Spring Into Solo 2008 (Indy Points Event 1)

The trophy was a little different than what I was used to. Instead of a placard, they handed out cone trophies. It was pretty cool. Here are some pictures of the trophy and the time slips I received on each run: 1, 2, and 3 respectively:

I arrived 30 minutes after registration opened and surprisingly, I had to park pretty far away because for some reason there were a lot more people in this event (125 drivers) than the last one (107 drivers). I overheard a board member mention that this event had the most attendance than any other Indy region event. Pretty cool. While I was looking for a parking spot to unload, I noticed that everyone was taking their time to get into tech. So I took advantage of this and set up as fast as I could; then I drove to tech before everyone else piled up there. heh...

Thanks to my speediness, I had 30 minutes to walk the course before the drivers meeting. This course was a lot more technical than the fun event course. In the beginning, there's a pretty long straight which at the end of the straight, leads downhill and into a sharp left turn. It was hard to gauge where my braking point would be with the downhill in the equation. The first slalom was placed sideways on a downhill slope which was pretty interesting. And just like the previous Indy event, the same sweeper was used at the same location, but with a little twist in the way they placed the cones. The end of the course had an offset slalom which I have never driven before. But I felt confident that I could handle it with the practice I got at the Columbus event.

Before I ran my first run on the course, I followed my cousins mentality and drove my first run like it was my last run. I felt confident with the way I drove until my competitor in the Mazdaspeed 3 came in a second faster than me but with a cone. Banking off the trend that I usually I drive faster on every run, I thought that I could best my first run. But on the second run, I jinxed myself when my tires lost grip while entering the first slalom which almost cost me a cone. Though I didn't hit the cone, it did slow me down about a second and a half just trying to avoid it... The driver in the Mazdaspeed 3 came in faster than his last at 49 seconds flat but with another cone. So I was still safe with my first run. In the third run, I drove clean but still ended up being about a half second slower than my third run. The Mazdaspeed 3 DNF'd which meant that I took first by a very small margin (.187 seconds). I was crazy to think that I won on my first run!