June 29th marked another autocross done and in the books for me. Once again another disappointing finish. Early in the week I was gathering up a bunch results data from previous races to submit to the Mazdaspeed Motorsports program and noticed something. Just about every event I've run so far this year I have placed either 6th or 7th place in my class. Considering that my class usually has about a dozen drivers in it one might argue that being right in the middle isn't that bad. One might also argue however that because John is consistently faster than me, in the same frickin' car, by as much as a full second in some cases, I really need to up my game. At the June 29th race I finished in 6th and John finished in 4th. With the exception of his win at the very under-attended Eau Claire event, that was his best finish so far this year. It was also a whopping 0.9 sec faster than my best time, NOT including the penalty cone I took on it. Had I not "coned" away the run I'd have finished in 5th. With the penalty though I ended up in 6th, and to add salt to the wound, there was only 8 drivers this time. Boo.

The car feels wonderful. It needs new brakes (which it will have before the next race), but otherwise it's as dialed in as my budget can allow. It's more responsive, stable and able now than it ever has been before. Before we put the new springs in it and tuned up the motor a bit, John and I were very very close to even. Now that car is more capable though it seems that John's abilities to get more out of it are drasticaly outpacing my own.

So what to do? I won't have any chance to really 'practice' again until the race on August 3rd. I'm thinking that I need to slow down and bring myself back to some basics. In analyzing myself recently I've been noticing that my ability to maintain concentration during a run has diminished and I have been relapsing into old, bad habits in regards to which lines and braking points I choose. In short, I've been getting sloppy. I can be at least as fast as John, possibly faster. I just need to re-teach myself how to tap into it.

At least I'm not Larry. Feel bad for the guy. He got himself a new job and with it came a hefty hiring bonus. He took almost the entirety of his hiring bonus and dumped it into new race-spec shocks, massive springs, race-spec bushings, and hired-labor to install it all and set up the chassis. The result at the last race for him was no different than it had been since the middle of last year: half a second (or more) slower than even me.