St Petersburg College, St Petersburg, FL - NASA-X Florida transformed itself into FAST with a bang! Sixty-two drivers -- including 17 novices -- constested the course, nearly double the turnout we'd normally been seeing in 2006. New classes mixed up different sets of cars -- I ran street tires again, simply because the under 3-liter production street tire class had 14 people in it and looked like fun. A decreasing radius figure 8 tested grip, while a long sweeper with a tight corner at the end tested nerve and timing. That latter I had...the former was tougher to come by. Although the surface was in better shape -- none of the grit that plagued us last month -- I could not get the car to rotate! That especially hurt in the figure 8, since the steady push limited my ability to lean on the throttle. I held on to a good position through most of the six runs, but Steve Frank and Mark Jones, both in Miatas, each managed to pull out a half second near the end. I finished 4th of 14 in class, about a second out of first, and a dismal (even for street tires) 34th of 62 overall. The event went so well, though, that it was impossible to count the day as a loss.
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