BRR-SCCA

The Wolf Ridge Hillclimb is this weekend down in North Carolina. You may have seen the write up on last years event in Grassroots a couple of months ago. I see your own Glen Thompson is entered. Come on up. it has to be cooler in the highlands. http://www.scenicwolfresort.com/

Yep - this will be my first hill climb.

Challenging first day at the hill climb. We got a bunch of practice runs due to a timing problem. They were needed since the course takes a while to learn. The course is about 1.6 miles long. 3 sharp switchbacks that requires 1st gear. A number of blind corners so a good memory is helpful.

One of the Miata drivers I'm staying with has a Traqmate with video. We were able to look at video of the runs with all the measurements.

My best time was 144.1 putting me 34th out of 47. Stann Vann ran FTD in his Formula Ford with a 118.

Back home after today's runs. It was hot, hot, hot. At least 3 cars got off course enough to break things. A Cobra trashed the left front suspension. A Z broke parts of its suspension. A few cars spun without hitting anything. All this delayed the runs.

Stan Vann improved his first to 116. I improved 4 seconds to 140.1, beating at least 3 other Miatas. CSP was a heavily contested class with 10 drivers.

Driving a hill climb is fun but doesn't give much margin for error. Pushing a turn can run you into a rock or a guardrail. For an idea of what it's like check out Stan's run from last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aJJoUMSQhw

Some videos. First is a CSP Miata owned by one of the guys I stayed with. I'm not sure what the 2nd car is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez1a7u6SV1g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFLJY7bgnVc

Nice glen Yours is about the least prepared CSP miata I could imagine...so awesome job! (I assume you were running CSP since you keep mentioning it...is that because you put in a different seat for running the hillclimbs/ solo trials?)

I ran Showroom Stock C (SSC) but was the only one there. There was a 99 Miata in SSB and a bunch of Miatas in CSP. I was using them as a baseline for my performance.

The racing seat is required and legal in Showroom Stock classes.

One of the Miatas I beat (twice since it was 2 drivers) had a Flying Miata suspension, headers & cold air intake, light flywheel and clutch, and no A/C.

TraqMate data for the hill climb is available at:

http://members.cox.net/glen.thompson/WolfRidge.zip

These files requires the latest version (2.10) of the TraqView software.

It's notable how few braking zones there are. Just lifting or a quick brake stab was usually enough to get speed down. The friction circle was quite similar to the one Monta recorded in my car at Danville.

I have video that can be synchronized with the TraqMate playback but it requires the TraqMate Studio software which isn't a free download.

Glenn it was great to see another autocrosser try hillclimbing. Congrats on you win. You know we have an advantage over most others and we don't seem to crash as often. Results and photos are up: http://www.ccrscca.com/results/wrhc08_fin.htm http://www.ccrscca.com/results/wrhc08_fin.htm