SCCA National Event, Crows Landing Options

[Randal]

Live broadcast and results here: http://sololive.scca.com/

Drove down to see the event with Richard Linsdall in his new Tesla. Nice trip and during the day we sat in that supercar with the AC on. Nice.

Anyway, Crow's Landing is a GREAT venue. Not sure why I've heard negative comments about this place as it's HUGE and has a great surface. Not necessarily tire friendly, but grippy.

Like 280 cars and drivers. My first time to see a national event. They are run extremely well.. so well organized.

Watched Bill Charron run in the morning yesterday. I think the surface was dirty and he wasn't hooking up, but he'll be at it again this morning -right about now I think. I think he was good for a low 60 second time yesterday, but not sure what running the course backwards will equate to in time today. Although watching the live feed it seems like times are maybe a bit faster this morning.

Just watching the live feed: Bill didn't run with the EM group, so maybe he isn't running today or has a mechanical. Shoot.

Also got to hang out and watch Britain Smith and Brad Roberts drive the yellow 914. They ran late in the afternoon when the course was clean. Car looked good, but the course (more later about this) was tough to master and you only got three shots to win the prize. Hard to drive that monster smooth on a course that is nothing but slaloms. Also had some performance issues when the ground cable got loose and fell off. TTOD day car, excluding the carts, no question. So much power, but with the slalom setup tough to take advantage.

And the course, unfortunately a poor design. Nothing but slalom courses from the start to the end with two sweepers for turn arounds. It didn't flow and had nothing interesting from a drivers perspective. Who ever designed the course should be made to sit down and read Roger's book on SCCA autoxing.

Sure would have liked to run this event, but maybe next year.