have a simple trimming tool for the files that you use, or are you trimming them right in the camera?

It's not *that* bad, but inside the car it is pretty loud (a lovely side effect of having absolutely no sound insulation of any kind in the car, I'm sure). The sound massively overdrives the poor little microphones in my camera - when you look at the sound file in any editing software, the 'run' portion is just a maxed out flat-line

There are lots of great pics and I like this one of the Rock trying to keep all the spray (and runway / tire gook) away from his exposed legs



And this one of Steve in the ex-Peter's hydroboat-car:


Add in a little ironic situation.. look at all the water sprayers in the grid...highly used in the rain

My second run, in-car.

http://www.magetower.com/CP/video/BrianSVRun2.wmv

Wasn't my fastest run, but it was a low 49 raw time (got a pesky cone near the finish). You can tell that the rear tires have some real grip issues, and I give an amazing demonstration on how to appear as a newb driver, by palming the wheel.

You can briefly see the shift light come on during the outbound run. The shift light is set for 7600 rpm. The calculated speed for the car at 7000 rpm is 74.9 mph, so I was probably hitting about 80 or so at peak.

It was great fun, just wish I had brought good tires.

I especially like the "heel of the hand" turning technique. Did I see that right? Does that thing have power steering???

The car's owner is old and frail, of course it has power steering!

I use Apple Quicktime app which requires the purchase of a license for $30. It is a very basic editor (cut/copy/paste) with lots of import/export filters. Does sound files too. I find it much easier to use for this kind of editing compared to full video project apps. It is free from apple for playback. When you install iTunes it gets intalled also. This is apple's version of Windows Media Player.

I've been told that ALL of the Nascar race cars have power steering.....and they are FAR from old and frail.....

So if this doesn't define "ADDICT" nothing does.........

One of the few times I've actually enjoyed running on a wet surface... that textured-concrete surface is amazing. When you weren't hydroplaning , the grip was surprisingly good!

Thank you for the nice feedback on the photographs. It was fun taking photographs in the rain.

Surpisingly I did not get that wet. A little tire dust and water mix on the bottom of the shorts but everything else was dry. even the front. I had no idea there were rooster tails until I was done and someone asked me about them.