[Cobra #3170]

This years Optima Challenge was way less fun than last year. I got my a$$ kicked pretty badly especially on the road course which is where the Ford GT should have been really good. My plan was to set the car up with mild under steer on the road course and then disconnect the front sway bar and reset the rear toe to zero for the autox. I marked the toe links with paint so we could reset them with the rear hatch open and not even jack the car up. I made a quick disconnect for the front sway bar so that it could be disconnected for the autox, these changes together would give lots of needed over steer for the autox. When I went out on the road course the GT was so loose that I almost spun it twice on the warm up lap and then once again on the first timed lap. I then just motored it around to avoid going off and doing some serious damage.
I was 8 seconds off the pace and about 12-13 seconds slower than the car should be capable of running. I was so disappointed that we did not bother changing the car at all for the autox, I was only .7 seconds slower than the winner there, which would indicate how much over steer I had on the road course.
It seems that my brilliant idea for disconnecting the sway bar was not so good since it disconnected itself on the drive through Las Vegas the night before.
They had us drive all the cars in 5:00 PM traffic and then on to Pahrump, (who would want to subject a full on Cobra to that).
I was also too dumb to check the bar the next morning, that coupled with a mis-communication with my crew on tire pressures sealed our fate. I expected to do well on the speed stop challenge (you accelerate and stop within a box that is 600 feet away and fastest time wins) I did OK here with a 4th fastest , all of the first four cars were 6.4 seconds, order was determined by hundredths of a second. The bad news, I had a 6.0 run but slid out of the back of the stop box because I was about .1 second late on the brakes. In summation I should have had more horsepower, bigger front and rear tires, adjustable sway bars, and a smarter engineer/driver. The overall winning car was a very well executed 69 Camaro with a stroked LS9 , it had ABS brakes and ZR1 Corvette tires. The Camaro had about a 100 horses on me and was about 200 lbs lighter, now I know how they felt last year!

The good news for all you Cobra owners, this years fastest road course time set by a very good "Time Attack" blown Corvette Z06 was 2 seconds slower than my Cobra ran last year.