SCCA Autocross Octoberfast report

[jerry rowley]

The SCCA Octoberfast Autocross is now history, and so are my chances for a trophy this year! Ruble Moore came out Saturday with his Hunter Cobra to do battle with me and other Cobras. Unfortunately, no other Cobras came to run. We did have a competetor in form of a '93 Mazda RX7 w/blower! he ran away and hid from us easily! Our best run was a sorry 64.387 seconds to his best of 57.365! Not even in the same ball park I am sorry to say!

Ruble did well to run his car after putting more miles on it at Gainesville than he has on the street! He improved his times during the day and came respecfully close to mine.

Jon Gosnel (Unique)l came out with Cobra to spectate on Saturday and Bill Miller (FFR) came out to kabitz on Sunday. Thanks to both for at least showing up to give support to our brave team! Brave, albeit, slow on autocross times!

I called Bill Parham today and told him I had a small bone to pick with him on my new engine. It's supoposed to put out about 525hp, but, the course marshall crew said every time they saw me put my foot in it coming out of a turn, the entire front end got airbourne! On more carefull examination of two of them, they admitted only seeing the left front tire off the track entirely. I told Bill I don't understand how you can do this with only 535hp? I thought it took over six hundred to do a wheelie!

Bill said it was his very first complaint about putting out "too much power:! At any rate, I can't drive it competitively in an autocross. Maybe next time I'll try third gear to lessen the torque effects on accelleration!

It was very good fun, anyway, win or lose, and the rest of you missed out on some good fun.

[Jerry Cowing]

Jerry,

I'm happy to hear you all had such a good time while I was still slaving away working 17 hours a day to keep our country safe.

I sure would have liked to have joined you, but duty called. It sounds like you all had an enjoyable time. Hopefully, next time I'll be able to join in on the fun.

As they say: Keep your nose to the ground -- or is that to the grind. Pun intended. Hahahahah!

Jer

[teamfour]

Where was this event? I would have liked to have been there.

[excelguru]

I spoke with Jerry on the phone yesterday and I just wanted to add some additional detail to Jerry's story about keeping his nose down (or up as the case my be) as he may be too modest to mention it. When he put his foot down coming out of the turns, he was in SECOND GEAR and was already rolling along at about 20 to 30 MPH. The clutch was completely engaged, he just stomped on the throttle to pull a wheelie. Think about that for a moment. Now THAT'S what I call low-end torque!

I'm just wondering... can you small-block guys do that? (All in good fun, guys.)

BTW, it was nice talking with you again, Jerry.

Keith

[aumoore]

I managed to spin out on my first two tries at the very sandy old airfield in Pensacola. My 17" Kumhos did not like the sub 50 degree weather nor the sand on the track. I managed to get a standing ovation for trying to stick a orange cone thru the front oil cooler hole. Ever hear of cone rash well it takes a lot of elbow greese to rub out. I did manage to get my times from 80 seconds to the 66 second range. I thought it was not bad considering my inexperience, street tires, my front sway bar came loose on one side(got to speek to my mechanic about that )and I was taking the long way around the long slomom. There was a Honda 2000s runing in the 58 second range. Oh yeah we were stuck with the RX7 twin turbo. At least I beet some of the econoboxes