OOOOwww-D race season opens with WIN!!!

[Steven Verona <vrona@infinet.com>]

I am not sure if anybody saw my last post from last Monday about the test session I went 
to.... my old service providor was having trouble again!!  Anyway, that test session 
went really well.  I spent most of the day messing with the suspension to try and dial 
out the understeer.  I was quite successful in spite of the lack of help from Eric ;-)  
Anyway, at the test session I had the 4th fastest time of the day and beat the second 
fastest car in my class by almost 5 seconds.  Although I must admit the "competition" 
was not too stiff.

Now on to the first real race of the year.  My wife and I headed up to the Goodyear Test 
Center(?) in Akron in the new motorhome ;-)  I found some pretty good competition there, 
over 95 cars.  A lot of Corvettes and RX7s.  Since their tech inspection was pretty 
loose, I decided to try and get one more weekend out of my abused and corded BFG R1s 
from lat year. I figured if anybody was a threat I would put on the new tires.

I saw Robert Phillips at the event and he was very helpful.  I don't know if he is still 
on the list since he defected to an RX7!!  I also met the guy who sold Bob D'Amato his 
URQ, I can't remember his name. Anyway, to say it was a successful race would be an 
understatement.  Running on the crap tires I beat the second place car by almost 6 
seconds on a 45 second course.  People were in shock!  I had dozens of people over 
looking at the little Audi that could and asking questions.  One guy was running his 911 
Carrera at the event and I beat him by over a second.  He cam over to talk because he 
could not beleive the times and he has an 87 4000q sitting at home waiting for this 
winters snow!!  Now he is thinking about racing it.

Anyway, I think I had one of the 5 fastest times of any production based cars.  Only 2 
Neons in D STock and a couple of Corvettes and an E STock national champion beat me.  It 
looks like this season is off to a great start.  Next week I am racing in Columbus, OH 
and the week after I will be in Pittsburgh for a race.

One last note, what I learned:  I have been successful at eliminating almost all of the 
understeer in the car through suspension alignments.  I tried to run a lap with the 
center diff locked.  I figured it would help reduce wheelspin and help braking.  
Normally, locking the diff makes the car understeer tremendously, but I was hoping the 
suspension changes would have eliminated most of it.  It did not.  I am still trying to 
find a way to run that diff locked without understeer.  Any suggestions?

Sincerely,

Steve Verona