2004 Solo II National Championships
by Jim Garry
Screaming across the finish line in third gear at full throttle in a four wheel drift, I was sure I had notched my time down into the 45s to match the leaders. After driving through the slow-down lane, I pulled up next to the worker who was writing times down on a slip of paper and waited, optimistically expectant. He handed me the timing slip and the number that was written down was about a second and a half slower than I’d hoped for. I held the slip in my hand and just stared, open mouthed. Of course, with my helmet on, no one could see this but have no doubts, it was wide open. How could this be? It must be a timing error, yeah, that’s it, a timing error.
READER WARNING
Due to past criticisms regarding the length of my annual trip to Kansas article, I once again have to warn the reader to NOT start reading this article if you are late for work or otherwise don’t have a lot of time to kill just now. As in past years, I suggest taking this issue of the Knock Off into the bathroom and leaving it there. You can read it in sections whenever you find yourself to be a captive audience.
FLASH BACK - The season starts wrong, but right
The season commenced with a bang on May 8. Literally. On the third run of the first event, the motor had a major problem. Damn! What a way to start the season. But it turned out to be the best thing to happen to me in the past few years of autocrossing!!!
Here’s the deal. A few days after the engine let go, my former co-driver Mike McMullen was helping me unbolt everything in the engine bay. I was on the left side and he was on the right side. When I got to the motor mount on my side I observed that it was missing its bolts. I asked Mike if he had already removed them. He said no, he had only worked on his side of the engine.
The proverbial lightning bolt ripped across my mind! My thoughts at that moment were very mixed. On the one hand, it had been incredibly thoughtless to leave out those bolts the last time I put the engine back in the car, which was in mid-2002. On the other hand, I had finally, FINALLY, found the cause of the terrible turn-in oversteer I’d experienced since that time. I asked myself why I hadn’t made an immediate correlation between the previous motor installation and the oversteer. I can only conclude that it was because the handling had been in constant flux during that time due to ongoing changes so the new problem blended in neatly with all the old problems.
In the season and a half that I had struggled with the turn-in oversteer problem, I had tried changing springs, ride height, shocks, sway bars, toe, camber, driving style ... nothing worked. I'd even get the car to push ... a lot. But the entry oversteer would still be there. So finally the race gods looked down upon me .... and they talked amongst themselves .... and they had the following conversation.
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God of handling: |
"Man o man, this Jim Garry guy is ONE *STUPID* SOB. He'll never figure this out unless we do something." | |
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God of tires: |
"You're right. What more can we do though? " | |
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God of the red mist: |
"Let's knock his head around a bit". | |
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God of race track transportation: |
"I already tried that in 2002 in Topeka. He took a piece out of the concrete on the south course with his head but otherwise there didn't seem to be any effect." | |
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God of cojones: |
"We need him to look directly at that motor mount." | |
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God of motors: |
"Well it's on the uncrowded side of the engine, all he has to do is look at it." | |
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God of handling: |
"He HAS looked at it. I've seen him do it." | |
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God of the red mist: |
"OK, so we need him actually TOUCH the holes where the bolts go. Then he'd notice they were missing." | |
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God of tires: |
"What would make him want to touch the bolt holes?" | |
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God of motors: |
"Hmmm, if he has to take the engine out, he'd do that." | |
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God of cojones: |
" By God you’re right. OK, let's do him a BIG favor and blow the sucker up." | |
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God of motors: |
"OK by me. This ought to be fun." | |
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God of handling: |
“Stop salivating oil all over the place and just do it.” |
As a postscript to my thoughtlessness, while Mike and I were re-installing the motor, those left side motor mounts were really hard to get bolts into. After 15 minutes I said, “Mike I just don’t remember these bolts being so hard to install last time”. Mike, paused and stared at me like I had just said the stupidest thing on earth. Then in a slightly amused, slightly exasperated tone he replied, “that’s because you NEVER INSTALLED THEM LAST TIME!”. Oh ... yah.
I spent the next couple of months tuning the suspension, ridding the car of the push I had dialed in over the previous two years. I had to change the relative spring rates and soften the front anti-sway bar. And with the low amount of seat time available in Solo II, this did not come quickly. Of greatest help was a BMW test and tune event at Fort Devens. In addition to the usual course to run, they also offered a slalom run and a skid pad. It was on the skid pad that I clearly felt that the front sway bar was too large. I had a smaller one in my trailer and the change was immediate and clear. This was the way to go.
SHOCKING
Another problem I had last year was the car’s absolute refusal to go fast through a slalom or other transitional maneuver. I just had to wait for it to be over. I remember on occasion watching other formula car drivers during their runs. They looked like they were actually having fun driving through slaloms. In my car, I hated slaloms.The problem, I finally figured out, was that the famous road racer car builder who’d been valving my shocks had the following mantra: “rebound kills grip”. I believe he is correct for racing on typical race tracks where the corners are long and fast. When you’re in a sweeper for 8 to 20 seconds, you gotta have as much grip as you can get. But in autocrossing our longest corner lasts for about 3 seconds. On a Solo II course, 3/4 of it is transitional in nature; that is, we are always turning right, left, right, and left again. And we’re doing it at high frequency and a relatively high speed given the maneuver. So having good transitional ability is much more critical than getting maximum idealized grip. By going with high rebound in the shocks, we give up a few percent of grip and in return we can drive through slaloms, offset gates, etc, at a much faster pace. It can actually be fun!
Not that it was easy to get someone to give me this valving. My road racer connection simply refused to “lead me astray”. So I turned to Joe Stimola, noted car preparer and shock valver who comes from Long Island. So in the winter before this season started, I had him do my shocks. But the shock dyno graphs he gave me indicated that the amount of rebound was still too low. Sure enough, after the engine went back in the car I realized that the car still wasn’t transitioning like it should. So next I tried sending the shocks to an autocrosser on the west coast. The car felt better after that but it seemed something was wrong. So once again the shocks went back to Joe. During our ensuing call he seemed insulted that I would send my shocks to someone else. In a mildly upset tone, he asked why I sent them to an unknown who then proceeded to make some physical errors in putting them back together. I replied, “He may have made some mistakes, but he KNOWS WHAT I WANT”.
Joe was silent for a moment, thinking about what I’d just said and then we calmly discussed exactly what I wanted. Communication was finally taking place! It took only two iterations of the fronts, and just one at the rears, and suddenly the car was transformed. Now I felt I could drive the damn thing.
CRACK GOES THE GEAR
The next big event was the Toledo National Tour event in June. This site boasts the absolute smoothest concrete I’ve ever seen. At the Friday warm up event we dialed the car in very nicely, changing springs for the last time (going to less rate). The car felt great! So what happened on the Saturday course? On the first run of the day we broke 2nd gear (a not rare occurrence when autocross FF’s are running these high acceleration, little gears). We were able to get the transmission back together ... but it was 5 minutes after the short heat was over. I did get one run in someone else’s car but it wasn’t very quick. However, the next day both Ken and I ran very fast times, I think we were 3rd and 4th quickest on Sunday. Now THIS was better.
By the end of August the car was feeling really good. We had discovered the right spring combination for good balance and the car was transitioning like it had never done before.
GETTING TO TOPEKA
And so the long drive to Topeka began on September 9th. The drive, for me, is very cathartic. You get in the car on Thursday morning knowing that after driving for 14 or 15 hours you’re still not going to be at your destination. And so you feel no hurry and settle in to the rhythm of the road. Leaving late-ish (about 9:30 am after Ken’s 3 hour drive from Vermont) we arrived in Effingham, Illinois some time after midnight. Departing around 7:30 the next morning we were able to get through St. Louis just after the brunt of the rush hour. One interesting point to make is that in the 20 years I’ve been making this trip, I have NEVER before smelled such high levels of industrial air pollution in cities like Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Effingham, Vandalia, and St. Louis. In St. Louis the severe pollution was very clearly visible as a yellowish brown haze on the skyline. I was glad to get west of it, but knew it was moving east to New York.
The only other thing of note to happen along the way occurred at a gasoline stop. As I walked from the bathroom to the car I passed a dog sitting at the driver’s seat of an idling car. I stared at him, I suppose in part wondering if he was going to release the parking brake and run me over. Without turning his head he was watching me out of the corner of his eye. Ah but I was too smart for him and knew he was peeking at me. We played like this for about 15 seconds until my superior intelligence won out and he finally gave in first and barked at me. When I got back to the car Ken asked me what the heck I was doing. “Playing with the dog’s head” was my reply. I was in warm-up mode for Nationals.
AIRBORNE
Once at the event site, we registered and teched the car with ease. No more long lines and waits like in the old days. These specialties are well run in a most efficient manner.
On Saturday and Sunday we ran the traditional Kansas Region Warm Up events. These are low key, casual, fun events that use the previous year’s Nationals north course. Over on the south course site the Pro Solo Finale is run concurrently. We ran reasonably quick times at the Warm Ups but were about a second out. The car felt very balanced and pretty good in the slaloms. But something was not right. Perhaps it was the fact that the car was getting airborne quite a bit. Indeed, in a first for me, during day one at the Warmups, one hand came flying off the steering wheel after hitting a bad bump in the middle of a corner. I sort of watched my hand with my peripheral vision as it bounced up toward my helmet. Many time champ Tommy Saunders summed it up very well. He had been working course while I ran the car and his comment to me was, “Jim, your car looks like it is working really well this year ..... when the tires are on the ground!”.
He was right. One thing you should know is that the National Championship site at Forbes Field is extremely bumpy. The north course area is the worst but the south course has a great deal of problems also. Groundwater pressures cause the concrete to heave and crack. There are patches on patches. Some blocks of concrete create little jumps. Forbes Field personnel do a lot of work to grind the bumps and repair the cracks and holes but it is a losing proposition. And during the week new cracks develop daily due to the pounding. It is embarrassing to see all the rubble swept up into little cairns along the course each day. Steve Johnson, our SCCA President, spoke about this at the Solo Town meeting and he revealed the City of Topeka has promised that by 2006 we will either have a brand new 45 acre paved facility for us near Heartland Park Racetrack (about 5 minutes away), or the current site would have the upper 2 to 3 inches removed and paved with asphalt. While that was welcomed news, it didn’t help my car this year.
On Sunday night Ken and I took split times off of the video we had taped during the warmups. It was clear that on the smooth parts of the course we were right there with everyone. In some cases we were ahead. But in the bumpy parts we fell way behind. That’s because my car was by far the most stiffly sprung car in the class. It’s the last remnants of my road racer contact’s advice. His road race cars run very low in order to keep the center of gravity low. This requires stiff springs to keep from bottoming. And he finds the stiffness helps the response of the car. So my wheel rates were about 1.6 times the corner weights. But his cars run on smooth tracks. For me, the stiffness resulted not only in slow times but bruised bodies. In fact, Ken wrote out a list of his injuries and it was quite lengthy. Needless to say, we added a lot of padding this year.
There are three reasons I failed to take the bumpiness of the site into account. The first is that in previous years I was running those soft road racer shocks which really helped to soften the blows (and to make the car feel like mush in slaloms). The second is that until this year I’d always come to Topeka struggling with major handling problems and so was not concentrating on the bumps too much. That’s my theory anyway and I’m sticking to it. At any rate, we decided to drop the spring rates about 30%. The bump setting was already full soft. Although I had the appropriate springs for the rear, we had to next day air another pair to our hotel room. Oh, the third and most important reason is because although my learning curve as a driver is very steep, my learning curve as a race engineer is exceedingly shallow.
IN THE MEANTIME
In the meantime, Monday was spent in a very traditional way. We walked the courses. Then we walked them again. And again. And again. Ken clipped on a pedometer for the week and he calculated that on Monday alone, we walked about 7 miles. The Nationals courses are quite technical and require a lot of thought and analysis. So a lot of walking is a good way to figure things out.
Since my class, C Modified, wasn’t scheduled to run until Thursday and Friday, we were able to take Tuesday to install the new springs, watch some heats run, then take the car over to Gary Godula’s paddock space and use his level alignment pad and scales to make sure the car was right. Many thanks to Gary who is a great competitor and friend.
Mark and Per drove a 2004 Dodge SRT-4 to 5th and 36th places. Mark, finishing about a second and a half out, said the car just wasn’t up to being able to perform with the other cars in the class. He told me that in a slalom he had to initiate turning the steering wheel 30 feet before he wanted the car to turn! The car’s response was THAT slow. And then, while the car was still turning into the first cone he had to begin turning the steering wheel back the other way for the next change of direction, knowing the car would still be moving correctly toward the first cone despite the tires asking it to move the other way. Amazing driving! Not so amazing car.
FINALLY, THE NATIONALS
Thursday afternoon finally arrived. Running in heat 4, the day was sunny and warm and the track anything but green. For the first time in a decade I was experiencing pre-race jitters. I truly felt I had a good shot to not only place well, but to win. Ken went out first and turned a couple of seconds off the pace. This concerned me. On my first run the car was pushing enough for me to feel like I lost a second. And indeed, my time was almost exactly 1 second behind the leader, Tyson Sawyer of New England Region. But I was in about 5th place anyway.
I was aware that high grip surfaces often make a balanced car push. But having just changed springs it was difficult to know exactly where to set the sway bars. Obviously, I had guessed wrong. Not too big a deal, but despite adjustments made during the remainder of our runs, my times did not improve. By the end of the day I was in 8th place, one spot and a tenth of a second out of the trophies but a full second off the leader. Behind me were about a half dozen drivers on my heals within 3 or 4 tenths including Ken.
I have to admit that I was extremely upset with this result. I walked around the periphery of the grid, out of earshot of my fellow competitors, rudely questioning why I had bothered making this $#*&@%$! trip. After calming down, I realized that despite the softer springs the car was still getting very light and occasionally airborne. All it takes to blow a slalom at this level of competition is to be off by a few inches at each cone. When the still stiffly sprung car hit bumps in slaloms, it ended up 5 or 6 inches late at the first cone. At the next cone I was almost a foot late. By the third cone it had grown to a foot and a half late. And so by the fifth or sixth cone it required slowing rapidly to avoid hitting that last pylon. Another way to combat this was to slow earlier to stay on line but that’s equally slow. Bouncing through a sweeper is also a way to lose large amounts of time. Try putting the power down with the tires in the air. Remind me ... what’s the coefficient of friction of air again?
For Friday’s competition there was nothing to be done. I was out of softer springs and out of time. I just had to hope that the less pock marked south course would let us drive the car quicker.
It didn’t.
As on the previous day’s course, my best run was my first. At a 46.2 it was one second off the eventual pace, just like the day before. But I hit the last cone on the course and ruined even that. With a nasty looking storm moving in, it was nerves times. Could we get dry runs in the rest of the heat? We did, but my next two runs, although more aggressive and with better lines, were both 47.0s. Ken and I later theorized that since the first run is usually a driver’s slowest in terms of speed past each cone, the car was not bouncing as much as it did on later runs when I was peddling much faster. As you use up the margin of safety in the 2nd and 3rd runs, the hops get you into late lines as well as sliding tires more. And thus my times were slower even though I felt, and was, much closer to the limit.
In the end, I finished 10th. Even without the pylon, I’d still have finished one out of the trophies in 8th. Tenth is my best finish since my 9th place trophy in 1993. Yes, it’s been that long. Ken finished in 13th, about 0.4 behind me. We were not happy campers but at the same time, being older and wiser, we were able to handle our relatively poor finishes pretty well. Oh, and Tyson finished in 4th, a position I would have been pleased with but was disappointing for Tyson, seeing as how he was in 1st the day before.
My biggest thrill of the week happened over in A Modified. My old pal Chuck Sample, now in his 60s, was co-driving the winged beast of George Bowland. George’s son Todd, race engineer for the IRL’s Buddy Rice, had designed this car just as he had designed the previous A Mod cars of George’s. The car was amazing. Chuck told me he was able to hold his foot down on the throttle for huge sections of the course. Sort of like driving a kid’s cart around the track except with a horsepower to (static) weight ratio of something on the order of an F1 car. Incredible. Over two days, Chuck was ahead of the entire class for the first 5 runs. But on George’s last run on Friday he ripped off an amazing time and pulled 0.2 ahead of Chuck. Chuck later told me he considered just cleaning up his last run a little to get the couple of tenths he needed. But in true racer fashion, he trashed that plan and decided to go for it. The worst he could do, he said, was to finish 0.2 down in second. He went for it and got it. He ended up going about a second faster and taking the class win. Chuck had not been successful for about a dozen years, blaming it on his age. But in reality, it was the set up on his cars. He just never got it right. (Sounds familiar.) So I was very happy to see him win convincingly in the fastest class in autocrossing.
GOING HOME
The ride home went smoothly, Ken and I debriefing each other along the way and deciding upon changes for next year. In addition to moving some weight around on the car, I’m going to soften the springs again, and will consider softening the shock bump valving too. I called multi A Mod champ Gary Milligan and we chatted. He agreed with my assessment regarding springs and the bumps and the bouncing and also assured me that I was not rationalizing. Rationalizing away a loss is a sure way to not learn from failure. It’s something I’ve attempted to avoid from the beginning of my participation in this sport, but you can never be sure if you’re just kidding yourself. Gary not only is fast and a good race car engineer, but he has his head screwed on right. So his assurances were of great solace to me.
Ironically, the normal headwind we fought on the ride from Albany to Topeka reversed itself and we fought the headwind again while heading east to Albany. It sort of summed up this year’s Nationals effort. Once again, I’m relegated to “next year!”
Near Dayton, Ken and I saw an Ohio state sign on the side of the road which encouraged motorists to: “Report Impaired Drivers to 911". Within an hour we had a list of over 50 crummy drivers and were about to dial 911 when we realized the sign was only referring to those drivers who are ALCOHOL impaired. Oh well.
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