Race Report: AutoX @ Moncton, NB - June 6th, 2010

[Scott McIntyre]

My wife thinks I’m crazy.

A couple weeks before this event I got T-boned in the Talon. Driver’s door is mangled, window is broken, and the rear quarter is pushed in. $3400 in damage, parts are on order. At least I’m not paying.

The car is still drivable. No wheel / suspension / frame damage. But the door will no longer open from the outside and it has no window. Just my luck, this event had to be WET.

I wasn’t going to let a little rain stop me from going though, window or not. So I picked up a roll of clear cellophane & packing tape from an Art store and fab'ed up a "lightweight racing" window. Only catch was that I could no longer use the driver's door, so I had to crawl in/out of the passenger side. To make it a little easier, I removed the passenger seat.

Took off at 8am Sunday morning for the 2.5 hour drive to Moncton. Had to stop once to re-tape my race window, but was otherwise uneventful. Got to the venue and it was dry, so I swapped on my race wheels / tires.

A note about my race tires... My original set were corded at the EVO school, so I had a different set mounted for this event. They are all used tires I got last fall. Two are relatively fresh at only 1-year old (put those on the front) and the other two are god-knows-how-old and more than 50% worn. But hey, the price was right.

Of course, just as the event was ready to begin it started raining and continued doing so for the remainder of the day. You can probably guess where this is leading...

• Run #1: I made like a contortionist and crawled through the passenger side into the driver seat. Started my first run and quickly discovered that those well-priced rear used tires were horrendous in the wet. I spun, took out 5 cones and botched the run. 84.335 seconds plus penalties.
  
  Run #2: Another hairy run with the rear stepping out no less than four times, but at least no spin. 70.530 plus a cone, which was waaaay slower than the previously set FTD of 61.853.
  
  Run #3: Didn’t fare any better on this run as the time was only 0.001 seconds faster but hit two cones.
  
  Run #4: Finally a clean run, but still only about 0.4 seconds faster. Enough to place me around mid-field overall.

Another dismal result. I honestly expected to be at least in the 65’s, but the car was just too difficult to control with those tires. Every time the boost kicked in, the rear end would step out. I had to let off on the throttle as I felt the turbo spool to maintain composure. Turbo lag was also a major issue due to the design of the course. It was very tight with almost every transition being a slow 90 or 180 degree turn. The car was bogging badly and had no power coming out of turns. But I certainly couldn’t downshift to 1st as the rear end would most certainly snap spin on me.

To add insult to injury, on my first fun run after the event I dropped my time by 1.5 seconds to a 68.620. Still not where I should have been, but it would have been nice to get that time when it counted.

My only consolation is that the driver who did get FTD (and pretty much always gets FTD) was running on new Toyo R888 which have nice V-shaped rain grooves. No one even got close to his times.


Here's an on-board videos of my first run & spin:
YouTube - 2010 ARMS Regional AutoSlalom #1 - Scott - Run 01

And here's my fun run where I got my best time:
YouTube - 2010 ARMS Regional AutoSlalom #1 - Scott - FunRun 05

All the other runs are on my YouTube channel at:
YouTube - scmcint's Channel

 

[purewake07]

Very cool nice runs, im sure u were the most stylish one there with a race window
Thats not a gopro camera by chance is it?

 

[bmoha2]

Wow. You were kidding about 90s and 180s. You could just about get dizzy driving that track! I'm sorry in the rain I would have gotten completely lost and starting making my own course route! Mad props to ya!

 

[Scott McIntyre]

Ha ha! Yeah, it was a tight painful course. The Moncton club loves 90º turns for some reason.

My camera is just a cheap Jazz HDV178, mounted on my roll bar. It works pretty good for the price ( < $100).