Texas Triathlon 2001 - My Story
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On the weekend of February 10th and 11th, I competed in the 2nd annual Texas Motorsport Triathlon, organized by Keith Verges and made possible by a great group of volunteers. As the name suggests, the Texas Triathlon is a competition to see who has, and can drive, the fastest street car in the country -- as determined by a combination of road racing, autocrossing, and drag racing. The Road Racing and Autocross would take place at Texas Motor Speedway, and the drag racing was slated for the Texas Motorplex at Ennis.
Last year, the Texas Triathlon was focused strictly on street cars -- with no trailering, race gas, or race tires allowed. This year, Keith changed the rules and added a class for race prepped cars -- the "unlimited" class. The unlimited class allowed you to trailer the car to the event, run any octane gas you want, and best of all you could run racing slick tires.
I decided to compete in the street class, running my daily driver Supra on pump gas and on my street wheels with Pilot Sport and S-02 Pole Position tires. This put me in what the Triathletes call the GT1 class -- sports cars over $30,000. The competition was fierce -- a lot of modified Vipers, C5s and Z06's, a ZR-1, Clint's HKS twin turbo SC300, Eric's T78 RX-7, a Lingenfelter Twin Turbo Corvette C5, etc.
For Saturday's autocross and road race competitions, I was put into group B, meaning I would first autocross in the morning and then road race in the afternoon. I was pretty nervous about this part of the Triathlon, because I've only autocrossed once in my life, and that was two years ago in my Maxima. Set up by the folks at Equipe Rapide in the TMS bus parking lot, the autocross course was nicely laid out. It was pretty technical, and I was in 2nd gear the whole time. It took me a few laps to learn the course, in the course of which I put up a pretty good smoke show exiting the slow turns and even spun the car once. :) By the end, though, I managed to learn the course pretty well, and managed to have a couple of non-smoky-burnout laps in the autocross with decent times, with my best lap taking about 48.2 seconds. Ironically, one of my fun, sideways laps was my 2nd fastest autocross lap (48.5 seconds). Heh. :)
After going out for fuel and lunch, it was time for the road race competition. We were using the TMS infield for the road race, which was a relatively short road course (well under a minute). The track surface was very nice and there were no elevation changes, so it was a relatively easy track where you just have to go fast, hang on, and hope you don't slide off. I used 3rd gear for most of the track, except for dropping down to 2nd for the back horseshoe and upshifting to 4th right after the chicane at the beginning of the main straight.
The road race competition worked as follows: two "similar" cars would be sent out on the track at a time, with about half a lap between them, to do their timed runs. After one warm up lap, they would have four "hot" timed laps and then a cool down lap. I was put on the track following a Viper GTS on Hoosier slicks. As much to my surprise as anybody else's, I caught up to him within a couple laps, which meant we had to stop and try again later. The funny part was after the checkered flag was waved for us to cool down, my concentration lapsed and I went into the back chicane too late, causing me to almost collect the inside tire wall. Luckily the cones stopped my slide ;) and I managed to keep it on the track and continue my cool down lap into the pits.
After waiting about 20 minutes for everybody else in group B to do their timed laps, the red Viper and I lined up to go again. This time the organizers decided to let me go first. :-) I was a bit nervous because of the near incident in the earlier timing session, but I knew I had to give it my all and make no mistakes in these timed laps.. I got out on the course and concentrated, and squeezed everything I could out of the car. My number "3.0" Supra performed great, letting me average high 42 seconds/lap through my four timed laps.
Two down, one to go. Or so we thoguht. The third and final event of the Texas Triathlon, the drag racing at Ennis, was unfortunately rained out on Sunday Morning. That didn't stop most of the participants from showing up with our cars on Sunday morning just in case the rain stopped. It didn't stop, so Keith decided to tabulate the results from the previous two reults and award the winners.
In the unlimited class on race tires, SW and Jay won 1st and 2nd place in their awesome and expertly driven C5's. Next up, your humble author won 3rd place overall, with 1st place in the street class! I am honored to have been part of this awesome event, and would like to thank everybody that organized, participated, and came out to the Triathlon for making it as great as it was.
Comments? Questions? Email me at andi@airmail.net
