holy crap!

[Wade Jackson]

---- "Kieran A. Lavin" <kieran at kieranlavin.com> wrote: 
> HOLY.... CRAP!  How the heck did you find that?!?

And for the West Coast Shootout.  
Reports from Zak and Paule

Date: Sun, 13 Dec 98 00:55:54 -0800
From: Zak <zak at xaqtly.com>
Subject: Streets of Willow! (long)

OK then...

Had a good day at Streets today. There was the SE-R club (yaay!) the MR-2
club, the DSM club, a VW club and a few assorted other cars like
Mustangs, Camaros, 911s, 510s, Corollas, etc. Some of you know Mike Yepes
from this year's National SE-R meet in June. He's a Honda guy, with a
14.0 second NA GSR and he brought his project Civic DX with a GSR engine.
That's going to be a hell of a race car someday.  :)

So it was me, Tom Paule, Rob Cadle, Ken Nord, Sheening Lin, Jared
Holstein and Kyle Gilliland. Ken had a Prelude VTEC that he was driving
around today.

(lots of complaining about brake fluid fade deleted)

I haven't heard the official results of the timed lap we all did, but we
did a lot of unofficial timing ourselves, and my best lap was a 1:28, and
I had a lot of 1:29s. Kyle, on street tires, could rip off absolutely
consistant 1:27s.  :) I know Sheening had a 1:22, and Jared had a 1:23.
Everybody else was somewhere between Sheening and Kyle.

I hope I didn't screw up team Nismo's (as the open Track guys called us)
average with my timed lap, because I don't think it was a very good one.
My R-1s were too hot on that lap and they were starting to give out. Our
team was pitted against the DSM club and the MR-2 club for fastest lap
times. As it was looking last I saw, we were holding our own. A lot of
MR2s were doing 1:28s, and so were a lot of DSMs. There were a couple
very fast DSMs and I think one very fast MR-2. We'll see.

Zak Nilsson
'92 Classic SE-R, black
POP, STB
----------

Date: Sun, 13 Dec 98 23:21:02 -0800
From: Tom <tapaule at incubed.com>
Subject: Streets of Willow Event - SE-Rs REPRESENT!

Heh heh heh,

It was bound to happen.  All the side glances that catch rolling eyes and
courteous smiles that are hiding obvious feelings of animosity and
displeasure finally got answered yesterday.  There is a new batch of
believers in SoCal now, thanks to Jared, Sheening, Rob, Zak, Kyle and Me.
 I should say very a very large thanks to Sheening and Jared especially.
There was a timed shootout between the MR2 and DSM and SE-R groups, with
everyone getting a 15 minute timed session to get their best time.  Since
there were only 6 SE-Rs out there, they took the best time of each SE-R
driver, then they took the best 6 individual times from the 16 DSM
drivers and the same from the 12 MR2 drivers.  Then the timing equipment
got messed up, so the times got thrown out and a final single lap
shootout was the call, the DSMs got to pick their 6 cars and 6 drivers,
and the MR2 group got upset that their times wouldn't count and choose
not to enter the final shootout.  It was definitely upsetting that the
equipment was out, but hats off to the DSM guys for acting mature and
sending 6 cars up for the fight, unlike the MR2 guys that decided they
didn't want to pull another session on the track.

It wouldn't have mattered anyway, since we had already times ourselves
and the other two groups in the previous 3 sessions, and we found that
the MR2s had one fast car @1:21 (as fast as Sheening), and every other
MR2 had trouble breaking 1:28.

The DSMs were another story, since they had several full out race cars,
and most of them were 4WD with lots of boost.

And talk about pressure!!  You get one lap to get your best time, so no
over-driving, no spins, and no bad lines.  Just the best lap you have
pulled all day, RIGHT NOW.

Every SE-R answered the call.

Sheening ran a @1:21, Jared a @1:22, Rob ran a @1:25, me a @1:25.5, Kyle
and Zak ran @1:27s. We out ran the DSMs by a mere six tenths of a
second!!  If one of us ran one second slower, we would have lost.  Major
hats off to Sheening and Jared, since the best time on the course was a
1:20.4 from a 350 hp 4WD Eclipse.  With 1/2 the horsepower and FWD,
Sheening and Jared will school just about anyone on the track no matter
what car or driver...

Sound of Gauntlet being thrown to ground -> Hey Kit, see you at Button
Willow, yea? :-)

This is sure to be the beginning of a fun competition between the SE-Rs
and DSMs at the Open-Track events for a long time to come, I hope the
MR2s decide to make it next time, too.

Tom Paule