We showed up the morning of race day and moved through registration and tech inspection pretty quickly. It was determined that both cars would be in E Street Prepared, or ESP, based on the modifications each Camaro had. Some tape over the battery terminals was about all that was required to pass tech inspection. After the morning driver’s meeting we were given a walk-through by two of the event chiefs to orient us to the course and to get some driving tips. For a newbie, the biggest challenge was viewing a pile of orange cones and seeing a path through them. There was very little in the way of chalk on the blacktop to indicate the boundaries like one has white or yellow lines or curbs on the street. The second thing that became obvious really quick is that even if you are fairly good at picking a good line on the streets to take a corner at aggressive speeds and allowing your car to drift to the outside of the curve as you accelerate out of a corner, stacking up many of these turns back to back is quickly beyond your street-driving developed skill set. Dad and I were in the afternoon heats so we had the luxury of watching Heats 1 and 2 to see where drivers goofed, where we thought we could be fast, and where we thought we needed to slow down. I was in Heat 3, and Dad was scheduled to work Heat 3 and race in Heat 4 (which I was scheduled to work in). Each driver gets 4 runs in his or her heat.
The races are set up in a parking lot in the Aloha Stadium complex. Volunteers from the club (generally the event “Chiefs” as they are known) show up before sunup to start laying out the track, getting the cones in place, putting the chalk marks around them, and setting up the tents, timing equipment, PA equipment, etc. They really do a lot of work so we can all have fun, and I for one and very appreciative of it. It’s a long day for me just to show up in the morning and race, they show up much sooner than I do and stay much later so kudos definitely need to go out to them. At any rate, the space they have to work with at the stadium is a fairly small space as far as autocrossing goes, and the course tends to have lots of twists and turns, probably more so than would be typical of a SCCA Solo II course on the mainland which might have some longer straightaways. This of course probably lends itself to the smaller cars, the Miatas and Minis, doing better on the course than the domestic cars like the Camaro, Mustang, and even the Corvette.
I did my first two runs with an instructor, who was very kind and helpful! Despite having him in the car, I zigged when I should have zagged and went through a set of cones on the wrong side after a slalom, and earned a Did Not Finish, or DNF, for my first run. Your time is not recorded for a DNF, but it was around 44 seconds. One thing about planning to go racing, thinking about what you are going to do on the track, and even visualizing what you are going to do: it all goes out the window when the flag drops and you put the hammer down in a 40 year old muscle car! Although I left the car in first gear for the entire run so I didn’t have to worry about shifting, my hands were fumbling all over the steering wheel, I didn’t slow down in the spots we had determined we should slow down in, and was generally sliding and drifting all over the place.
My second run was dramatically smoother, and I started to get the hang of navigating the cones. First gear seemed to work reasonably well although letting off the gas abruptly caused some fairly serious engine breaking, so getting on the brakes hard was not required on the course. I got through the course without hitting any cones, and staying on track, with a time of 43.756. While there were many faster times clocked that day, I had seen some slower as well, so felt like this wasn’t too bad a start. I put my car in the staging area known as the Grid, and looked down at my gauges. The voltage was in the single digits and the water temp was 240 degrees. I had blown the water pump/alternator belt off the car!