Cq20V

So today was the date of our SCCA regions's Driver's Challenge. That means all the class winners from the 10-event summer series compete in the same car, donated from the local Honda dealer. This year it was a Pontiac Grand Prix Special Edition, not sure what year, sometime in the mid 90s. Since I won CSP for the season I was one of 20 drivers to get 2 runs each behind the wheel. The winner can be somewhat considered to have the best raw talent, since it is a car nobody has ever driven before, and is not what most of us are used to (front-drive, automatic, soggy suspension, etc., i.e. NOT a good autocross car)

So I drew slot number 20, dead last. The worst possible slot. That means when I got the car it had done 38 runs already, had chunks missing from the tires, and the brakes were smoking and smelled roasty-toasty. Plus, it was getting late, so rather than getting cool-down time between runs like everybody else, I had to hop in the car right after the previous driver and rip off my runs with no time in between.

At this point the winner was almost decided already, one guy was way ahead with an absurd time that was considered unbeatable, so I was basically just going through the motions so everybody could get on with it and go home.

After my first run I was lagging by about 1.5 seconds, an eternity in autocross land. But, it was better than a lot of the field. You have to remember the current leader was ahead of the pack by about 2 seconds, with a lot of people 3 or 4 seconds back. So I said to myself, "heck, I have a chance, I'm either going to win or run this car into the ground trying".

My second run I gave <i>everything</i> I had. The car gave no feedback, typical numb GM controls, and had a really floaty suspension, so you have no idea what's going on, you just have to manhandle it and hope it goes the way you want it to. I pushed it to the absolute limit, nearly spinning in every corner, and dropped my time by 2 seconds, winning the event by almost half a second. As I crossed the line our announcer (who drives a Honda) said over the loudspeaker "I take back anything bad I ever said about Audi drivers".

Everybody involved crowded around the car as I pulled it back into grid with huge grins on their faces and shook my hand to congratulate me on laying down such an absurd time in this kind of car. It was only 2 seconds slower than I ran in my Cq, in which I got 5 runs!

Just had to gloat a little on the forum here, what a day!! Hopefully I represented the Audi community well.

520

Great job! Congrats!!