OLOA11 - Day 1 Event 2 - Grissom AFB autocross
My excitement has been pretty hard to contain to finally get behind the wheel of the M3 with all of the new power on tap - especially after getting to hear it rumble to life yesterday! 600 hp is by far the most I’ve driven. Yee Haw!!!!
So today is the day. After walking around the sea of cones setup on a no-longer used portion of the airbase to get an idea of the course, I slid into the driver seat, strapped in and put my helmet on. It was time to see what this car was all about with the modest little power upgrade!
Times of the competitors were mostly in the 54-50 second range. Fastest time was initially set by SCCA Solo national champ Andy Hollis in his ‘89 Civic CRX. Then Leh Keen in his Nissan GT-R snagged it. Both running in mid 50.xx seconds.
For some added fun on this, and a potentially really cool camera angle, I stuck my GoPro camera on the left front fender behind the wheel.
Unfortunately, that move cost me a 2 second penalty in the first of 3 tries when the camera tagged a cone… DOH! I thought at least I’d get some really cool video, but it turns out the camera didn’t get the last 10 seconds of video before it fell off and bounced around a bit.. Those cameras are tough little things, it still records and all that appears to be wrong is a few scuffs on the case… Lesson learned.
So, first lap was a 56.7, but with 4 seconds worth of cone penalties.
Next lap was clean, and much faster with a 55.595.
The car is fast, and is eager to kick the back end out. Especially with the track being a 2nd gear course. but I’m getting a handle for it and dropping time.
On the final run, I pulled a 54.7, but apparently tagged 2 cones again. And I can’t blame the camera on it this time…
We will see what the final results come back as, but from what I could tell, the finishing order for luxury sedan is:
Brian in the #47 M3
Me in the #30
Dave in his #18 M3
The Audi S4
Porsche
caddy
Once the results are posted, I’ll update the results page.
And now, on the road for our first long leg. About 590 miles to Summit Point. Get some sleep for us, its going to be a long week! 
