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Update!!
We would like to congradulate Billy Brooks on his Second Place STX Finish and Corey Ridgick for his STU First Place finish in Topeka!
Great job guys!!
Below is Corey's racap of the entire event!
"The trip to Nationals this year didn't start out too well me. We left Allentown, PA at 6AM Wednesday right on schedule. About 30 miles down the road we were told by another driver that we had a smell eminating from the trailer. I looked in the mirror and noticed light smoke coming from one of the trailer wheels. We were in a construction zone and had to drag the trailer for another couple miles before the next exit. Light smoke turned into a smokescreen. We pulled off at the
exit to see the damage. One of the bearings on the trailer went and proceeded to completely trash everything on that axle. (I had just lubed and checked everything a couple of days before we left too) The heat from the bad bearing had cracked the drum, melted the wiring for the brakes, the brake pads were melted off completely and the axle itself was toast. We took the car off the trailer and then removed useless wheel. We drug the 3 legged trailer around to 2 different trailer places before opting to just go home and make more phone calls. I needed a complete axle to make the trip, a patch job wasn't going to be safe for our 1200 mile tow. I finally got in touch with Bri-Mar (the trailer manufacturer) and found out that they were located in Chambersburg, PA… about 2.5 hours from my house. We packed the tools to do a complete axle swap in the parking lot and drug the 3 legged trailer to their factory, driving the EVO behind. All that highway driving (about 160 miles) and NO check engine lights from the COBB Tuning cat/DP combo. I knew at that point that I didn't have to worry about CEL's at Nationals… Once we got to the Bri-Mar factory the guys there asked us where we were headed. When we told them that we needed to be in Topeka, KS the next day they took pitty on us and did the fastest axle swap I've ever seen. We were literally back on the road in 30 minutes after arriving at their location. I think I need to make up some Bri-Mar vinyl and put it on the car for next year! The rest of the trip went well and we got to Topeka on Thursday at 12PM on Thursday.
The ProSolo practice sessions went pretty bad. I was playing with my launch technique trying to get the car off the line. With the extra power from the COBB Tuning STU tune and the Cat/DP combo, the car was smoking the clutch if I didn't completely dump it. At least I figured this out at the practice starts. The next day it was time for the 1st rounds of the 2007 ProSolo National Championships. I got off to a good start with some clean runs that put me about .8 seconds ahead of
the class. The car had great power and was handling very well. There weren't many transitions in the courses and that allowed me to set it up pretty loose. (That would later come back to bite me at the Solo National Championships.) Going into the afternoon I tried a few different things on course and wasn't able to imporve any of my times. I really didn't drive too well in the second session at all, and my confidence and lead, was shrinking. The next morning it was time for the 3rd and final round to decide the ProSolo National Champions. I started off with a couple of bad runs that had me sitting in 3rd place all of a sudden. I knew I had to get serious and
pull something out. I knew that most of my runs on the left side were conservative… so I opted to just go for the win and not worry about cones or being sloppy. Turns out that I dropped a ton of time on that one run, leaving me with my first ProSolo National Championship.
I had 3 days to kill before it was my turn to run in the 2007 Solo National Championships. I watched a bunch of my friends in their classes, and ended up being very busy on my "days off". By Thursday I was ready to get on course again.
My first run on Thursday started out just like the trip to Topeka: Disasterous. I went into the opening slalom and the car just took off on me… wagging the tail to an off course excursion. Remember when I said that I set up the car very loose for the ProSolo… well that ended up coming back to bite me on the transition heavy Solo Nationals courses. I got through the run with a bunch more sliding and came in with my first run: DNF. The second run was very conservative, just trying to get a clean run in. By my 3rd run I was feeling much better about how loose the car was, but still wasn't attacking the courses like I should have been. The time left me in 4th place… just .35 seconds out of first. After walking the day 2 course I knew I was going to have to work on the car for the next day. I softened the rear swaybar and took a ton of rebound out of the rear shocks hoping that it would help.
On Friday I told myself to be conservative on the 1st run, so that I could make 2 bonzai runs rather than just one. Well, that first run left me sitting about 1.5 seconds back. I had backed off WAY too much. The car was much more stable, but I decided to go for another semi-conservative run on the 2nd run. This left me sitting back in 4th spot again. OK, it was time to turn up the wick and really go for it on the final run. The car was making great power thanks to the COBB STU tune but there weren't many places to use it on this course. I stayed in the gas a bit too long in a bunch of places on my final
run, got a bit sideways here, a bit late there… when it was all said and done I just matched my 2nd run time, leaving me in 5th place out of 50 drivers.
When it was all said and done I ended up with the 2007 ProSolo National Championship in STU and a 5th place at the 2007 Solo National Championships. It's my highest placing yet and I worked hard this year to get it so I feel pretty good. I went through 1 trailer axle, a stack of tires and a year of development that included more races than I've ever done in a year.
As a bonus, I made some great new partnerships.
I want to thank COBB Tuning for coming through for me this year when I needed it. I started out the year with one of the least powerful STU cars in the grid. The combination of the STU-legal tune via the AccessPort and the great High-flow Cat and Downpipe combo along with the cat-back exhaust transformed the car. Tuning the MIVEC helped with spool up of the turbo, and the car made great TQ seemingly everywhere in the rev-range. One thing that I can say for sure about all COBB products is that the engineering and quality of build are second to none. Along with the great products I got customer service that was 1st class and professional. Everyone that I had contact with at COBB Tuning gave me great respect for the company, and they were capable of not only meeting my needs but exceeding my expectations as well. " - Corey Ridgick
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- EVO AccessPORT can be found HERE
- EVO Downpipe can be found HERE
- EVO Test Pipe can be found HERE
- EVO Cat Back Exhaust can be found HERE
- Complete EVO Turbo Back can be found HERE
- EVO SF Intake can be found HERE
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