Summer School SCCA Style

Hot Racing in Cool San Francisco Region 

TEMPE">

Summer School SCCA Style

Hot Racing in Cool San Francisco Region 

TEMPE, AZ – August 4, 2002– Summer School for Seton High Senior  Carl Scott consisted of SCCA National/Regional racing at World Famous Laguna Seca and Sears Point raceways.   Joining up with Hammerhead Racing, ScottRacing took the Tiger Karts Van Diemen RF96 racing in the San Franciscoregion in July and August.  Using his National license for the first time, Carl garnered a third and a fifth placing him into the top ten in his home Southern Pacific division.

Sears Point hosted two of the summer classes with Carl learning about blind corners, elevation changes, memorizing the track and the SCCA way.   The 2.52 mile track features  160 feet elevation change and a fast down hill straightaway. About half of the drop occurs in the Carousel turn, which is a blind sweeping third gear corner carved out of a hill.  Even more daunting is the flat out tire wall lined tenth turn at the bottom of another down hill section.   This pair really tests the skill and bravery of anybody who wants to go fast here.  The facilities at Sears Point are first class with plenty of evidence of the $50 million improvements made recently.  Sears point racing was fun, fast and clean with Carl finishing third in the National.

After two weeks and two races at Sears Point, the Hammerhead tractor-trailer took the cars down the coast to the Monterey Peninsula and Laguna Seca for a combination regional/national.  There was no practice day at Laguna, just a morning warm-up.  It is difficult to get a handle on the track in just 20 minutes but Carl managed to get consistent enough to make some small chassis changes.   His times improved significantly on Saturday after we found and fixed a loose intake valve bringing our tired engine up to nearly full power.  In the National race, he begin running laps within a few seconds of the leaders and finished a very satisfying fifth.  During the regional race, we learned that heat cycles matter on the Goodyear tires.  We tried to stretch a set to 6 heat cycles in the Sunday contingency race and while in hot pursuit of several Formula Mazdas, the Tiger karts Vandiemen  pushed straight into the turn 6 tire wall at about 100 mph. A valuable lesson learned with fortunately no harm to the driver and only the front corner trimmed off the car.

Both tracks are now among Carl's favorites with the Laguna Corkscrew easily being the most fun turn ever.  In contrast, Sears offers the brave thrill ride down through the S-turns followed by the 130 mph white knuckle turn ten tire wall and flat turn eleven no-grip hairpin.