Filed under: Life — at 7:13 pm by jim

Alright, so it’s taken me longer than expected to get the prize for our car-related palindrome contest. We had three different entrants, and they all did a good job. Here were their submissions:

Thom: “Race fast safe car”.
Gustad: “race carrot or race car”?
Charles: “Not! Naw, (e.g. never) I dash sad, racecar for one, nor of racecar dash sad, I, revenge wanton!”

Unlike in autocross, there actually can be more than one winner here. So I’m going to give everyone a prize. And the prize is…

Yep, that’s right. A photo of Emmy, autographed by the fastest driver on the palindromeRACING team! Best prize ever.

P.S. Don’t check the race results from last August. I don’t think there’s any team where I would have qualified as the fastest driver.

Filed under: Cars — at 9:37 pm by jim

This Saturday, April 1st, is the 3rd Annual Georgia Tech Auto Show. As far as I can tell, this is no April Fools prank. From the web site, it looks pretty cool too.

This year’s show has a whole spectrum of car categories, such as Race Cars, Unmodified, FWD Modified, RWD Modified, Alternative Fuel, and Student. It looks like the “student” category should be one of the most interesting, with the prize going to the ugliest jalopy.

And the best part… it’s free.

P.S. I didn’t forget about the palindrome contest… I’ve just been too lazy to get the prize ready. Expect the update tomorrow.

Filed under: Life — at 11:10 am by jim

’nuff said.  Submit an entry.

Filed under: Life — at 2:31 pm by jim

The M3 is getting a break from my generally liberal driving style… for this weekend, I will be chauffeuring my mom around Atlanta. If I don’t keep it in check, then I can expect to hear her say, “Wow, the police officers in Atlanta are much more lenient in traffic enforcement.” So between now and Tuesday, when you see an M3 doing 55 on the highway, it’s me.

Just to be clear, I’m very happy to have my mom in town. It’s been four years since she’s been to Atlanta, and this is the first time she’s really had a chance to sightsee. Plus, unlike when I visit New Jersey, she hopefully won’t feel obligated to cook for me and clean up after me.

Lastly, keep posting those car-related palindromes. Especially if they make some sense. Entries so far for the contest:

Thom: “Race fast safe car”.
Gustad: “race carrot or race car”?
Charles: “not last, salt on” and the long sentence in his post.
Jim: “a Toyota”.

Filed under: Cars — at 12:38 am by jim

Ah, last but not least, figuratively speaking, of course, are my thoughts of this weekend’s past event. Now as the title alludes (notice my title is a palindrome, Jim), I came in last for our team, and let the pouring of salt in wounds begin. But hey, I like salt and it goes good with crow. I am going to look up some recipes for said crow, and see if we can’t mix up a batch for old Jim for the future.

Well, I can hem and haw, (and caw), but I know what I did wrong. All I have to do is drive smarter, not harder, but I will come back to that in later posts. Lets just say that I need to walk the course more beforehand, hit the turns wider to not lose so much speed, drive with both hands on the wheel, not coast so much and quit driving like my grandmother.

Let me finish then with a palindrome to say what a blog cannot. The car and I drove like hell for a first event, so how can I be upset. And, Oh yes, my race car and I will be back, such sweet revenge.
“Not! Naw, (e.g. never) I dash sad, racecar for one, nor of racecar dash sad, I, revenge wanton!”

Filed under: Cars — at 11:29 am by jim

As our slogan states, “racecar” is a palindrome… forwards and backwards, it’s the same. I think this is evident from my awesome 5-minute MS Paint rendering. Yes, I put forth a great deal of effort to create the content for this site.

But what other car-related words are palindromes? From the Honda TV commercials that were recently released, we know that “civic” is a palindrome.

Post your palindromes in the comments… the person with the best palindrome will win something. Not sure what, since I don’t have palindromeRACING.com gear yet.

Filed under: Cars — at 11:30 am by jim

Hey folks,

Just an update on what happened yesterday… as you can see from the results, I dominated. Yeah, I’m awesome. 62 out of 167 drivers… I even beat two pro drivers.

OK, now that I’ve had an opportunity to congratulate myself, it’s time to tell the full story. First off, waking up at 6:30am on a Sunday sucks. First thing I did was put down two Red Bulls… mmmm, breakfast of champions. Even after that, I was still thinking on the level of a five-year-old.

My sluggishness wasn’t much of an issue though, because the racing day started slowly as well. The morning session was delayed by an hour, due to a car accident on the road leading to our event site (no racing participants were involved in the accident).

However, once the racing began, I didn’t need those Red Bulls to keep me awake. The adrenaline started pumping the second I hit the starting line. The course was very wide-open, so the cars had a chance to get some good speed. To be honest, this was a big advantage for the high-horsepower cars (like mine). Whereas some cars would top out at about 30 or 40mph before getting to a tight turn, we’d be able to get to 60 or 65. This is definitely not a complaint, though.

After doing some doughnuts on my early runs, I finally found the limits of my car. On my last lap, I posted a time of 50.785 on my final lap. I think I left the rest of the B-Stock class in shock… even though I was in last place in our class, I was running on street tires. The rest of the guys were using R-compound (sticky race) tires, so they should have been a couple of seconds faster than me.

Charles also posted some solid lap times. He was in the middle of the pack for G-Stock, and he drove good lines throughout the course. His wife Fernanda even snapped a good action shot of him taking the first slalom:

It looks just like something out of Fast and the Furious. Well, not quite.

Filed under: Life — at 2:20 pm by jim

Filed under: Life — at 11:24 am by jim

The blog is done.  I’m never touching the blog code again… this week.

As I said yesterday, I’ve put in a few late nights for this web site recently.  Usually I wouldn’t wear myself out like this just for a hobby site.  However, I DO have a deadline for this project.  palindromeRACING.com needs to be in a complete state by this Sunday.

Why this Sunday?  Because it’s the first autocross event of 2006.  Sadly, I don’t have the schedule up already, or else everyone would have already known.  Regardless, on Sunday morning, the palindromeRACING.com crew will be haulin’ ass around a parking lot at Gwinnett County Fairgrounds.  Rain, snow, sleet or hail.  This thing will happen, even if the postal service isn’t delivering mail.

Hm, now if we only had bumper stickers to put on our cars… I could probably sell them in an online store too…

Filed under: Life — at 12:17 pm by jim

I’ve been working rather intensely on palindromeRACING the past few nights… I don’t even work this hard for my day job (I’m just joking, co-workers).  As you probably noticed, I’ve been able to create a “drivers” page… the “cars” page is almost complete, but not posted.

In addition to those pages, I was really hoping to have a final version of the blog posted by today.  After several hours of messing around yesterday, it looked even worse than when I started.  As you can see, you’re stuck with the current interface for at least one more day.

So to keep you entertained for today, here are a few photos from the 2005 autocross season:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimkoch/sets/1200541/

Filed under: Cars — at 4:49 pm by jim

I am in a unique situation in that the co-driver on my car, the Nissan 300zx, is also my Nissan Mechanic.  He also lives in the same building that I do.  This weekend, we had our first conversation about Ethanol.  Wouldn’t it be cool to run a car on Corn (Ethanol is commonly made from corn - think Moonshine.)  Hell, we might even get more performance with the higher octane.

I have been reading about converting the Z car down the road to burn Ethanol, and for us to brew our own shine, to burn in the car, of course.  It turns out, Jeff had been reading about it, too.   Maybe all we need to do is replace the stock ECU, put in some bigger fuel injectors and change the thermostat and replace any rubber fuel lines…. No Jim, you cannot drink the fuel!  Stay tuned for more on this.

Filed under: Life — at 10:57 pm by jim

The blog is now live!  Charles, Jeff, and I will use this area to give updates about life.  In terms of racing, we’ll use the blog for the purposes of talking smack and gloating.  For other topics, we’ll probably still use the blog for the purposes of talking smack and gloating.  I hope you all enjoy!