Saturday started out perfectly. There were scattered showers on the forecast, but the morning was dry and competition on the autocross was serious. There were way more competitors than the day before, lined up and ready to run. The SCCA Autocross chapter that helped run the autocross was extremely helpful. The main instructor, and course designer, was busy the entire day jumping in and out of cars, giving people tips. He had good advice, after his lessons, drivers were improving by a second or more! He even joined Brandy in the El Camino for one round to give some pointers on some of the decreasing radius turns on the course.
Brandy drove all morning, but it isn’t all racing and fun for the Spectre crew. We were there to work, and it was time for the Spectre Top Speed Challenge. This was the first event where we decided to tie in the Top Speed challenge with Baer Brakes SpeedStop Challenge and it went really well. although it did mean that we had no time to send a driver out to participate in the drag racing, or to watch the Engine Swap contest, which we heard was very cool!
Maybe it’s a good thing we weren’t able to make it on to the drag strip, Nick Licata, editor of Camaro Performers, broke his driveshaft while on the track mid afternoon! Everyone pulled together to get the car off the track safely. Some people might have called it a day, but Nick is a racer, and he had one goal, get back on the track! Nick was about to have a driveshaft shipped next day from California, but the car gods were friendly and he and fellow writer, Steve Rupp, found one locally.
One of the engineering/ mechanic schools that had competed in the Engine Swap contest offered to help Nick replace the driveshaft that night and everyone signed the broken driveshaft the next day as a little memory of the event.
One of the coolest things about LS Fest is how focused the participants are on racing, yet everyone pitched in and helped each other out. As we are becoming a familiar sight at so many events, the Spectre booth ends up being a hang-out for journalists and other racers. We opened the lounge in the truck for our media pals to store their equipment, parked cars under our awning, and sat around joking with everyone, telling stories and building memories.
It’s great to see folks like Bret and Greg from RideTech, Stacy from DSE, the crew from Holley, our own team and so many old friends. Some of the usual participants like Brian Finch and Yancy Johns came out with their cars as well. Brian Finch debuted his version two Spectre Cold air intake at the LS Fest. Brian already had a couple of our parts on the yellow Camaro, but was adding on to the kit to make it a true cold air intake. This was Yancy’s first event driving his 2010 camaro that he just got back from Steve Rupp and Camaro Performers. We hope to install an intake within the next month or so or do a custom kit on his car.
We had time to chat, because around 3pm the rain came back. It came down in buckets, but luckily only lasted a short time. By Sat evening the racing was back on, and we were able to see the
Prostock cars run for the first time. Very cool.
