West Palm Beach is a pretty sweet event for us.
It's only two and a half hours from us, so we can kind of get relaxed, get the car ready,
cruise down there on our own time.
It's not like we're switching drivers the entire time, we're dealing with all kinds
of trucks.
We fill up once, we get down there, we run the event, we fill up and go home.
So it's kind of a relief to almost do that because of how much work we put into these
trips like Seattle and Jersey and California.
Going into the event, we had some car issues in Atlanta.
We fixed those, had them all sorted, tested the car, everything was solid.
Not a whole lot changed on the setup for this event, so we kind of went in knowing what
we needed.
We've driven the track before, it's an awesome track for tandem.
It's a fast entry to a slower infield that allows you to just go full lock, full throttle
and it really shows who can commit and who doesn't commit by the amount of smoke and
throttle commitment you can get through the track.
So going into practice on Thursday, it was raining up until practice started.
The first maybe 10 minutes or so it was raining, so we continued to set up and get everything
ready to go, let the track dry out because we just wanted to start with a dry track and
not really a progressive track where it's half dry, half wet, that's pretty dangerous.
It's basically the worst situation.
So we went out there and it was dry, we warmed the tires up and going for our first run.
Our first run of the day was literally like an 85 point run.
We've been to that track before, we know the line, the judges had changed a few things
that helped us out, so we were on fire all day.
We were just basically, our only trouble was trying to stop in the first outer zone, coming
in at 100 miles an hour and staying flat as long as possible.
We worked that out and the team did a good job of keeping the car together and went into
the Friday.
Friday was definitely an interesting day, again we had a little bit of weather change,
some overcasts, the track temps were changing pretty much the entire time.
We had our tires set up perfect, the car was set up perfect.
We actually had to dial down the boost a little bit because we had some coolant issues, not
actually overheating, but we were smelling coolant out of the exhaust and pressurizing
the cooling system.
So for practice we went out and did two or three laps to kind of get the car dialed
in, get back into the groove for the day, then we kind of parked it and sat and watched
everybody.
Everybody was doing really well, so we decided we were going to do our full grip setup and
try to go out and qualify number one.
Going out for qualifying, we put some fresh tires on, did a good burnout, got the car
dialed in, turned the boost up a little bit more to like 27, 28 pounds, which is around
the 700 horsepower mark and went out for qualifying, went down the straight away as fast as possible,
had a super solid run, rode the outer zone everywhere, tons of angle, committed throttle,
you know there wasn't any shaking, it was pretty solid, I felt good about the run.
And then my spotter, Hachi, told me that we dropped the tire in the outer zone, slightly
into the dirt.
It wasn't actually in the zone, it was going off the rumble strip there, so they docked,
usually about five points off that.
I thought the run was a little bit better than they judged us, but they gave us like
a 75.4 or 75.6.
So it was a little harsh on the judging, but we definitely got in and we qualified 15th
place, so we didn't have to make a second qualifying run.
Going into Friday nights tandem practice, we were pretty solid, like I said, this is
one of my favorite tandem tracks, because you can literally put it on their door and really
take advantage of the situation there.
We basically were killing people in tandem, like we were entering about a car back, closing
it completely into the zone and putting tires from people's rear to front like the entire
time, no issues there at all.
And then it started pouring raining, like I couldn't see anything.
I was driving by like, they have the course markers lit up, and you could just see giant
red blurs.
So when you're pointing at them straight, you'd see the red blurs, and as soon as you
kick it sideways, then you could see out your side windows.
So basically I drove as much angle and as snappy as possible, because I couldn't see
out my front windshield at all, wipers on full blast, it was just fogging up no matter
what.
So we were able to plug a little bit early on in practice, got some good solid rain laps
in and prepped the car for Saturday morning.
So rolling onto the track on Saturday, car was prepped ready to go, still having a little
bit of a cooling issue.
It was starting to get a little bit warmer, but Dave hit in the crew, definitely kept
bleeding the cooling system, kept it going good, and we went into tandem practice again
in the morning.
Basically that tandem practice in the morning is to get everybody kind of pumped up, ready
to go, get your car set up, you can really kind of get those last little bits so the
spotter can see what speeds are.
Went into that practice basically to set up the car for full grit.
So we ran against Daigo, stayed on his door no problem, ran against Turrick and had a
phenomenal run with him, we definitely had a lot of fun.
He had a full lock, massive, smoky run in front of us, and we were banging his door
the whole time.
And then ran with a couple other guys to kind of judge you out the speed, and we were definitely
like one of the faster cars there, so we were stoked on that, and we knew what we had to
line up against Osbo, the car that was ready to rock.
You know Osbo's definitely got one of the fastest cars out there, you know Daigo's car
is super fast, but you know he has more angle than Daigo at the same speed, so we knew we
had to have the car set up right, our tires set up for full grips, our BC coilovers like
full bleed, ready to rock.
So we went out and did our lead run first because we out qualified him, had basically
a hundred point run, it was tons of angle, tons of commitment, tons of throttle, we did
go slightly over the line on the outer zone number two, but it was a small, small bit
so it would have been a five point deduction, finished the last two runs full lock, we were
actually able to stretch Osbo in between zones one and two by about three cars, he closed
the gap, stretched him again and then he closed the gap again, so we were able to definitely
show that we were more dominant in our lead run.
Then we pulled up to the line for our follow run, I jumped the light a little bit because
his car is faster down the straightaway, at the pace cone he had about a fender length
on me which is pretty much perfectly where you want to be, I was flat on the gas, full
grip and third gear, shift to fourth and I noticed like shifting into fourth that he
had already put two cars on us, we had about two to three hundred feet before we entered
the first turn and he was just out, like rolling and I was like foot to the floor looking
at gauges like what's going on you know, we're definitely making enough power, we definitely
still entered at like 98 miles an hour but he had four cars on us on the entry, so I
entered the first turn through in the angle and then shallowed up to try to get up on
his door for the outer zone and about halfway through the outer zone I was back on his door
as close as possible, I didn't have to sacrifice my line and angle to catch up you know but
there was really nothing else I could do at that point, put it on his door for the last
two clips and then went through the finish line you know within a car length and then
you know he kind of rolled off and we went to the decision and he actually wound up taking
the win there, he didn't have to shallow up to keep up with me even though we had a little
bit of a gap on him in our lead run and he had a little bit of a gap on us, we just lost
on the drag race, like it was such an eye-opener like having my car at 700 horsepower which
never has a problem keeping up with anybody on the track to lose on the straight line
like between the pace cone and initiation point, it was like my mind's blown, absolutely
crazy, so going into the next round I think we're just going to you know add about 100
to 150 horsepower, have active auto work retune the car, kind of set the car out to be faster
on the straight away, Jersey's not too bad of a straight away so I think we'll be good
there but you know we've got to get the power on for Seattle and you know keep trucking,
team's got to work hard.
And you know because he drives a front wheel drive car that is not front wheel drive anymore,
it's deceiving, so you look at the French toast and you're like oh man I love French
toast and then you cut it and you get cream cheese inside of it and then you're like
that's a front wheel drive car, it's rear wheel drive but it works great just like French
toast and stuff and cream cheese, it's amazing.
