I'm not building this TR6 to be a race car, really more of a summer around-town cruiser that's reliable and ready for moderate road trips. But, in that process, the engine is a bit hotter, and the original point of the car was for spirited driving, and they didn't take much prep to be a reasonable weekend racer, so it's totally in the car's spirit to do some zippier events.
This past weekend i joined the Waumandee Time Trial, a hill climb in the driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin. It's been running for several years in a couple of different locations, but for the last few year at a twisty 2.3 mile course with 430 feet of climbing. It's run on a local road that's closed for the event, but being a remote farm road there's no guard rails or any kind of shoulder or runout area.
The course also has 9 chicanes made of hay bales plus a series of chicanes at the end to limit the overall driving speed and make it safer, though a few cars still manage to get sideways or slip a bit off the road. Happily nobody took the long slide sideways down the hill, which has apparently only happened once (the first year at this location).
This is a video of my fastest run of the day, from my phone on the dash:
The car ran great all day, no mechanical problems at all. The new wheels and tires were very grippy and the engine was strong. I was definitely the limiting factor in overall speed. What i lacked in pure power over many other cars i partially made up for by carrying pretty good speed through the chicanes, and i probably could have been faster and still plenty safe through a few of the other corners where i was feeling more cautious.
I ended up 34th out of 50 drivers, which is about what i was aiming for. I drove my car 2 hours there, and it was also my way home, so my main 2 goals were to not break anything on the car and to not get hurt myself. I'm fine not being near the fastest of the day, and happy to have beat a few friends and potentially faster cars.
I had a great time, and plan to do it again next year, and hopefully some more on-track time to get a better feel for the car. I did one other track day at the beginning of August that helped a lot, even though the car wasn't running 100% that day. I may try out some autocross too, i think it would help a lot to feel out the limits of the car to have more confidence with it.