Grassroots Motorsports

Hello Honda Jan 1, 2004

Welcome to one our new project cars for 2004: a Honda S2000. The car is on loan from American Honda, a crew that genuinely seems interested in seeing their cars perform in "our" forms of motorsport. The S2000 has been a strong autocross performer since its 2000 introduction, and we'd like to see if the new car can continue that run.

Our car is a Berlina Black model with the matching black interior, and like most Honda products, there really aren't any available options. However, our car did come with a catch: come and get it.

American Honda is located in Torrance, Calif., while GRM's headquarters are in Ormond Beach, Fla. While shipping the car cross-country would have been easy, we decided to go retrieve the car ourselves. We figured the 3000-mile journey would tell if the car was really for us.

Honda left the car at LAX on Christmas Eve, and we caught a direct, one-way flight out of Orlando International Airport for only $137. We retrieved the car from the park and ride and started heading east Christmas morning. Along the way we visited some regular GRMers, including Tim Sharp, Lorne Trezise and Tim Baxter. The funny thing is that we saw two of our regulars while they were visiting their families for the holidays. (By the way, Tim Sharp's mom is very nice.)

Despite the somewhat poor weather--lots of rain in Southern California and Arizona plus dust storms in Texas--the little car did just fine. We were tempted to take a northern route home, but figured that staying on I-10 would minimize the chances of seeing snow.

As it turns out, we totally avoided any frozen precipitation, although the weather did cause some accidents: We passed five separate fender-benders in the Los Angeles area as well as two pretty big accidents later on. If you don't wear your seat belt, perhaps you should reconsider. One was particular ugly, and we got to the scene before any emergency vehicles did.

The car itself did extremely well, never missing a beat and never giving us any trouble. However, the car was pretty filthy by the time we got home. 

Getting to know our S2000 Feb 2, 2004

The car will make its competition debut at this weekend's Martin Sports Car Club autocross. Hopefully we'll have some good news to post next week. Before we can go run, first we need to order some new class designations.

A lot of people wonder if a two-seat sports car can work as a daily vehicle, but the S2000 proved itself last night, as it transported a full week's worth of groceries, including five one-gallon jugs of water. (Note: This was enough groceries for two people, not a family of six.) Still, not bad for a traditional sports car. Okay, back to the performance stuff. 

First time out Feb 9, 2004

Our S2000 made its competition debut yesterday, running with the Martin Sports Car club at the Lake County Technical Center in Tavares, Fla. The lot could be described as "average-sized" with a slightly aged asphalt surface. Weather was windy yet, as we're realizing today, quite sunny.

Like the SCCA, Martin has bumped the new S2000 up one class, placing the car in their B Stock class. Other cars in the class include the fourth-generation Chevy Corvette, current Ford Mustang Cobra, E36-chassis BMW M3, Subaru Impreza WRX STi and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution. We had planned on running in their C Stock class, meaning the new class designations we had printed last week were worthless. We'll get new ones this week.

We ran the car in bone-stock condition, using 37 psi for our baseline tire pressures. The rear end of the car was a little loose, but unlike our Miata, things were much easier to control. And as expected, we ran out of second gear on the faster parts of the course. We just bumped the rev limiter a few times, figuring the upshift and then subsequent downshift would have taken just as much time. We'll have to do some testing and see if that theory holds true.

At the end of the day, we took the win in our three-car class, finishing about one second behind another 2004 S2000 running Kumho race tires. (Martin places stock cars running R-compound race tires in their Prepared classes.) Once the results are posted, we'll get some hard numbers and times from the day.

We still have much testing to do, so look for updates in the near future. Now that we have some baseline impressions, we can go get a real alignment. We also have some new-vs.-old S2000 testing in the works.

And with the thrill of victory came a small agony of defeat: While readjusting our rearview mirror for the drive home, we snapped it off. Doh!

Thanks to fellow S2000 driver James Penrod for sending us the action shot.

Speaking of plugs and thanks, to communicate with other S2000 owners, check out S2K International: http://www.s2ki.com. 

Behind enemy lines Feb 19, 2004

Call it a sneak peak behind enemy lines, but we didn't run the S2000 last weekend, instead bringing a Subaru Impreza WRX STi to Central Florida Region SCCA's event at the DeLand Airport. The Subaru may be totally different than the S2000 in practically every way possible, but the cars are both in the same class, along with the Porsche Boxster S, Ford Mustang Cobra, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and fourth-generation Chevy Corvette.

What's the STi like? Pulls like a freight train, very little turbo lag and good brakes. Feels a little tall in the saddle and could use some suspension work--more negative camber up front would be nice--but there's definitely no lack of power. Now we want to drive one set up for Street Prepared competition.

Look for the S2000 at Palm Bay, Fla., on Feb. 29, as the Central Florida Region will be hosting another one of their events. Check their Web page for details: http://www.cfrsolo2.com. 

Back to class Apr 13, 2004

Okay, we're back, and sorry for the break in the updates. It's not that we haven't been running the car, but our on-track performance hasn't exactly been up to par lately. We had two back-of-the-pack finishes and figured we needed to regroup.

So, we did. Tire pressures were set back at 37 psi all around--we had been trying some different settings--and the car responded favorably, as the throttle could be used for mid-corner corrections. It was nice.

We also switched classes. We have been running in the Martin Sports Car Club's B Stock class, which has some pretty restrictive rules: no R-compound tires, no performance exhausts and no adjustable shock absorbers. We like the keep-it-simple approach, but that doesn't give us much to write about.

We moved ourselves to their Street Modified Street Tire class for this past weekend's event. The rules are simple, in that true street tires must be used, and the interior must remain in place. Other than that, things are pretty wide-open. For the most part, the class has been populated by hybrid Honda Civics and the MINI Cooper S.

This past weekend's Martin Sports Car Club Mini-Prix event took place at Gainesville Raceway's road course, home of the $2003 and $2004 Challenges. The course was run without cones, allowing some higher speeds to be reached--we ran out of third gear on the back straight.

At the end of four runs, we were second in the seven-car class. Not bad for a totally stock vehicle. We plan on running the car this coming weekend with the SCCA, as the S2000 has been serving as a baseline against our Volvo 142 project. After this coming weekend's event, then the modifications can begin. 

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