1200 miles, 5 1/2 days, four days of racing...
I started off my journey this year to the Solo Nationals on Tuesday after work. Getting very short on time off with all the travel and budget so I drove till I was about an hour outside of Lincoln and slept in my truck at a rest area...me and my XD-M that is. I woke up Wednesday and drove the hour or so and got registered, tech'd and hung around to eye up the West course as much as possible prior to running on Thursday. After the fifth heat finished, I walked the course a few times and headed to the hotel to crash and get some good sleep. My car was mostly prepped for stock class with a Buschur custom cat back exhaust, K&N drop in, and an Alignment Guy alignment. However, since the car was eating $310 Hoosiers up front in only a dozen or so runs, the majority of the season I was on street tires. It was my third time on race rubber and I was also missing out on aftermarket struts/shocks. I still managed to land in the last trophy spot (6th) out of 18 cars after the first day. Friday, another driver moved up that should have been in first after day one and that put me and another driver in a battle for the last trophy spot. He led me by .022 seconds going into Friday. I had jumped up all the way to the third spot on my final run and then the drivers after me started also dropping time. I bounced back to the last trophy spot but was still almost .4 seconds ahead of the guy who led me on Thursday. That was until his third run. He ran .010 seconds faster than me on his third run and beat me by .032 seconds after the combined two day times. So, so close. Many people said that the Coupe should have been in D Stock class this year and I wish it would have been as I would have finished 5th out of 25 instead. All in all though a good showing for a car that was not fully prepped and somewhat limited seat time.
A few of the guys at Nats from Milwaukee said they were going to head back Friday night to make the first Street Tire Nationals in Milwaukee on Saturday. I had a room booked for Friday night as I hadn't planned on driving back and then after they talked to me...I was convinced that I need to man up and make a showing. I packed up and headed out for Milwaukee at 6:00 p.m. on Friday night...drove...and drove...and drove until I was about an hour outside of Milwaukee and needed to pull over and crash. I slept for about three hours at a rest area and then back up and driving again. I was completely exhausted on Saturday after three days of sun and 600 miles of driving but still managed to pull off a 6th place finish on OEM tires out of 59 cars in the RWD street tire class. Luckily for me, my parents and son drove down Saturday late afternoon in their RV and I got another decent night's sleep. I ran a normal points race on Sunday and placed third out of 36 in the RWD street tire class (again on OEM rubber).
A HUGE thank you to Buschur Racing for the kick ass exhaust, to Chuck at PCS for the awesome powder coating job, to the Alignment Guy, and most of all to my family and friends for their never ending support and help.
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Originally Posted by David
