Dropping the expectations: time to suck at Nationals
Thursday rolls around, and it’s finally time to compete for a National Championship. And compete for is all I can do, as I knew that I hadn’t the slightest chance in hell of even reaching the podium.
Still, I was feeling good. Taking to heart the “don’t burden yourself with expectations” advice, my only goal for Thursday and Friday was to have a single clean run on each course. STR was to run the West Course on Thursday, a tight and very technical course, and run the East Course on Friday, a faster, more open course.
Even so, I had to make things difficult for myself somehow. The morning of competition, I decided to make a last minute setup change, just for shits and giggles: I disconnected the front sway bar. I would now be running with no sway bars on either end of the car.
My logic was this. James Dunham was a proponent of less roll stiffness on NC Miatas. He is running a 400 in/lb spring on the front of his car with massive front sway bar. If I simply disconnected my front sway bar, then perhaps my 600 lb/in springs on the front would approximate the front roll stiffness of James’ car. A wild hypothesis, yes, and one that should be tested on any day other than the start of the National Championships, but I no longer gave a fuck, so why the hell not? I put my car in grid and put out the tools that I needed in order to quickly service the front sway bar if I needed to.
I would be driving by myself for Nationals. Tory had wisely found a different ride for Nationals; she’d have a far better chance driving someone else’s car that has been competently set up, instead of driving a car set up by a maniac with blatant disregard for having a stable, predictable setup.
First run, and I’m staged at the start line waiting for the starter to give me the signal to go. The car in front of me clears the first third of the course, and the starter gives me the go-ahead to begin my run. Watch out corner workers, I think to myself, prepare to run after a shit ton of cones.
And I was very right to think that. The car was unbelievably loose. I was knocking cones left and right, finishing the run with something like half a dozen cone penalties to my name. And despite that…
The front of the car felt pretty damn good. For the longest time, I had been fighting what I had been nebulously calling a “push,” never mind the fact that the car would typically be coming out of corners sideways. I could never get the front end of the car to go where I wanted to place it, but now, I suddenly could.
I pulled the car into the grid silently cursing Kenneth under my breath for advising me not to swap the soft springs onto the front of the Miata back at Oscoda. If I had simply tried the softer springs then, I’d have come to this realization in a test and tune situation and would have been able to set up the rear of the car to match the front. Of course, I can’t actually blame on Kenneth as what happened to the car is exactly what he said it was. The blame is on me for blindly taking the advice given and not trying things out for myself. Always experiment if you’re in a position where you can comfortably do so, such as when you’re at a test and tune, and not during a national championship event.
With no way to set up the Miata softer, I had to go back to the stiffer setup just to get a car that I could put some decent times down in. Out came the jack, up went the car, and off came the front wheels. After burning my arm on one of the brake rotors, I reconnected the unattached end link and I was good to go. Well, as “good to go” as one can get with a compromised setup.
The irony that I had returned the Miata to the exact original setup that my car started the season off with was not lost on me. All that setup work was, in the end, completely for naught. From here on out, there was nothing more that I could do except drive.
And at the end of the first day of competition, I had done pretty well for myself. Unbelievably, I was hanging on to the bottom of the trophies. My second run turned out to be pretty decent, and my third run was even better. Most importantly, I had a clean run in the books for Day 1, which proved to be quite difficult for quite a few drivers. There were plenty of cones hit, and many a “safety” run taken in order to finish the day with a run that didn’t have a cone penalty attached to it.
Hmm. Maybe there’s something to this “don’t give a shit” attitude that is the key to my putting down decent runs? I’d better make sure that I keep not giving a shit and perhaps I’ll end up just fine in competition after all.
I definitely enjoyed myself that evening.
The next day was the final day of competition at Nationals, with STR running the fast and flowing East Course. Walking the course on Thursday evening, and again on Friday morning, made me wonder if I’d stand a chance on this course.
Plenty of folks had complained about their cars’ short gearing causing many an awkward moment when one can’t decide if one is riding the rev limiter long enough to justify a shift into third gear. I wondered if I would be one of that group. My Miata crests 60mph only with a raised rev limiter that takes the engine to a ridiculous 8k rpm, which I’m sure was not in the design specifications when Ford and Mazda put this motor together.
I pulled the Miata into grid and proceeded to not give a shit about my driving. The first run out was a lot of fun, and decently quick. Much to my surprise, the gearing on the Miata wasn’t completely terrible — while I still hit the rev limiter in many places, I didn’t stay on the rev limiter long enough to consider shifting into 3rd gear.
The second run turned out to be even better. I stupidly clipped a cone at the beginning of the course trying to cut an apex too tight. But the run was a lot of fun, I kept the car pointed straight, and finished with a scratch time that, if it were clean, would have been good for 10th place and a trophy. Nice! I wasn’t expecting that.
I was enjoying my state of not-giving-a-shit, when Ido Waksman came by to both congratulate me and to suggest that, if I took the next run slightly easier and didn’t hit any cones, I could secure my first Nationals trophy. Just don’t hit cones and you’ll be fine, he told me.
That’s true. But now I’m actually thinking about my last run. Fuck, now I actually sort of give a shit. Damn you, Ido!
What comes next? I’m sure you could predict exactly what happened on my third and final run of the day. I fucked it up.
I launched out of the start, and decided that I was going to ease the car around the cone that I had hit at the beginning of the second run. As I was doing so, I gave the apex too wide a berth, and ham-fisted the correction. Result: a car spinning to a stop in the first 10 seconds of the course.
Fuck. Of course it would happen like this. That’ll teach me to give a shit about my runs. I flipped off the “serious business” switch in my brain and enjoyed the rest of the run.
I pulled into the grid, having failed my simple goal of having a single clean run on both courses at Nationals. The East Course had foiled me. Three dirty runs, so I’d be way down in the standings.
Though, despite my wild mistakes, all things considered, I could have placed a lot worse. Even with a cone on my second run on the East Course, I was good enough for solidly midpack in STR. Go figure, another midpack finish at a National event.
I hung out with friends for the rest of the day, and clapped for the ones who won something at the Friday night awards banquet.