1998 Denver ProSolo

(As originally posted to the Talon Digest)

Well, I have been a busy busy boy lately.

My co-driver went out to the Seattle Pro, where he was sharing a drive with his arch-nemesis, the current points leader - who, incidentally, dumped his MX-6 and bought a GSX of his own. :)

Between the two of them, they destroyed the clutch.

So he came back all paranoid about our clutch, and wanted to change ours for a new one, just to be safe. Well, it's his dime, and it gets me a new clutch...

Then I did something really stupid. I told him I'd swap it in his garage. Hey, it's a clutch. How hard can it be?

26 man-hours of no-air-tools-cursing-and-swearing later, I had it done. Never again! Life's too short to waste doing that. Next time I'll pay the $400 for someone else to do the job. If you have a 2G, yes, the clutch job REALLY IS that bad. Yeesh.

Then, off to the Denver Pro. High altitude, a mile above sea level. Despite the turbo, the car felt noticeably flat, although man, did it spool up quick! We also switched to 245 40 R 17s on all 4 corners. Yes Virginia, they do fit on the stock rims - barely.

The course itself was really tricky. Straight forward slalom-into-sweeper on the way down, but they way back was a devious series of 90 degree super-late-apex turns, that were really hard to judge braking and turn in points on. Even worse, the surface - despite being concrete - wasn't all that grippy, so if you braked too late, you got spanked pretty bad as you slid over half of Colorado.

To be honest, I'd never driven a course like this before, and it showed. Started off slow, sliding all over the track like a moron, but got better as the weekend progressed. By my last couple of runs I had it mostly figured out, and was closing the gap somewhat, but it was too little, too late.

Chalk this one up as a learning experience. I finished 9th, about mid-pack.

Both my co-drivers (John and Renee) won. It's not the car...

Incidently, this makes the Buschur Racing GS Eagle Talon (heh, makes me sound like Geoff Gordon) is the winningest car in the ProSolo GS class this year.

In the overall series, I'm tied for 8th place going into the Finale. Not bad for a series rookie eh? Considering that my sudden jump into the Pro series is sorta like jumping from PeeWee hockey into the NHL, I don't think I'm doing that badly.