Written by: Vaughn Micciche
It’s been 3 days since completing the 24.5 hour drive home from Iowa…and I still haven’t taken off this 2nd place National Championship medallion!!!
What an amazing weekend / trip and to think I had decided against a Nationals bid after loosing to Brianne Corn at the Eastern National Challenge earlier this year. Thank you to Warren Elliott for a little pep talk and the phone call after the eastern challenge. It wasn’t the most responsible decision to head out to Iowa, but definitely the best decision!
Oh man did we have a race, Peter Dozeman has built the class-killa Miata — the thing is awesome and has implemented most of the ideas that you’d think of to make speed, plus some more. Radiator is in the truck, that is actually one of the more simple mods. My idea was in-board brakes — his was to make an aluminum drive hub and run motorcycle brakes on 13 inch wheels! And rubber, from some stinky garage in Lithuania they found some EPIC tires. I had brought some epic tires of my own though and boy did we have a fight.
After the morning runs on Saturday, I was in the lead but knew it probably wouldn’t hold on Sunday’s longer course with more runs. So I kept pushing the limits on every run, and rolled the dice fitting up my new 10.5 inch wide dirt track tires for the dry-ish hard-packed course Saturday afternoon. Brianne and Peter had some tire issues Saturday morning (lots of understeer) and lost a bead halfway through one of the runs. My dirt track tire gamble was a handful to say the least. The only way out of trouble was more throttle, and that just meant you were in more trouble at the next corner. On my second run that added up to me taking out a cone with the radiator – so not like a little nick of a cone base, a full on smack in the middle of the car! They came off after that run and the experiment was tabled.
Heading into Sunday my cone penalty had me behind by 2.2 seconds, and as predicted the Miata was on-point. Some course changes meant we lost a whole section of the course so it was shorter than normal (probably wouldn’t have risked the dirt track tires had I have known that) I noticed that they had us heading straight up hill on grass for a good portion, so I told the New England Region SCCA peeps to come to my car after the parade lap so we could swap tires to the #MaxsportTires grass lugs. The timing had to be perfect so that Brianne and Peter didn’t have enough time to cover by swapping away from their gravel tires. It worked like a charm and we got to see the true speed of that Miata with a motivated driver.
I nicked a cone that lap but even still, was 2 seconds off the pace as I had predicted. The sign of a true champ is driving only as fast as you need to go – and Brianne has that down. Seeing the difference made me feel better about my dice roll Saturday afternoon. I hung in, and stayed ahead of 3rd place every lap, but kept nicking cones. 2 years ago at this track when I was fast enough I could tell that my rear wheels were bouncing in the air. That got me to upgrade the shocks/springs on the rear. This year the fronts were the weak link. Turn in and mid-corner they just did not feel confident. So happy to have held off 11 other drivers to retain 2nd and happy to bring the fight to the Class-Killaz Brianne and Peter.
More tricks up my sleeve for next year if time and $$$ allow and the knowledge that their car has squarely reached ‘law of diminishing returns’ territory. I know what I’ve got to catch :) Huge thank you to Hal Denham for a seat in the truck and a spot on the 2 car trailer, Performance Unlimited for many hours of garage time, Schaeffer Oil Northeast for some slippery stuff, Traction Concepts LSD/Limited Slip Differential Conversion Kits for the grip, Clear River Tavern for some liquid motivation every now and then, and never ending support and motivation from the smartest, hottest chick around Amy Alton!!!
