A good day and a ‘FTD’.

Posted on June 27, 2011

At the risk of turning my cycling related blog into a car blog I share this with you.

I race a sports car in SCCA Solo events (aka –  autocross) and at the beginning of last season I switched cars and have been doing my best to get the car dialed in ever since and while I’ve taken 2nd overall a number of times I’ve never gotten the coveted ‘FTD’ award. FTD stands for ‘Fastest Time of the Day’ and it means just what is sounds like – it the fastest time recorded that day regardless of the class the car is in. So I’m pretty excited to have gotten the car set up well enough so that it matches my driving style which will then allow for my first FTD.

I’ve raced lots of things over the years – bikes (BMX, MTB, road, observed trials), XC skis, snowboards, skateboards and cars and I bet I will continue to compete in something until my last days……..which……..with any luck will be a good long time from now. My body has taken a bit of a beating over the years doing this stuff and in some ways I’m paying for that now. As much as I’d like to be able to continue to race my bike (I often miss it dearly) my body will not allow for the training required to do it with any level of race fitness. So I ride my bike as much as I can and enjoy it to the core but now my racing is done on 4 wheels. I really ‘need’ to race something I guess.

Many thanks to Kevin Boyles photograhy (  http://kevinboylesphotography.com/ ) for the photos he shot at yesterday’s solo event.

Dave

This entry was posted in For Fun.  

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7 responses to “A good day and a ‘FTD’.”

  1. parris says:
    June 27, 2011 at 11:48 am

    Dave congrats! Now that things appear to have warmed up are you able to get the car to hook up better?
    Parris

  2. Don from Kalamazoo says:
    June 27, 2011 at 4:57 pm

    Dave —

    I enjoy your blog whether you are writing about bikes, cars, or just about Montana. Congratulations on you FTD! I autocross as well, but have tended to run cars that fall into G-Stock, so unless no one else shows up, I have almost no chance at FTD! Car looks good!

    Enjoy,

    — Don4

  3. Mike B says:
    June 29, 2011 at 5:21 am

    I’m glad you have such a cool hobby. I think “speed freak” sums you up. Not a bad thing you know…

  4. Scott Miller says:
    June 29, 2011 at 5:08 pm

    Did you change your set-up after you made your alignment bars? Congrats!

  5. kirks says:
    June 30, 2011 at 7:08 am

    Hey Scott,

    Yes I did. The car seemed good in steady state fast sweepers but it was very unstable and twitchy in transitions and slaloms. My rear tires were also running much hotter on the inside. So I reduced the camber rear camber from 2.4° to 1.8° and it feels MUCH better. I also increased the rear toe to 2 mm a side and now the car is much more stable and predictable, turns in very crisply and rotates well when need be. Overall if feels much more intuitive now and does what I ask it to. some fresh rubber and it’s going to be great.

    dave

  6. Ivana Garfunkel says:
    August 12, 2011 at 10:08 am

    I think it would be cool to be able to drive a car like this on some kind of driving course

  7. Dee Machala says:
    October 10, 2011 at 9:12 am

    Man if I get one of these cars I’m going to go by James Bond from now on

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