Final Solo Weekend Oct. 24-25

[Cody]

Reno Region SCCA members and friends,

Don't forget that Reno Region's final Solo weekend of the year, Oct. 24-25, has been moved to Stead Airport north of Reno! All our usual schedules and procedures will be in place -- morning driver's meeting at 8:45 both days. Check our website, renoscca.org (http://renoscca.org/), for the run group orders. Mark your calendar so you don't forget -- it'll be long cold winter, waiting for April and the beginning of the 2010 Solo season. See you at Stead Oct. 24 and 25!

Jim Gandy
Regional Executive

Who has seen the surface lately? Any improvement? I'll go regardless, but I want to know how much masking tape to bring. ;)

[Dean]

Debbie mentioned that the sweepers were running full blast the day she was at the air races early that week...

[Kevin M]

I plan to be on hand for setup on Friday to find out for myself. :)

[van]

Who has seen the surface lately? Any improvement? I'll go regardless, but I want to know how much masking tape to bring. ;)
again? Roughish.

[friwes]

The surface looks much better than it did early this year.

[Skyhorse]

I went and looked at the surface on Sunday it does seem better but more will be reveled after a few tires are turned in anger
Set up will start around 1ish on Friday
And every one will have to swear an oath not to laugh when I DNF on my own course
Your sort of humble event chair –Scott Knauf

[Kevin M]

If you DNF from a spin, that's okay. If you manage to get lost on your own course (as certain Vegas region event chairs have done at Hawthorne) then you will be ridiculed for the rest of your days. :p

[S2kreno]

So make it an easy one to follow. Some of us will be grateful :)

[solonut]

So make it an easy one to follow. Some of us will be grateful :)

I'll put bread crumbs down for you to follow.......

[stevewaclo]

We had chip seal applied to our streets here at Quail Run in Carson City in the Spring, and complaints began almost immediately. Lot's of loose gravel picked up on tires and tracked into garages and homes. After six months, the more trafficked areas have stabilized, but less heavily used side streets continue to shed, with gravel in gutters all over the community. And several passes of sweepers did not help. An adjacent property next door had theirs done by another contractor 3 weeks later and was, in the immortal words of Goldilocks "just right"...go figure.

One thing for sure, the "sunshine" treatment does not improve the situation. It needs traffic, and lots of it!

We'll see what we've got over the weekend. My main concern, other than being the official club back-marker, is spinning out, like l did at Truckee till I sorted things out.

[solonut]

the tires are on,air pressures set....ready to push it to the max!!!! and then some;)

I helped Scott set-up the course.....it looks fun....

[Skyhorse]

We all know pat has a strange idea of fun. Big thanks to Wes, Bryan, Jim and Van for all the help with set up, oh and Pat also. fun will be had by all

[solonut]

We all know pat has a strange idea of fun.

Warped:devil::devil::banana::disco:

[solonut]

I would like to give Scott a big Kudosfor job well done this weekend....course design was great surface made you drive a very tight line...get 6" off lne and its drift time...I nominate Scott to chair all events next year....

[dknv]

On Saturday, I went to the event, thinking that if it was too slippery/dangerous/damaging due to gravel and sand, I would only take 3 runs. It ended up being fun enough to take all 6 runs. And to do it again on Sunday.
And from the devil's-advocate perspective, if I were trying to win a regional/class championship (non-AWD on race tires), or even if I were trying to get seat time to train for national events, the surface conditions at Stead would have left me tremendously frustrated.
Nevertheless, I thank our Solo Director Wes Friesen, for arranging to have the course swept/vacuumed after each run group, and for building good will with Jeff "Sweeper" and his partner.
And many many thanks, Scott Knauf, for chairing our last two events of the season! I enjoyed the courses.
And on Sunday, I had a Great time driving Pat Housel's Miata. Thanks so much, Pat, your car was set-up really well and was a joy to drive!!

[MPREZIV]

And from the devil's-advocate perspective, if I were trying to win a regional/class championship (non-AWD on race tires), or even if I were trying to get seat time to train for national events, the surface conditions at Stead would have left me tremendously frustrated.


Trust me, even with AWD and street tires, that surface can still be frustrating while trying to win your class championship...

I DO still want to send the same kudos along to everyone who put the event on this weekend tho! Just because it was a struggle for me doesn't mean I didn't have fun! :D

[Dean]

I rode on Sat. a few times and talked to many while I was there.

While the surface is less than ideal, it was predictable which is key IMHO.

The challenge for drivers is to forget the surface we had at Stead and drive the surface we have. In many respects it reminded me of the extension (slalom and pivot) at Hawthorne, and others described it as similar to Truckee the previous event.

As someone who has spent many hours on-track at Audi events in the wet, I would say that slicker surfaces require smoother and slower inputs and if anything, learning to drive well on them will make you better on stickier surfaces. I would remind Debbie's Devil side :) of how many nationals as well as tours have been run in the wet as well as the "sandy" surface 2 or three years ago at Topeka's "new" site that I can't remember the name of.

I guess the bottom line question is reflected in Cory's comment. Did you have fun despite whatever frustration?

And are more people going to come and drive the Stead we have than the very small RFR Solo turnouts? The club cannot survive on the later...

[Cody]

I think that the street sweepers made it more than bearable. I had a blast this weekend. I felt like things were back to how they should be (just a touch more slippy). :)

[dsmith]

I rode on Sat. a few times and talked to many while I was there.

While the surface is less than ideal, it was predictable which is key IMHO.

The challenge for drivers is to forget the surface we had at Stead and drive the surface we have. In many respects it reminded me of the extension (slalom and pivot) at Hawthorne, and others described it as similar to Truckee the previous event.

As someone who has spent many hours on-track at Audi events in the wet, I would say that slicker surfaces require smoother and slower inputs and if anything, learning to drive well on them will make you better on stickier surfaces. I would remind Debbie's Devil side :) of how many nationals as well as tours have been run in the wet as well as the "sandy" surface 2 or three years ago at Topeka's "new" site that I can't remember the name of.

I guess the bottom line question is reflected in Cory's comment. Did you have fun despite whatever frustration?

And are more people going to come and drive the Stead we have than the very small RFR Solo turnouts? The club cannot survive on the later...

Yep, it's what we have and what we'll have to work with; at least it will be the same for everyone. It may, however, limit the Cali folks from coming over the hill, unless they want to practise "wet" racing. It should improve, the question is how fast? Since we'll always use different parts of the surface as our courses vary, it may take quite awhile to traffic it down to a solid surface, or at least as solid as it's been in the past.

[Dean]

Any surface will degrade over time. We forget that the "old surface" was coming up in many areas and would likely have gotten worse fast and have been worse than it is with little chance of recovery in a matter of years if it was not sealed no matter how bad a job they did.

Until they repave which is unlikely in the next decade, we will have to deal with it. Also remember there are many regions that have no sites or those that are far worse than Stead. You also may recall the national site where concrete bits got pulled up and they had to repatch almost between run groups in addition to designing courses around the bad parts and ski jumps!!!!

[dknv]

...As someone who has spent many hours on-track at Audi events in the wet, I would say that slicker surfaces require smoother and slower inputs and if anything, learning to drive well on them will make you better on stickier surfaces. I would remind Debbie's Devil side :) of how many nationals as well as tours have been run in the wet as well as the "sandy" surface 2 or three years ago at Topeka's "new" site that I can't remember the name of.:devil:Who, me?

Many nationals competitors running in the rain will run rain tires, which unfortunately does not displace sand. Furthermore, yes, Heartland Park Topeka had a sand problem particularly in the first year, but it was limited to certain areas, not the entire course. And except for John Burns and (Pat, were you there in 2006? 2007?); and myself, no one else has anything but anecdotal evidence to compare the two, in the conditions we are talking about. In my opinion, I could attack the HPT course everywhere, including when I was driving Mark's STU car on street tires. I could not attack anything at the Stead course. This was my main point of saying anything about it.

My bottom line is that Stead was fun to run, though I am in doubt it will help me learn to be a faster driver until the surface improves (but as many have said, at least the conditions are the same for everyone). I think Kevin McDaniel mentioned elsewhere that it seemed improved on Sunday afternoon (I hope I'm not misquoting you, Kevin!), and for that I am extremely hopeful -- because I really enjoyed being back at my home turf. :)

[Kevin M]

My personal opinion is that yes, as the weekend went on the course improved. Or maybe what it really did was degrade less over each run group, which made all of our run-to-run improvements show up and not get negated as much by the surface "going away."

I was never really fighting the course though, so I am probably not the opinion to be basing conclusions about the surface on. :lol:

[dsmith]

Well, it's our surface and we're just going to have to deal with it next year. Who knows how 6 months might change it, how severe a winter we'll have, etc. It probably won't get any worse, might get better, could stay the same. But, as anyone who has looked at our attendance figures can see (only 32 drivers made enough events to qualify for a trophy, down 40% from last year) if we want to survive we need to get back to a regular schedule at Stead.