Starmaxx 2011 Classic Rallye

At the last weekend of june, my girlfriend and I took a journey towards southern germany, more specifically the city of Tübingen where the starting point for the 2011 Starmaxx rallye was set up. The Starmaxx is an event for car enthusiasts and drivers of current and future classics and is limited to 80 participating vehicles. The course would lead the drivers along 550km of winding roads through the blackwood forest with a number of checkpoints and prearranged tasks along the way.
Unfortunately the weather wasnt exactly brilliant at saturday and we didnt manage to take pictures of everything so this is merely a selection of impressions collected along the way - there really was a lot more to see...
Start was at 7.30 saturday morning (yay), we arrived just in time to register and check out the starting grid. There were two classes (cars older/younger than 24 years), represented by a diverse selection of Porsches, BMWs, Minis, Jags, Opels, Alfas, Mercs, Elises, i think 3 MX-5s and some exotica. Over all a loud and colorful mixture of automotive history:

The start was done with a blind folded driver and required precise timing as well as good communication...

 

We arrived at the first checkpoint and had a good start with a respectable score at the first task:

(That wasnt our attempt :) )

The second checkpoint was hidden behind a farm ...

On of the checkpoints turned out to be a automobile museum that actually had a nice collection with more than a few cherries:

The last checkpoint of the day took us to an airfield - the only task where the speed of the car actually mattered:

Unfortunately this was more of an acceleration test than anything else (there would be room for improvement) - still, a surprising high number of drivers missed the turning point or even the finish.

Thankfully the weather turned out to be great on sunday, the sun greeted the participants at 8 a.m with warmth and blue skies...the first parcours already awaited:

Lunch checkpoint at a beautiful "authentic Schwarzwald" mill:

 Later in the afternoon the route got a bit confusing due to overlapping road diversions...

 

 

Still, everyone arrived at the finish at the "Pitstop-Museum" in Tübingen...

 

 
One day I'm gonna have to have a set of those:

The last race of the day:

After a gourmetesque dinner in Tübingen at the river Neckar, we set sails for our 300km journey home and into the sunset:

At 1.00 a.m. monday night, we arrived after a proper driving weekend and ~1300km on the roads. In the end we scored 27th place out of 80 - not too bad considering that we were listed 50th after saturday but certainly not brilliant, so there's room for improvement should we decide to take part again some time :)

Over all i think the Starmaxx is a nice event for the car enthusiast and passionate driver although the actual driving tests fell a bit short (but then, it's germany after all) - the Schwarzwald scenery and the amount of nice cars, nice people and good food made up for that.

...

Wheel quest

After I got my 15" MAS wheels in April i was quite happy with the way the Roadster looked - however faith had a different plan since after only 2 months of ownership i hit a spot of oily mess in a corner and did this to one of the alloys:

 

So that was that then...needless to say, I was as sad as I was angry - especially since these wheels are quite rare these days...couldnt be helped though, and since the wheel was beyond repair I was sporting the OEM look for some time. At first like this:

 

And later like this:

 

I sort of got used to the looks, however the tires on those wheels were somwhere between crappy and severely dangerous. So something had to be done. By chance I stumbled upon an ad in a german forum and some time later this arrived at my door:

Score! The wheels I always wanted: 6.5x14" +14.5 R.S. Watanabe B-Type wheels in original finishing, with some scratches to the lip but over all in quite good shape - guess who was a happy bunny! Since we had planned to attend a rally event a week later I immediately started polishing up the faded lips:

And ended up with this:

 Last Friday morning i got new Falken 912s fitted and brought the wheels back home...

 

Only 2 hours before we wanted to start driving to the Schwarzwald where the rally would start early on Saturday morning, i got the wheels fitted and went for a quick test drive. Fortunately everything would fit without modifying the arches as long as the car wasnt any lower.

So with some fresh rubber mounted to a set of great wheels we could set off towards a pure driving weekend...

JDM wheels 101 on Speedhunters

Granted, it's not a new article, however Speedhunters did a nice roundup of great classic as well as recent JDM wheels some time ago. Here's a teaser shot:

 

Find the whole article here!

Resurrecting a racing legend

The 787B is coming back to LeMans this year and i thought I'd share this two videos of it's rebuild and test drive.

This is a pure racing soundtrack, so enjoy :)