My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Wed May 12, 1999

Turn it on, wind it up, blow it out, G-T-O at Grand Valley 300KM

The [R]GTO'95 LM looked poised to beat out all previous cars except for the Concept Car, and that's exactly what it did.

First, a relatively uneventful warm-up at the 4WD Challenge:

Then the main event of the evening:

[R]GTO'95 MR Grand Valley 300km Endurance Race

Results:

This was a disappointingly weak field for this car to challenge.

I blew my qualifying time, coming off between the two hairpins when trying to go just a little too fast. I should have been able to set a new qualifying record. Luckily the car had so much in reserve that I still managed to get pole position.

With the clean start I got, however, it would not have made much difference. This race I led literally from start to finish.

I had about three disasters in the race, often when overtaking other cars.

Near the end of the race, the car became difficult to control, to the point that I began wondering if my controller was going flakey.

I was encourage early in the race by the several 1:32.xxx laps, but that turned out to be a strong start, and I was not quite able to match that performance later in the race.

I won Cr300,000, and a black/green Castrol Supra GT.

Apart from it getting difficult to control near the end, I liked this car so much I'm going to give it another try to see if the recent experience can result in a better time.

Immediately after the race, I went to the 4wd series, and broke 8 of 9 available records. That seems to suggest my controller is still working fine. (The remaining record I had set earlier in the evening .

I was very cavalier about wall-bouncing around SSR5ii, and in the process discovered that there is actually a "sticky bit", on the inside of the esse which takes you on to the common Clubman portion.

So here's the PB-setting results from that cool-down series: