Procrastination Racing

Who went? I was there Friday and had a good time. Lots of cars to drive and lots to see.

Phil Currin was there and hit the Number 1 spot Friday going into the shootout. He caught a cone and a guy named Matt Ferratusco (he had a cheering section) was the City Champ for Friday.

I see the scores are posted on the site for Orlando and the scores are much higher now. Friday, most of the top guys were in the mid 500s. Now the results have a lot of high 600s and higher, so something must have happened to the track to let everyone get that much better scores.

When we pulled into the lot Friday afternoon, there were a large number of Corvettes there. They had an orange 2009 Camaro convertible show car. There was also a '69 Camaro SS and while I thought the new Camaro looks good in the Transformers movie, in person I'm not so crazy about it.

The new Corvettes were nice to drive. The Cobalts were fun, but they didn't have the go kart feel that I had with my Neon several years ago.


The Trailblazer SS had a great engine and the power was great, but it felt like i was steering with the power steering belt off or two flat tires. The Silverado handled much better than the Trailblazer SS.

Z1NONLY

Hello. I am new to the forum but I was there and had a great time!

The track conditions were wet sat night, but the pro index(s) was also done in the wet. I have been autocrossing for less than two years yet still recognized a lot of the names on the board sat night. (a lot of "big" drivers.)

Do you have a link to the results? I couldn't find them on the rev it up web site.

Procrastination Racing

I wondered if it was wet. That explains a lot, the difference in the wet would be less, letting the large number of drivers be closer to the 1000 point index.

Yesterday, they had the Friday night top 20 for Orlando listed on this link, but today, that is gone. They don't have Orlando in the database results yet.

http://www.revitup.com/results.asp

Z1NONLY

I think the fact that there were also a lot more drivers (about 1,000) taking shots at the index had something to do with it also.

Z1NONLY

Here's a short video clip my wife took last night of me in the shootout portion of the competition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjKAWM-ZRTs

-Just fixed...

CandyVette

We went to the Miami one last year but didn't make the one this year. Were there any racing celebs there this time around? Last year I met Johnny O who drove me around in a Z06............... A dream come true!

shakedown067

I went Saturday. I was in the top 15 for the shootout for a few hours. Got knocked out of the top 25 with just an hour to go. The scores really jumped up after it rained. It was great to drive the 07 vette and to ride in the ZO6. Got to see johnny oconnell saturday...it's always a pleasure chatting with him. He also took a few people around the track in the ZO6, he was pulling some wicked fish tails. Probably had a few people wet the seat. That alone was worth going and watching...the go-carts were a blast in the rain as well.

I finished 19th out of 639 in the novice class. 87th out of 1166 overall in orlando.

Z1NONLY

Here is the long story behind the short video I posted:

It was a fun, but rough, day for me. For starters, my brother pre registered us and when we got our little badges they both said "pro." He said he just selected "autocross" when he registered. We have both been autocrossing for less than two years. I doubt that makes us "pro", but oh well...

I had hoped to get into the top 25 for the Corvette Shootout when I asked my brother to sign us up but I was only expecting a couple hundred competitors. When I got there and saw all the people I asked one of the organizers how many people were actually competing, he said "...about a thousand." My goal of making the top 25 suddenly seemed a bit too optimistic. I should have done a little more homework.

We tried to get used to the FWD, auto (stuck in "D"), Cobalts (practice track) and watched as much video of the racecourse as we could. Then the rain came and they sent everyone back to their own cars.

They were good about re-indexing when track conditions changed but I have only done one event in the wet and I don't play with my car on wet roads otherwise. FWD, auto, wet track, I was starting to feel way out of my element.

When things got back underway all the race times were pushed back a couple hours, so my brother and I would be racing under the lights. -Another first for both of us.

My first run, I came up on the first hard left and tried to look ahead, (through the corner). As soon as I took my eyes off the course in front of me, nice and bright, thanks to the headlights, all else was too dark to make any use of what I was looking at. I told my self not to be a wimp or give up too much speed and tried to guess a good entry speed.... WRONG!!! The turn was about 15 degrees sharper than I guessed and I pushed out, and onto, 5 cones! THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP!

I tried to get a good look at the rest of the course, knowing I had blown my first run. But seeing that "DNF" on the board next to my name really took the air out of my balloon. My brother and I get very close times at the track so when his clean run was 50 points out of the cut I got a little worried. I thought about my original goal of making the Shootout and just thought, "What was I thinking?" My wife came over and told me she wasn't the least bit worried. "Ok, now you know what to expect. Now go out there
and JUST DRIVE." (I love that woman)

I stood in line for my second run and tried to memorize what the course looked like at speed, then I went out and "just drove." Without the ability to see through the turns, I just tried to anticipate the few hard parts from memory but otherwise just react and hold speed. I usually try to work with the car, the course, and physics when I drive, but this run was a fight with all three. I knew the time was decent before I saw it because I caught up to the car before me near the finish. (About 3-4 car lengths )

I came back to staging and heard the lady announcer say "BAM! BAM! Two more people just got bumped!" I knew the car ahead of me probably didn't bump so I looked back and there's my brother grinning ear to ear!

We slid into the 16th and 18th spot for the top 25. -Onto the Corvette Shootout

Although the wider Vette made the tight course seem even tighter, driving the Vette was more fun and less fight. The course was fresh in my head, I set up for the turns much better and the Car was a willing ally. I came through the line on my first run only to find out that I hit a cone. Many of the cones at this event were screwed to the pavement so they called any contact with a cone. I would normally take a little off to make sure I didn't hit the cone again but I was "on" a lot of cones in my all-out effort to win a Corvette and never heard or felt a cone. Backing off for all the cones I was close to would have been worse than the two second penalty so I just drove the best I could for the second run. My time improved by .1 seconds and, just as consistent as my time, there was the mystery cone by my name again.

Still, with the 2 second penalty on both runs, I improved from 18th to 15th for the night. My brother took it easy and ended up 10th.
Even if my runs had been clean, my best time would have only been good enough for 6th overall.

So that's how one can have a bad night and still finish 15th out of 1000.

What a night...