It has been a couple of days since the Atwater National Tour, and I expect a few people are waiting for the report (Hi Bob). Northern California changed abruptly from winter to summer during the week leading up to the event, so we had sunny weather and temperature in the high 80s/low 70s. Chris Cox designed the course, and efficiently used every bit of the large concrete refueling pad. The course was medium to high speed throughout, with a couple of transition-intensive sections but mostly one sweeping turn flowing into another. When I walked the course, I was concerned that some of the turns might be in between gears for the AP2, and that I might make the wrong call about which gear to be in for any given section. Fortunately I spend a couple of weekends this year at AAS events which helped me judge when to shift and gave me a lot of practice executing shifts. On Saturday (clockwise), there was a single shift to 3rd across the far end, heading from station 3 to 4. I also shifted to 1st for the last right hand turn just before the lights, to pivot the car around. On Sunday (counter clockwise), there were actually three sections that I took in 3rd gear: coming out of station 6 towards station 5, then at the right hand bend approaching station 4, then again heading from 4 towards 3. Most of the other turns were right in the good part of the power band, and in several places I got to the rev limiter just before the next turn-in or braking zone. The sections where I shifted into 3rd, I got good use out of it.

On Sunday I was getting wheelspin in the turn going around station 6, and again very steady in the long turn around station 2. It wasn't too severe, and the car was still able to accelerate.

Now for the competition itself. The major players were Jim Martin, an AAS regular driving a black Corvette, Don McKenna, a really fast old fart driving a Gran Sport Corvette, Tom McDaniel in the red Corvette that he lets Scott McHugh drive, Cal Craner driving the same car, Reijo Silvenoinnen driving a black AP1 S2000, and myself. Scott McHugh wasn't at the event, which I am thankful for.

My first run on Saturday was decent, but I made a pretty big mistake at the finish by getting suckered in by the apex cone to the left of station 6. Being tight to that cone resulted in being very poorly set up for the following apex , which threw me way off line for the right hand turn into the finish. Reijo had just completed a run with a nearly identical time. Jim Martin followed with a run that was 0.1s ahead of us. Steve Hobaugh (Don's co-driver) got a rerun but hit cones. They made a rear toe adjustment. Don was off the pace and made another rear toe adjustment.

On second runs, I improved 0.7s and Jim improved 0.5s, putting me in the lead by 0.1s. Reijo only improved 0.1s and dropped back to 3rd place. Don improved a second but was still off the pace. He made rear toe adjustments after both his and Steve's 2nd runs.

On third runs, I didn't improve, but Jim only picked up 0.05s, narrowing my lead to just 0.05s. Don made another rear toe adjustment after Steve's 3rd run and improved another 1.5 seconds on his last run, putting him in 3rd place by 0.05s. Reijo got a really good 3rd run, 0.05s slower than Don. Tom McDaniel picked up a full second on a banzai run, ending up in 5th place just 0.32s behind me. Cal Craner had struggled with seating position and a less powerful, differently-handling car than he was used to, and was stuck in 6th place with a 1 second gap up to Tom in the same car.

So, with five drivers within 0.32 seconds, Sunday would be a brand new competition.

On first runs Sunday, Jim and I turned nearly identical times (59.2), but Jim hit a cone. Cal turned a run that was about 0.4s slower, and many of the other drivers were about 1s behind us, including several who had not been that close on Saturday. I went back and asked Joe Goeke what his top time had been that morning in the RX-8, since I knew I ought to be faster than that if I wanted to win AS. Joe's winning time had been 58.4, so I knew I had to make a big improvement.

On my second run, I forgot to close the cupholder cover where I had put my timing slips, and as I launched out of station 2, the timing slips exploded into the air and started blowing around the cockpit. Somewhere around the turn at station 3, I closed the cover with my right hand to prevent additional distraction. Amazingly, that didn't blow my concentration and I completed the run with a 1.1 second improvement, 58.1s. Jim came in with a 58.8, and nobody else was within a second of my time.

On the third run I wanted to set up the final bend towards station 4 better, since I was understeering around it and not able to keep the accelerator floored on my first two runs. I did a great job there, and got to shift into 3rd much earlier than on the previous runs. Then I got a great run through the corner at station 4 and got to shift back to 3rd very early in the following section. Unfortunately coming out of station 2 towards the slalom before the finish, I braked too late and went wide around the first cone, costing me some speed & distance. The run was 0.2 seconds slower. The frustrating thing about that was, I had noticed that few people were coming anywhere near that first slalom cone and resolved to pay close attention to my slalom entry. I had done that well on the first to runs, but got a little too enthusiastic (optimistic? distracted?) on my last run. Fortunately, Jim was only able to get down to 58.5s, so I won AS by a margin of 0.47 seconds. Don stayed in 3rd, and Reijo and Tom switched places, with Tom taking the 4th place trophy.

And that's how I won my first National Tour.

There are videos of some of my runs at here if you can tolerate slow downloads and promise not to overload my server. Unfortunately I did not capture the timing slip eruption. That would have been a fun one to watch.

Results can be viewed here.

 

Congrats Good to see an AP2 take a victory.

 

Nice writeup John, congrats on the win!

 

I know a couple of those guys.

 

John,

Congrats again! And thanks for the videos! I'm not on here very often anymore, but I still like to see the S2000's doing well. And you're definitely helping them do well.

In the Miata I was driving (94R package), the more siginificant descriptors are where we used the brakes (instead of where we shifted to 3rd!). I used the brakes only 5 times on my fastest Sunday run (a waaaay off the ES pace 60.6). It was definitely a speed maintenance course and like nothing I'd driven for a long time.

Andy H.

 

CONGRATULATIONS JOHN!

I know how good that first one feels. And thanks, we appreciate the great report and videos. Wish I could have been there. Although I haven't seen one before, I'm already a fan of Chris Cox courses. That looked like great fun.

OK, now that you know how it's done, just go ahead and lean on Scott this weekend at the PRO, too.

Best of luck.

BK