What a difference a week makes! After a grumpy couple of days on the beach in San Diego pondering everything that went wrong last week, we came back with a vengeance this week with a lop-sided victory at the El Toro Pro Solo. That makes it eight in a row for Pro Solo wins starting from early last year. Not only did we win the class, but we went all the way through the Super Challenge competition to the final four, only to take ourselves out with a brain-fade red-light. Doh! With a win in the consolation round, though, we moved up to third overall for the event.
So, what did we change? Not much, really. We went back to our 16” tires all around and left everything else the way we had started the prior weekend. The extra grip of the surface at El Toro moved our Miata from an oversteering beast to a very balanced car. We also worked hard on staying hydrated and fed, and getting our head in the game rockin’ out in grid with some musical inspiration.
The course itself had a wide variety of elements and was very fast. We were well into third gear with our short 16” tires. But the shorter gearing helped us dig out of the slower sections and the upshift was in a relatively straight section, so it was the right thing to do. In the end, we put 1.7 seconds on the class and it could easily have been 2.5 as we intentionally gave up our final right side run time that matched our best on the left. The other good news is that we were right there with the leader in STS, even though the results don’t show it.
Next stop is Atwater. First for a regional event and then for the National Tour. In the meantime, we’ll be putting our dual-purpose Miata to good use on the canyon roads along the Pacific Coast Highway. The infamous Mulholland Drive is just down the road.
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