saablog

Yesterday was practice day 2 with the 900. Practice day 1 was the day after I purchased the car, I was just learning to drive the car at that point, practice was just a good way to do that.

It was a chilly morning when I arrived at the Boeing lot in Everett. There was still ice on portions of the parking lot. After tech and setup, we had the drivers meeting and split into run groups. I actually called the coin flip and was able to choose for our group to drive second, so that the pavement would have a chance to dry out. But then Zane realized that the three guys who had never driven autocross before were in the first run group, and didn’t think that was a good idea. He decided that he and Noel would change to the first run group, and he asked me to do the same. So even though I had called the winning coin toss, I ended up running in the first group with wet pavement.

Since I’m still running on the commuter car tires that the car came with, I wasn’t expecting great results. What I got were pretty damn disappointing results. On my first run I missed 2 gates (the course was technically challenging). On my second I did a 180 coming through the slalom. That was disorienting. Only on my last run did I make a clean run, finishing in the 58s. On every run, the back end felt not planted, and the front tires spent a lot of time spinning, without traction.

So the first order of business is to get my race tires before the next practice. The other immediate order of business is to replace the thermostat (I’ve got the part as well as the radiator hoses), as the car is slow to warm up so I’m thining the t-stat is stuck open or at least is not closing as quickly as it should.

I’m hoping that the tires will give me some traction. As far as handling… I’ll have to see what the tires do. I’m sure I could use new shocks, but I’d really like to see how the car feels with the tires before also replacing the shocks. We’ll see. I need to prioritize… how much money do I really want to spend?

I’m thinking that my lack of driving skill is playing as much of a role in my performance as the age/condition of my car. That’s both good and bad. And I’ll let you figure out why.