Duryea hillclimb - what a rush! (video inside)

[JekylandHyde]

I have to confess, I was really not in the mood for racing this weekend.
At least not Saturday morning. I just wasn't "feeling it."

I was struggle with some issues with Hyde's front end all week (don't feel like getting into right now) and I did not go into the event feeling 100% confident in the car. I was planning on going all out on the first run, but the way the car felt going up the hill betrayed the last bit of confidence I had in it.

The car did not feel stable, especially at high speeds, which is something I am really not used to with Hyde. The car was excellrating insanely fast which did not help. I botched a turn or two and just over all felt like I should just go home. The first long straight where I typically get into 4th, I never got out of 3rd.

I was incredibly shocked when I got back down to the pits and learned that I went 124.67 seconds over the 2.3-mile course! I set the SM2 hill record last year at 124.77. Beating the record by .1 on the first pass, and a bad pass at that, gave a little boost to my wanting to race.

On the second run, since the pressure was off, I relaxed and just tried to be really smooth and maintain some speed. I posted a 124.60 nibbling a few more chunks out of the record.

I still felt kinda blah so I called it a day and went home without taking the 3rd round of racing. It was suppose to rain here today (Sunday) and I was already planning on not coming back, but when I got up this morning I felt 100% better and the skies were clear. Although I slept in a bit, I still had time to get to the 8:30 drivers' meeting. I threw all of my stuff in the car and took off to the hill.

The hill was really damp and the first run was just going to be a spunky run up the hill to see how wet it was. Unfortunately, like the dumb ass that I can be I forgot the jacket of my driver suit at home. *ugh

A quick phone call and some begging to Cindy got her out of bed and driving down to the city with my jacket. Man, I love her

I made the second Sunday round and posted a 127 taking it easy.
On the third Sunday round, I went into the 1st turn (a 180 degree left-hander) way too fast and the guard rail was coming up fast. I broadened the turn as much as possible while trying to slow down and resigned myself to the fact that I would scrape the gaurd rail, but as luck would have it I inched by and pulledthe car back onto the road ... down to 1st gear, on the power and then I MISSED secoind gear!!! All of that and it was only the first turn of 12! ugh.

So I let my frustrations out and started beating on the car the whole way up the hill. Amazingly HYde really responded to this whipping. The harder I wailed him the better he stuck and everything just felt wonderful. Of course this was infinitely frustrating as I had already thrown the run away on turn 1! Imagine that even with botching turn 1 I posted a 124.7 that would have beaten the previous SM2 hill record. This was really inspiring ... we had one more chance to go for it.

On the last round of the day, I really pushed Hyde hard (at least for me). I ended up plowing through some turns with the fronts giving up and evening bouncing/stumbling at one point ... at the top of the hill the rearend swung around failry quick at one point, but I caught it ... and I just kept going. The whole run was real rush of adrenaline.

On that last run, Hyde went 123.913 setting a new SM2 hill recording while taking 1st place and inching ever so closer to the miracle 2-minute mark.

I have a video of the run from the Chase Cam. This should be my first video in "stereo," but I think I had weak batteries on the mic as the audio is not great.

These videos are identical, the second one is just higher resolution for those with faster Internet connections that would like to see/hear better quality. The other video is the quality I normally post.

< - right click, save as ->
Lower quality, 12 meg file

higher quality, 32 meg file

[Chiquae07]

sweet. nice vid. glad that pumped u up a bit. at least you know that when you feel that you are off, you've improved soo much from before, seting record times. hyde sounds mean as well now. next year will be a under 2 minute run for you!

[-The Stig-]

Goooooooo Jeff!

[Mad_Maxima]

Nice job setting the record, that run looked really good.


and I wish I had roads like that where I live.