New Jersey ProSolo

Photo by Perry Aidelbaum - AutoX4U

John and I's first National level event for the season! It has been two years since my last ProSolo in New Jersey, but I wasn't as nervous as I was back in 2011. I was here to meet the competitors in S2, hopefully make some new friends, and show 'em what I've got. S2 is a new thing this year, in where it is a combination of BSP and DSP classes, and you race against each other using PAX times. Guess I still get to race in BSP after all! Technically anyways...

Photo by Perry Aidelbaum - AutoX4U

We had arrived at the site on Friday afternoon. After catching up with some friends from the New England Region, I got the car ready to tech, and then ready for some practice launches. Not only do I have more grip than I did in 2011, but their LED christmas tree starting light was broken and we had to use the old style christmas tree, so I definitely needed to practice my launches for the event. Once we were done, we were off to the hotel to get some rest before the following day.

Nice full shot I took of the course

Though I wished for the best, both Saturday and Sunday had all sorts of little nuisances. First, the GoPro must have been accidentally turned on in my bag, because the battery was completely drained for our first morning runs on Saturday. Then later on in the day on both Saturday and Sunday, the intake filter had decided to pop off. Not sure why, but it blew off as if the intake back-fired. Lastly, during our last few runs on Saturday and some runs on Sunday, the ABS had decided to start failing on us. I'm not sure what it could've been, but I wonder if it had to do with either how much the rear end bounced on launches, if it was because we had to use the e-brake for launching on one side, or if it was just the battery starting to get low on juice.

The true meaning of a "dedicated co-driver"

Problems aside, I still pushed forth as much as I could. I had forgotten just how much grip was here in this lot, and wish I drove to the limits of it. With my best time being a '36.843 on the left side, and a '37.373 on the right, making a '62.994, I came 8th out of 16. My reaction times were decent, as most of them were very low .5's. John came home in 9th place, with a '36.995 on the left side, and a '37.376 for the right, making '63.141. John's reaction times however were up in the .8's and .9's. That means with faster reaction times, John would've easily beaten me and taken a higher ranked finish.

This STR S2000 was awesome, and not just because of the stickers either!

All in all, it was a blast. I even managed to make it to the bonus challenge against PJ Corrales, only to spin out on my first run (forgot about cold tires...Whoops!).  It was also great meeting some new faces that I would hope to see at future National events. In the meantime, I need more seat time to make up for where I was slacking. YouTube Playlist for all the videos is located here. Below are my fastest left and right run videos. In the playlist, I only posted up our fastest runs since we missed quite a few videos with the camera being out of commission anyways. Thanks again to my region and everyone I met out there for the great times, and see you soon!