2025 Tire Rack SCCA Red Hills National Tour Results

About 1700 miles later I am home. It was a long 4-5 days, starting off early Thursday morning. I knew Dave and Beth were heading out as well, but didn’t plan to follow along with them. I wanted to get on the road early so that I could swing through Lynchburg Tennesee to stop by the Jack Daniels Distillery there, a must stop for me whenever possible.

I made pretty good time, and gas mileage, to Lynchburg. The first ~30 miles, from my house to the Arch, I managed to get 40mpg in the 2016 FR-S. Most of the drive down on Thursday I didn’t push it, the car really seems to get better mileage between 60-70mph than 70-80mph.

A quick stop in Lynchburg to stock up on a few things for my Collector of Jack hobby and I was once again on my way towards Moultrie Georgia. Besides Atlanta just being a hell of a place you never want to drive through, the trip was good. I managed to get into the town of Berlin before Dave and Beth (they were dropping their trailer off at the event site) and tracked down our AirBNB for the weekend.

Friday morning we were up early, though not super early on autocross time. I ran around town a bit, washed the FR-S, picked up some groceries for the the weekend and put some gas into the car to get it ready for the weekend. Once I got over to the event site I found the Solo Performance trailer and started to unload my car a bit. They started selling practice course tickets at 1030am, so I ran over and purchased 6 tickets ($20) and signed up for a work assignment in the first shift (11-1130) so that I could get that out of the way early.

After working my shift I immediately got to getting the wheels/tires switched over on the FR-S. I had a new set of Falken RT660+s for the event, as the tire just became available for the class in recent weeks. While I had the wheels off the car I also decided to double check the sway bar settings as I hadn’t bothered to do that to the car since I picked it up from David back in December. The car was set to stiff on both the front and rear sway bars, I went ahead and switched the front bar to soft as that was my perference on the last car.

I adjusted the shocks to my preferred settings (Front .5 turns from soft, Read 1.5 turns from soft), set some initial tire pressures (F33/R32) and headed off to grid for the practice course. The course/grid were packed, so it ultimately took quite a while to get my practice runs in, I ended up taking 5 runs, adjusting tire pressures down to 31/30 at the end of the session. I don’t know if the tire pressures made much difference for me, on brand new tires, in a car I hadn’t autocrossed in 4 years with minimal autocrossing during that time frame, I feel like most improvements were simply to me knocking off some of the rust.

After the practice runs I ran over to tech, got some of the decals I needed for the event and got ready to get in line to go through the tech process. Stickers/decals were quickly applied to the car, knowing that they would be temporary and replaced before the Shootout event in St. Louis coming up in May. Friday evening were course walks, and then later, I was in bed by 10pm, which is pretty damn early for me.

Saturday and Sunday mornings started out similarly, out to the event site before the sun came up. I started by cleaning some of the dew off the car, which was mostly futile because of the humidity and chill in the air, it was wet again shortly after I cleaned it off. Each morning I got at least one course walk in as the sun came up, final prep for runs, making sure I had my pump to increase air pressure in the car, make sure that the battery was ready for the GoPro and the camera was on a suction cup mount, helmet was in the car, etc.

SSC (Solo Spec Coupe) ran first heat on Saturday and Sunday, not ideal from a temperature perspective (both mornings were chilly in the 40s I believe), but everyone in the class had those same condistions, so I wasn’t too worried. The cars with codrivers likely had a leg up on the rest of us with the opportunity for warmer tires, but I wasn’t going to worry about that, I just wanted to focus on my driving and improving what I could improve. Saturday’s runs for me were good, but not great. I was happy with the runs, but not happy with the overall results, at the end of heat 1 I was sitting in 6th place, about 9/10ths out of 5th.

The car felt pretty good, though when I went out on my second run it was super skatey, slidding through slaloms, not really pushing but gliding on all 4 tires where I wouldn’t expect that. Based on that run I came in, and with Dave from SPS advice, I took 3/4 of a turn out of the rear shocks. This improvement allowed for me to continue to drop time on my third and final run, getting down to 40.655, where the leader had a 39.351. For tire pressures I started around 33/32 and settled at 31/30 by the end of the day.

Sunday’s runs were about the same, I had the 6th fastest time in class, though I did manage to fall back to 7th as the gentleman there ran the 3r fastest time for the class, which was enough to move up in front of me. Overall I was closer to the fastest time on Sunday, within 6/10ths of a second, versus 1.3 seconds on Saturday. I was pleased with that.

I’m starting to come back to the car, realizing that I really don’t need to use the brakes as much as I did the few times I ran Dave’s mustang in CAM-C last year. Overall for the weekend results I am happy with getting to put some runs on the car, now I get to decide if I run the RT660+ tires at our upcoming local event, or switch back to older RT660s for local.

I was fortunate enough to work as the Announcer for the third heat all weekend, getting back into the announcer seat is always something I enjoy. I’ve announced at events all around the country for 15+ years now and really appreciate the opportunity to do so!

The drive home was overall uneventful, though traffic south of Atlanta once again left something to be desired (a big circle around Atlanta just to avoid that mess is my desire). I ended up stopping in Clarksville Tennessee Sunday night rather than trying to drive the whole way home in one shot.

Red Hills National Tour Photos

I hauled all my camera gear down to Georgia, so it was necessary for me to justify that by at least shooting some photos! I managed to shoot the entire 4th heat on Saturday, both on the course, and while driving to grid to try to get some face shots. You can check them out on RainbowMarks Photography gallery, and even download some free shots!

One other thing, when I got home I received my 25 Year membership pin from the SCCA national office! I think my official 25th date was March 7th. It is now sitting right next to the 20th pin in my drawer of things!

Solo Spec Coupe Autocross Settings:

• Front Swaybar: Soft setting
• Rear Swaybar: Stiff Setting
• Front Konis: 0.5 turn from soft
• Rear Konis: 1.5 turns from soft (first 2 runs Saturday)
• Rear Konis: .75 turns from soft (remaining runs)
• Front Tire Pressure: 31 psi
• Rear Tire Pressure: 30 psi
• Gas level: 1/2 Tank
• Total Runs on Tires: 8.5 (Saturday 3, Sunday 3, practice 5 1/2 a course)