My First Autocross in the DSM... Finally!!!

[housegsx]

Yesterday was my first autox at Beaverun, the local motorsports complex, and also my first autox in the DSM.

Luckily, I was in the first heat and got 3 dry runs in. I worked the 2nd heat and as soon as I got out there it started pouring. I was completely soaked head to toe. My girlfriend came with me for support, to take pics, and of course to ride along... so she had my umbrella.

Coming into yesterday I didn't know what class my car would be in and was put in SMT. (Street Modified Street Tire) I was just happy to have some other cars in the same class to compare my times. I really had no idea how the car would do, but it impressed me somewhat. It certainly wasn't the understeering pig I thought it would be. I'm sure with more time and money it will get better, but for my first time out I think I have an ok starting point. I had a lot of fun and was consistently getting faster as I got used to the course and my car. My first run was a 59.995, 2nd run a mid 58s, and my 3rd run was a 58.083. So steady progress.

The course was fairly fast with only 2 truly tight 180s. This is how it played out... The first turn was a fairly tight 180 to the right which I seemed to manage fairly well. After that first turn it cuts left with a bit more open of a left hand sweeper, through a not too tight chicane and then a left hand 90 into a straight. This straight was fairly long so you wanted to carry some speed through that 90. At the end of the straight is the 2nd 180, a tight right hand turn that I carried a lot of speed entering(top of 2nd gear). This turn seemed to catch me up because the car wanted to go wide here. In the video below you can see this on my 2nd time through. Too much speed, lock up the wheels. Unfortunately, this was bad because right after the 180 there was a tight cone on course that you had to get inside immediately after the turn. It was also beneficial to get the car fairly straight through here to set the car up for the 3 cone slalom. The slalom wasn't too difficult to get through and seemed to have a ton of grip, but after this there was a right hander in the corner of the lot that is generally very slippery... And it was. I seemed to carry too much speed through this turn and I think I put the car into a 4 wheel drift every time around it. Nobody else was doing too much better on this turn so I didn't worry about it. There were a lot of cars completely spinning on this turn. After that turn, the course goes back into that long straight and tight 180 again, slalom, slippery right hander, and then staying straight other than a small chicane leading to the finish. It was definitely a fun course. One thing I definitely realize now is that I don't think I was looking far enough ahead. I didn't catch myself doing it yesterday, but I will be thinking about it the next time I'm out. Also, I didn't hit any cones so I must not have been going fast enough.

It was supposed to be 3 heats in the morning and 3 in the afternoon but there were almost 80 cars entered and the course was long and designed so the 2nd person couldn't start until the other person was about 45 seconds through it. This made the "morning" runs go until 3pm. It was a hectic weekend to be there because it was also Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix weekPittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix Association so all of the old machinery was on the big course and tons of autocrossers sign up this weekend. With on and off rain they decided to cancel the second half of the day while I was waiting in the grid to go back out. The remainder of the day was going to be fun runs. At the driver's meeting for fun runs it started raining again so I decided to get my stuff together and leave for the day.

I definitely need to be better prepared for the weather next time out. I was fairly well prepared otherwise, but I didn't have any ponchos or extra umbrellas. And my laptop I use for tuning was almost ruined while I was out working the course getting soaked. Luckily I had my hatch tray sitting over top of it where I parked and it only got a few drops on it. After I was all packed up and heading down the highway the rain stopped and the sun came out...oh well, I still had a blast.

Overall, I had so much fun even though we couldn't get the 2nd half of the day in. At least I got three clean dry runs in, which was more than some others so I can't really complain.

Here's a couple pictures. No real good action shots unfortunately. There weren't too many good places to stand for pictures yesterday.

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Here's the video of my last run. It was done on a digital camera so it's not the best quality.

DSCN1039.flv - Video - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

 

[tsiboosted]

Nice job Erik....Always good to see more DSM's out at the tracks and AutoX's. Hey, your times steadily dropped and thats all you can ask for is to improve on your last time out man. And you had fun which is the #1 point of doing this. Keep up the good work. When do you think you will go out again?

 

[talonTSIDriver]

you finally made it out ehhh? thats awesome. great job!!! I love your wheels btw.

 

[bmoha2]

Love the wheels. My car surprised the hell out of me.

 

[housegsx]

Yeah, finally made it out, ! I was either slacking or had something come up for the other couple events. I'll be going out as much as possible for now on. There is an autocross on the 27th so hopefully I make that. If not, there is one on August 10th and it's actually on Wilson Circuit, which is the go cart track at Beaverun. I will definitely be there. It's going to be a bigger course, have elevation change, and most importantly there won't be nearly as much room for mistakes!

As far as the car being a surprise, I was just really concerned about the overall balance. It seems really good though. Pretty neutral and the back will come around if you want it too. It felt really good to me. My last autocross was in my old Nissan Sentra ser specv and it was awful. Slow, boring, and tons of understeer. I prefer neutral/tail happy when I want it to be.

Thanks for the compliments on the wheels, I'm loving them so far.

 

[bmoha2]

I have concentrated most all of my weight reduction on the front of the car with the removal of the a/c system etc with the exception of the sound deadening that I removed from the entire car. I have nicely functional strut tower braces on the front and rear of the car, toikiko illumina adjustable struts front and rear and stock gsx springs. I have been too busy to put my H&R springs back in and don't want to do it without the proper camber adjustment kit in the front. My car can be a little as happy bewildering some of the other guys at the event. They were expecting my car to understeer badly and it didn't at all. In fact my car only understeers under harsher panic hard braking fast twitch steering. I was the only one at our autocross event that go the car into third gear. Everyone else stayed in second the entire course. Also, it had rained heavily that day and I was the only car running street tires. Everyone else brought super sticky track tires. I was warned to play it safe because the track was very slippery. I was able to pretty much open it up on the still a little damp asphalt banked turns. I didn't have any traction problems at all. There was an older Nissan sentra there that tore it up. It was damn light and quick thru the entire course.

 

[everbruin]

welcome to the addiction, er club! best way to learn fast is to ask fast guys to ride w/ you, and also for you to ride w/ them. it's free; just don't bother the guys racing for season points =).

 

[housegsx]

Yes, I definitely need to start making some more friends up there to get some rides and advice. The few people I did meet were very cool and the guy handing out times said my car looked really good on track. So that's a positive. I'll be going back out on the 27th.

I have concentrated most all of my weight reduction on the front of the car with the removal of the a/c system etc with the exception of the sound deadening that I removed from the entire car. I have nicely functional strut tower braces on the front and rear of the car, toikiko illumina adjustable struts front and rear and stock gsx springs. I have been too busy to put my H&R springs back in and don't want to do it without the proper camber adjustment kit in the front. My car can be a little as happy bewildering some of the other guys at the event. They were expecting my car to understeer badly and it didn't at all. In fact my car only understeers under harsher panic hard braking fast twitch steering.

bmoha, it's hard to focus on weight reduction on the front of the car, but I've also managed to pull out a good bit. I've also relocated my battery. Here's what I've done so far. I don't have the heart to completely gut it yet.
http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/articles-exterior-interior/301256-clean-looking-weight-reduction.html

What kit do you plan on getting for the front camber? I just have the eccentric bushings in the control arms. To be honest, if I would have stuck with the stock bushings it might have been a better setting than what I have now, at least for racing. I'm sure my car needs aligned though, it's been a while.

 

[bmoha2]

I relocated the battery to the trunk. Removed all of the a/c system including the compressor and it's heavy weight cast iron bracket. I still need to remove the balance shafts and I gotta get a carbon fiber hood. i was planning on the Engall's kit.

 

[talonTSIDriver]

welcome to the addiction, er club! best way to learn fast is to ask fast guys to ride w/ you, and also for you to ride w/ them. it's free; just don't bother the guys racing for season points =).

yup, being an instructor at a few events, its sort of hard to teach someone by telling them what to do during a run.

What I usually do is ride with the "newbie" and observe his/her driving, then tell them what they did wrong at the end of their run, then have them ride with me to show them the correct line, apex, ect...

Learning by observing is easiest for both instructor and driver.

 

[DSMunknown]

I'm jealous.

 

[housegsx]

yup, being an instructor at a few events, its sort of hard to teach someone by telling them what to do during a run.

What I usually do is ride with the "newbie" and observe his/her driving, then tell them what they did wrong at the end of their run, then have them ride with me to show them the correct line, apex, ect...

Learning by observing is easiest for both instructor and driver.

Yeah, that seems to be the best way to learn. At our events they have a novice instructor that walks the course with the novice group and explains some things. I'm sure it helps, but not really comparable to having him ride along I'm sure. Hopefully the weather will be better on the 27th and I can stick around for some fun runs and get an instructor to ride along.

Anthony, isn't there any place near you that you can sign up for some autocrossing?

 

[DSMunknown]

Closest thing I've got is Lime Rock in CT.

 

[bmoha2]

In silver Cars looking a little beat up

 

[Jordanbutter]

Getting people to ride with you is shuch a huge help. I had some former National Champion/Qualifiers/etc. ride with me and they all said the samething... "this car seems a bit fast for you, you know the lines very well but tend to get behind every once in a while." I did a novice drivers class earlier in the year and heard the exact samething about our cars, all the instructors were very impressed with the DSM. I'm just glad theres yet another DSM out there Autocrossing, I just wish more in my area would pop up, I'm tired of being the Black Sheep. Oh yeah and how come like every other Region has an SM Street Tire? I'm so sick of being stuck with streets in a race tire class. Oh well more power to ya.

 

[cmspaz]

Heh, you looked like me at my first event... literally feet from the cones. They don't bite, I promise.

You have to hit cones to be fast. Period. If you're not hitting cones, you're not getting close enough to them to put down the times you want.

I have to say, I love autox'ing DSMs. They're fast as hell when you know what you're doing, able to take down (raw times), newer cars in higher classes. Plus, there're those handy ST classes when you've got too much broken to run in a stock class

I need to get my ABS working again, so I can avoid this:

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[Project2G]

Does everyone in tech inspection get a massage? j/k nice pictures.

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[talonTSIDriver]

Does everyone in tech inspection get a massage? j/k nice pictures.

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haha,

i want one!

 

[housegsx]

^Haha!!! Wow, I just showed my gf this so she'll be ready for the next event. j/k

cmspaz, I did that once or twice, it sucks but hopefully I get used to the braking and it won't happen as much.

Here's a few more pics that are decent. Nice to get a couple action shots.

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[DSMunknown]

^ That's gotta be about a 50 second penalty.

 

[Jordanbutter]

One thing I notice from those pictures is you seem to always be looking ahead, that is very very good! Though I noticed I was very good about looking ahead my first time and then got worse about it. Good job!

- Jordan Butterfield

 

[cmspaz]

Looking ahead, spotting cones, all great things, good to see you're doing them!

And yeah, that was the first time I locked them, the second time yielded an off-course. i was going to fast (oops).

I've already gotten a lot better at braking and feeling for the limits. Once I get the system back on, I'll definitely be pulling the fuse at events.

 

[housegsx]

You know, I thought I may have not been looking ahead enough, but the pictures say I was, more than I realized. So that's good. Another event is coming up on Sunday and I can't wait. Hopefully I'll be better prepared and it will go smoother.

I was going to start messing with tire pressure, but what I was running seemed to work pretty good and the front tires didn't seem to roll under much. Only thing I plan on doing to the car in between these events is continuing to tune with dsmlink. One thing I plan on doing with my driving that I can practice is the launch and launch control.

Anthony, always giving me a hard time. I didn't hit 1 cone all day. That might not be a necessarily good thing, but it's better than hitting dozens of em.

 

[cmspaz]

I didn't hit 1 cone all day. That might not be a necessarily good thing, but it's better than hitting dozens of em.

Heh, not hitting cones means you're taking things too wide. Your slaloms should, from an overhead view, look like a straight line. You need to be inches, not feet, from key cones (not all inside cones, they'll trick you sometimes). I consider my days good when I hit cones on my 3rd and 4th runs (out of 5 or 6), it means I'm pushing the envelope on course. From there, it's using that knowledge to Further drop my times by upping my pace and starting to trail brake more.

My strat:
Course walk: Study things, look at the little stuff you can't see when driving (sand, cracks), find key cones, look for shortcuts (ex: gated slaloms that make a relatively straight line at the right angle)
First 3 runs, I memorize the course more, pick braking points, WOT points, close in on cones, find a pace that fits the course.
Last 3 runs: Increase pace, push braking points back, stick close to cones.

You've really got to think outside the box a lot to go fast in autox. A good course is simple to understand, and incredibly difficult to master. No course has a single way to drive it fast. You have to find your own line, and road race theory doesn't apply half the time.

 

[DSMunknown]

One thing I notice from those pictures is you seem to always be looking ahead, that is very very good! Though I noticed I was very good about looking ahead my first time and then got worse about it. Good job!

- Jordan Butterfield

Mister Butterfield, what kind of Hankook tires do you run? I've always wondered why your mod list is so modest. Guess most of us wish we had a bit more green to fling around.