Congrat's on your own win in Street Modified, Carter. You put the hammer down on Sunday.

My car is finally back together in one piece. Had a private test & Tune at Mineral Wells yesterday. Still a bit loose for handling, but runs like a banshee otherwise. Hoping to make a good run on the grippy concrete at College Station this weekend. Nine STX competitors are registered, a pretty good variety of vehicles. James Wilson should be strong in the Subaru WRX and I haven't had much seat time, so we'll see.

 

No worries Carter, I was busy drooling over your RX7 and those new gold CCW's you got there

 

yeah, how'd you like to see a similar setup in an RX8 chassis?


.

 

Only if I can get a co drive

 

Congrats to Jason,Jim and Dennis.....terrific racing guys.

Jim and Carter T

 

Nice scare yesterday, thought I would have to withdraw my entry again. Went to put the car in the trailer to head down to the event and the engine went flat from 6000 rpm up. Just would not rev, then I noticed the flashing CEL. Popped the hood, everything looked good so I'm thinking worst case catastrophe of failed coil(s) since I don't have any spares. Cranked it up and just worked the throttle until it finally cleared and would rev normally. Ran out to Mineral Wells and did some practice runs and everything seems normal now. I was at Cobb the day before getting an alignment and did some extended idling while they were moving cars around etc. so I'm thinking the plugs might have loaded up.

Tour course is long, flowing, and appears to be quick. STX runs last heat and they are half way through Heat 2 now.

 

Out of impound and done for the day at 2:30 PM, awesome ...

 

Good job today Mark, go get them tomorrow!

 

Good luck tomorrow, Mark.

 

I think I need to make my car legal for STX. The fastest STX car (Ruggles 102.016 Good effort by the way) was over 2 seconds behind the fastest STR car (Darrin DiSimo 99.963).

Last time I raced against Darrin he got a 77.139 and my time was 78.796 under 1.7 second difference. I know Dixie is 2 races on 2 days but I think I would be up there maybe get on the podium. Obviously I would have to remove my replica Mazdaspeed kit though :-(

 

Anybody can bench race...

 

I know right. I never though it would be worth going to Nationals but that gives me hope. I might get Ruggles to drive my car and see how far off his pace I am am what he thinks of my cars chances.

 

Congrats Mark!

2012 Sun Belt National Tour
March 16-18, 2012

**** UNOFFICIAL RESULTS (INFORMATIONAL ONLY) ****

Class standings for STX [9 Cars] (3/18/2012 1:41:12 PM)

---------------------------------------------------------
T 1 99 Mark Sipe 2005 Mazda RX-8 White Toyo
72.446(2) 67.995 68.888 133.803
67.257(1) 65.808 67.146(1)
---------------------------------------------------------
T 2 144 James Wilson 2008 Subaru WRX DGM Dunlop
70.055 70.294(1) 68.506 133.890
65.953 65.521 65.384 (0.087)
---------------------------------------------------------
T 3 93 Terry Fair 2011 Ford Mustang GT Re
DNF 68.750 68.743 134.211
66.901 65.468 65.827 (0.321)
---------------------------------------------------------
4 75 Todd Roberts 2008 Mazda Mazdaspeed 3 Kumho
69.790 68.637 70.522(1) 134.623
66.104 65.986 66.527 (0.412)
---------------------------------------------------------
5 97 Christopher Ledb 1997 BMW 328iS White Dunlop
74.422(3) 70.833(1) 69.211 134.803
66.590 65.826 65.592 (0.180)
---------------------------------------------------------
6 44 Shawn Murphy 2008 Subaru Impreza WRX Hankook
73.015 69.808 69.296 135.106
69.043(1) 66.682 65.810 (0.303)
---------------------------------------------------------
7 77 Barry Booker 2004 Volkswagen R32 blu Yokoham
70.890 70.587 71.359 136.723
66.478 66.214 66.136 (1.617)
---------------------------------------------------------
8 177 Paul Carrig 2004 Volkswagen R32 Blu
71.134 73.153(2) 72.628(1) 138.036
67.952 66.902 67.055 (1.313)
---------------------------------------------------------
9 12 Chris Levitz 2006 Mazda Mazdaspeed 6 Dunlop
72.780(1) 72.108(1) 75.629 138.982
77.745 67.538 66.874 (0.946)

RX-8s on top in both National Tours thus far.

 

Congrats Mark!

No 8's in CS yet.

 

Well done Mark.....close thanks to your final run cone but a win is a win is a win.

 

I did my best to try and give it away, but nobody else would cooperate there were multiple seconds of time left out there

 

Great time at the dixie tour..nice to meet all of you guys that were there. thanks for convincing corrin and i to get into an rx8..just bought an 09 rx8 r3 in brilliant black. loving it so far and once the speed3 is sold we should start buying parts looking forward to racing with you guys again!
-Brian Tyson btw lol

 

Yea, you better get out there and race. If you competed in STR ( which you can not with an RX8) 1.7 seconds combined both days would yield a 43rd place finish. Also if you have a 1,7 second each day difference that would have put you in second to last based on the 2011 national results.

I love bench racing.


+1, great job Mark.

 

Did you run in the same conditions as the other ST classes?


Simmons

 

Oh man, you should know not to offer up a ride in your car

As a resident car-*****, I would love to take a spin in it and see how it feels.

Dixie tour was a BLAST. STX will be my new home as the competition was very tight and the people were great! Jim's car is a joy to drive, but I would hold off on bench racing using those results. There are always more unknown factors than known factors. I would say that if you are considering running a tour or something, but are unsure if the car or driver is up to the task, JUST GO. Even if you are dead last, you will learn a lot, and it will completely change your outlook on the sport. It's like having a baby...there is never a RIGHT time....wait, what?

Thanks again Jim for the seat!

(Nice job Mark, sounded like a nail biter at the end....too bad there is no Defense in autocross )

 

You can deffo drive my car, if you are going to the next event you can share my car on Sunday. I'll let you drive my car and you can show me how to drive it fast!
The best way to learn is to have someone else drive it faster and then chase there time. I usually let Eric drive it for the odd run as he is a great driver.

 

Yes, we were last heat so maybe the warmest temp, but it was neither too cool in the morning nor too hot in the afternoon. I was still fighting oversteer issues on Saturday coupled with a lot of driving errors in general. Seemed to have gotten the balance settings figured out for Sunday, but i was still gunshy about the rear grip level and the mistakes kept piling up like hitting both the gas and brake pedal in a critical high to low speed braking zone and almost not making the gate etc. on my clean 2nd run, which I was playing safe otherwise to protect my lead. I can't see how the cone call on my last Sunday run even occurred. The gate was wide open into braking and turning into a wide, long 180. They had me marked as clean then scratched it out and marked the inside cone as down. Unless I just carelessly brushed it with the inside rear, but I can't recall being that close to it. That again was supposed to be just a clean, smooth save the lead safety run. I had to wonder if the cone was already down and I just got pegged with it.


.

 

Have to add that James Wilson was his usual class act, as was the rest of the STX field. Whdn it came down to our last run our discussion with each other was sincere to the point of rooting each other on rather than a stare down or attempted psych out. STX was also the most diverse class of the event. We had six different model vehicles and not a single duplicate of any one model.

 

That happened to me once (I think) so ever since I run a camera front and backwards in case they call a cone. My co-driver at Nationals swore he didn't have a cone, so we watched the videos and sure enough he got one.

Simmons

 

Good to hear, I had fun last year in D/S and was hoping STX would be the same.