First nationals level outing for me ever in Lincoln, Nebraska!

Enjoyed a nice 8-9hr drive coming from St. Louis on Thursday morning. I have to say – this is a not a novice/noobie friendly event. Not just as far as driving obviously, but also just in terms of finding the site, figuring out what to do, etc. Once I found the site, there was a lot of different things going on and it was a little overwhelming, but it was still the same basic register and tech inspection as a normal event – just a little more intense. The helmet also needs to be tech’ed along with the car.

In addition to being my first nats event, it was also my first pro solo event! The difference with Pro Solo is that it basically introduces a launch element to the course. You line up, trip a pre-stage light and then a staging light. Once the timer counts down, there is a beep followed by 3 yellow lights and a green. You want to trip the final light, which is 17″ away from the staging light, right as the light turns green. A perfect time is .500, and anything below is a DQ/+10s, and anything above is wasted time. There are two courses for Pro Solo, which are mirror images of each other. You get a total of 6 tries for each side. Pro Solo also groups classes together differently, and my class, SF, combines FWD cars from HS, GS, and DS. They run different PAX times within the class however.

Being my first nats level event, I only had one real goal – Not to get DFL at the event – in my class, or in PAX overall. And fortunately enough, I can happily say this did not happen. I ended up 5/7 in SF, which I think is fairly respectable for a first time outing. I had a fairly substantial error on the same element on the left and right sides, which I wanted to fix with my final runs on Saturday morning. Unfortunately for me, it had rained a good deal overnight and was sprinkling on into the morning – and my runs ended up totally wet, and no one was able to beat their fast runs from the day before. Regardless, I had a great time and I’m looking forward to the second half of Spring Nats – the National Tour!

Fastest counted Left and Right runs:

Result: 5th out of 7 in SF

Final results here.

Tour next!

Run Count: 90