Optima Search for the Ultimate Street Car, NOLA

So, with the season upon us, it’s time again for a weekend recap.

I spent the weekend of April 14 driving to and from New Orleans, Louisiana for the second round of the Optima Search for the Ultimate Street car.

After my shakedown cruise to Charlotte for the SCCA Match Tour last month shook what I thought was most of the bugs out of the system, I embarked on my trip to NOLA with a fresh front fuel pump in the truck and a completely new fuel system in the Buick.

Data logged during my runs at the ZMAx dragway indicated my fuel system wasn’t building pressure as boost rose past ~12psi. The most likely cause was the return line was simply too small to bypass enough fuel. This hypothesis was bolstered by the drop in voltage seen when the fuel pressure plateaued.

The solution was a completely fuel system replacement from Racetronix. New sender assembly, a 450LPH pump, and new lines. A -8 feed, and a -6 return. It’s enough pump and line to put the car into the nines in the quarter, though I have no intentions of ever actually trying to test that.

The tow to NOLA was uneventful. I arrived on site early Friday as I normally try to do and got the car tech’d and stickered.

One of these rigs is not like the other

It was immediately clear from my parking lot mates that I was overmatched in the financial resources department. By a lot. But punching above my weight is what I like to do, so carry on.

Saturday morning threatened a deluge, and the event staff wisely got things going early. We managed three dry runs before the monsoon hit. The rest of the day was spent trying to stay dry, and getting Design and Engineering completed.

My best autocross run was good for fifth in GTV, with some very fast drivers in front of me. I was not ashamed of it at all. I think I scored 25th raw time overall for the entire event, which was top third. I’ll take it.

The car’s performance was pretty good, though I did feel it nose over at full throttle a couple of times. I still need to be more aggressive with it. The car pulled 1.3g in several places, but the sweepers were much less, which means I’m not pushing it far enough.

But I was pushing it hard enough to pick the wheels off the ground. Yes, the car was packing the inside front tire in turns, consistently. I’ll need some stiffer rear springs to push it back onto the ground.

D&E went well also. Again, I think I was 25th or so overall for the entire event, netting 73 points in the category. At the end of the first day, I was sitting in view of a podium finish in GTV.

Then Sunday happened.

The first road course session was reconnaissance. We all were learning the track and everybody in my run group was running in the 2:10 – 2:15 range. The car handled fine. The new brakes worked fantastic. It was such a joy jamming the pedal down and having the car immediately slow down, and do it rapidly.

After the first track session, I headed over to the Speed Stop challenge, and that’s where it all went off the rails. At WOT at the top of second, the car just died.

Then it did it again.

Back to the pits. I found this:

That’s not right

My charge pipe had come out of the coupler. So I put it back in. Went to run another speed stop, and it popped out again. Got it back in, then it popped out at the throttle body. Got that tighened down and it started leaking where the turbo outlet goes into the intercooler.

I missed the second track session of the day and burned up all my morning speed stop runs troubleshooting this. It was frustrating.

I ate lunch and completed my Road Rally requirement. Since the normal rally had been cancelled due to the rain the night before, we were tasked with getting a photo of our car at a local golf course. When I got there, another driver was there and was nice enough to get a picture not just of my car, but me with it.

Me!

Then, the afternoon road course session started. I though I had locked down the hoses, so I went out for another round. I got one crappy lap in before the hoses blew off. Additionally, at WOT before the hoses blew off, the car was leaning out to 12.4:1 AFR, so I was lifting. I topped out at 128 on the front straight and screwed up turn one, then had a pretty good lap. No drama. Could have gone a lot faster. Caught a Corvette in the twisties, but he walked me on the straight because I couldn’t put my foot down.

Shortly after this video ends, the hoses blew again. I limped it off the track and back to the pits.

I was able to piece the hoses back together enough to manage two clean speed stop runs at half throttle.

At the end of the day, I was 7th in GTV (out of 15 registered, but only 9 showed up). I scored 343 points, which isn’t terrible at all. But it was disappointing considering the car could be a lot faster.

On the bright side, at the end of the weekend, the car was still showing 23psi of hot idle oil pressure fresh off the road course. The engine is still healthy and holding up fine. I have new rear springs ready to go in, and new charge tube couplers and clamps are on the way.

So, despite the bad outing, the only real tweaks are rear springs, new hose couplers, and add some WOT fuel to the tune.

My next event will be with the Central Kentucky Region SCCA at UK’s football stadium onĀ April 29.

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