Re: Virgina City Hillclimb Report

[Thompers@aol.com]

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Special Report, Audi Quattro Club, USA
Virgina City Hilllclimb, Virgina City, NV
June 23-25, 1995
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Greetings to all,

This report is a bit late, eventhough I have been buried with creating art
for other QCUSA events and have neglected my q.net duties,  I now seem to
have time to write this.

Friday evening the 23rd
Drivers meeting at "Cabin In The Sky" restaurant.  All the QCUSA people,
goodies and fellowship were present at the meeting, along with some Ferrari
club members, the normal Porsche drivers, and occasional other sports car
entrants. The evenings drivers meeting adgenda called for an exercise of
caution with wild mustang horses roaming on the hill, unavoidable RV/tour bus
traffic course shutdowns and the inevidable cliff on the left side. Also, the
notorius turn 17, that must be late apexed in any car... The meeting ran
until 10:30pm.  I was lodging two friends and fellow QCUSA members, David
Baertshiger (D1) from So. Cal., and Dave Gauthier (D2), Nor. Cal. area.  D1
owns a beautiful slammed 1989 90 quattro lic."RENWAGEN" and D2 owns a pearl
white1991 90 20v q.  These two were volunteer QclubUSA photographers for the
weekend, with lotso' Lieca gear to boot.  The rest of the evening was spent
indulging in new factory Audi videos....until about 1:30am!

Saturday morning the 24th
High speed Club caravan from Lake Tahoe to Virginia City (approx. 50min)  One
'86 5000cs tq, that we raced, the two 90 quattros and my Urquattro all left
the Lake early am racing down hwy 50 to VC at over 110mph in some downhill
corners.  You really get a feel for how well quattros handle, at high speed,
when peer pressure is on your tail!  D1's renwagen really handles well!
(eibach spring kit).  That's all the racing I needed. the hillclimb was just
club stuff. (last year I raced my old trusty '85 4000s q and really got it
out of my system)

A complete list of Audi's entered will follow soon...

Sat. pm
The first car up the hill was around 10am., I was called upon to instruct two
drivers. One car was a 1993 100CS q with Eibach springs, R1's, S4 rims, K&N
and throttle body kit. Nice smooth car. the second car was Darren Hale's
Urquattro, with RS2 turbo, IA stage 2 kit, Moda 5 spoke rims and other
goodies. Great running 13.5lbs boost car.

The heat grew on us all, and took a toll on some Urquattros... One of Frank
Beddors' Urqs' had a small fuel fire starting at the #1 injector, then
causing the main radiator hose to explode, sending fluid all over.  Keith
Andersons' White Urq ended up with a 4:02 run and then blew his engine.  This
Hillclimb is really hard on air cooled only turbo engines. The temp rose up
to about 98-102deg around 3pm. Inside my parked Urqcoupe the temp read 120deg
plus!

Our '86 5000cs tq blew a diode in the alternator and we resorted to switching
batterys during runs for the rest of the day. This worked until one of the
batterys dropped down to about 11v. That night we swapped alt's with a
bogamatic 5000cs.

Sunday the 25th
I was unable to attend until later in the day. When we arrived at about 2pm
we were told that the red Ultima Sports kit car did the "ultimate cliff
dive".
Thank god nobody was hurt really seriously.  It could have been not so cool.
 This 575hp McLaren looking winged kit car launched itself over turn 7 at
over 90mph plus, footballed end-over-end four times and landed rightside up.
 the driver crawled out, then it burst into a mushroom cloud.  Classic
toounces the cat (remember when you used to burn models with VO5 hairspray?)
well, that's about it...   only thing left was the roll cage.

On a better note, some of the best times were posted with the RUF Carrera 4
CTR's,  Urquattros, the sport quattros and Ferraris.

The TTOD was a blindily fast 3:22 sec burst up the hill in David Beddor's
white RUF CTR  (that is 5.2mi in 3min!) He was clocked at over 125plus on a
short straight away)  Just for compairison - we were clocked at a mere 87mph
on the same straight in the modified '86 5000cs tq.

This week the two Beddor's RUF CTR's are being transported to Pikes Peak
Hillclimb.... I will keep all posted.   Stay tuned for Audi entrant list and
results...
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Later,
Thompson Smith
QCUSA Art Director