Spent some time cinching up the Evo (long overdue) late last night at Tobz Performance in preparation for today's Sport Compact event at Bandimere. It was a heads-up class for street sport compacts, although the fine line between street and "pro" can be a bit gray at times. Regardless, the class ended up being great with 18-20 cars competing, all of which got laddered (not just top 16). The quickest car in class was an 11.3, and then there were a whole slew of 11-sec cars behind along with several in the 12s. This made for a fairly even field where one mistake at the light (pro tree) or when shifting could take you from an easy win to a sure loss.
It was unfortunately the hottest day yet of the season as far as I know (~85-90* maybe), so that wasn't conducive to records times, but apparently my car wasn't aware of this fact. Up until now, I had hit a best of 11.84 but had not yet gotten a really solid 60' due to minimal track prep and subsequent inability to hook at all off the line. Due to this, I decided to purchase some drag radials to go on my winter rims and expected to run those today. Unfortunately, they won't arrive until Tuesday, haha. So, I figured that with this being a race day with plenty of big rubber muscle car there would be lots more stick - maybe enough for my Direzza Z1s to actually pull a decent 1.6 without lowering the pressure to extremes (20 or below). I also raised my 2-step up to 6500 hoping to get as much of a holeshot as possible on the sticky surface.
Well, first run of the day was against a drag slicked Integra with wheelie bars. I blasted him off the line and had the lead until almost the 1/8th, but then his power-to-weight pulled him right on by. However, he only finished a few lengths ahead of me, and we cut pretty much the same light. Based off my launch not really feeling that great, I figured he ran an 11.6-11.8 with me on a 12.0 or so. Just because I like the anticipation, I first looked at his time...whoa, 11.4? Hmm. Then, I looked at mine, and SHAZAAM!!!
Holy crap, I was just trying to sneak in an 11.7 on the street tires but only had faint hopes of 11.6s, and that was with the drag radials. All the sudden, I've gone halfway into the 11.6s with my street tires. The 60' was 1.68, which was better than I thought, but by no means a crazy launch. As a reminder, I still think this lane is reading 2mph high, so I believe this is closer to a 117.7mph traps (makes sense considering the 60' and nasty NLTS shifts). Regardless, I had never trapped this high before in this lane, so I knew the previous night of work paid off (fixed several huge boost leaks in the IC piping, which is all new, and fastened the EGR hose back on).
I later ran this to back it up, and this was during actual heads-up competition (1st round):
Wow, same 60' and exact 1/4 trap, but my shifting was 4/100ths slower.
I then beat an 11.8-sec Civic, but that put me up against the eventual winner - Mark from here but driving a 2G Eclipse - in the semis. He had been running consistent 11.3s and was the #1 seed, so I basically needed to tree him and hope he missed a shift or broke. I managed to tree him by a tenth, but that wasn't enough as he ran an even better 11.27, and I was pretty much done in by my 60', which was caused by focusing too much on the pro tree 60'. No shame in losing to a car trapping 128, though:
This slip again shows proof of my belief that the right lane is reading 6mph lower than the left. Both of my runs in the right were 111, and all 3 in the left were 119. Wierd. Out of 6 runs, 4 were 11s (11.94, 11.76, 11.69, 11.65) on full launches and no missed shifts. The other 2 I missed the 2-3 and kept going on one (12.2 @ 111) but cruised home on the other (13.3 @ 85). Unfortunately, when I got my slip on the 13.3, it was a 1.65 60'!!!! That could have been enough to drop my 11.65 to an 11.59 with the same shifting. Man oh man...
Overall, I'm ecstatic. It was really hot, yet I was running faster than ever. The new goal is to hit an illegal 11.49 on the DRs with some cool air at a night-time TNT.
High-res vid of 11.69 run (51MB - Right click and Save As, please)
Low-res on Youtube
