Steel Cities Region Autocross #9 - What a fun course!!!

[housegsx]

I wanted to go to the autocross on Sunday. I had my car all packed and ready to roll Saturday night. Well the girlfriend wanted to do something else so I was kind of bummed because this is the last autocross until October 12th. I set my alarm for 6:30am to get up and decide what to do for the day. I slept in. I woke around 7 which is usually when I'm leaving. It wasn't looking good for the day but then I got a call from Jim to come up. He's the one who got me interested in autocross, but hasn't been out all season because he just bought a house and got married. (I guess that stuff takes up a lot of time and money) So, I got myself ready real quick and headed out the door about an hour late.

I get to the course, hurry up and register and put my numbers on. I have to get some real numbers over the winter. Tape is getting to be a bit annoying. Finally I meet up with some friends and get a chance to walk the course. Now normally I like to walk the course at least 3 times. But being I arrived a bit late and had to eat when I got there, I only walked the course once.

My heat was first to grid. I've been getting a little more involved with a local board, racepa.com, so it was nice to meet some people I recognized from there and put a face to their name. Lots of cool people.

So, 1st run. Right out of the staging area the course goes into slalom filled left hand sweeper. On the first cone I almost go to the right of the cone instead of staying to the left as I'm supposed to. Whoops! Screwed up already. The rest of the run was just getting used to the layout since I only walked it once. I was also reacquainting myself to the slippery Beaverun VDA surface. Coming from a different autoX location the previous week I and numerous others were surprised by the lack of grip. This was a fast course with just one tight 180 and a very tight finish. The course walked very simple, but ended up being quite challenging to get right. I think my favorite part of the course was a section on the back straight. Two offset cones that I had to cut the wheel as fast as I could right then left. My car really seemed to rip through there.

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I flubbed the 2nd run at the start again. My time came down to a 42.2xx from the 1st run with a 43.xxx. I took Jim along for my 3rd run which would end up being my fastest run of the day. 41.325. I really wanted to get a 40.xxx but it wasn't meant to happen on Sunday. I coned two of my afternoon runs but I still am not sure of which ones. Both were a 41.2xx. This was the first time I've ever taken out a cone. I was quite ok with that. It means I'm learning the car and actually going fast enough to take turns with enough risk to hit cones if I don't get it just right.

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Overall it was a great day. Lots of fun, good weather, and new friends. Only downer of the day was finding a nail imbedded in my tire right before leaving for the day. I'll be pulling the wheels to rotate them and patch the tire while I have the wheel off. Hopefully it'll hold.

More pics...

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[bmoha2]

I'd like to see a pic of one of our cars cornering flat.

 

[housegsx]

I'd like to see a pic of one of our cars cornering flat.

Eh, still a street car. It would be awesome to see a fully prepped 2g time attack car. You know, one with enough money into it to buy a nice house.

 

[housegsx]

Got the results finally. My car was the fastest raw times in the tires class out of 17 entries. Woohoo! Unfortunately the street tire class only goes by PAX times I guess. I placed 6th PAX. Still faster than 3 other SM cars on street tires.

Here are the class results if anyone's interested. http://steelcities-scca.org/Autox/2008Results/2008Event9Class.pdf

 

[Dallas J]

Im a big believer in if you arent hitting cones you arent close enough. One thing to try is to hit them with your back tire in areas that have tighter turns like solemns.

Another thing I often do is purposely over-drive the course to see where I actually can go faster. If you only drive as fast as you think you can, youll never figure out how fast you can really go.

Do you ever have better drivers drive your car? I try to get better drivers in my car often to see where they drive different or faster than I do.

 

[housegsx]

Im a big believer in if you arent hitting cones you arent close enough. One thing to try is to hit them with your back tire in areas that have tighter turns like solemns.

I believe thats what happened. I know both cones were taken out from the rear.

Do you ever have better drivers drive your car? I try to get better drivers in my car often to see where they drive different or faster than I do.

Not yet, but I need to. I was going to have someone drive it last Sunday but I was to burnt to stick around for fun runs. My friend Jim did come along for 1 run and critiqued me. I hope to get someone else driving the car the next time I'm out.

 

[hatch]

Feeling rushed and behind at an auto-x is a bad feeling. I've shown up late before and still had to get my tire pressures right, numbers on car, walk the course, yadayadyayada and the rest of the day I'm trying to tell myself to slow down to go faster on course.

I've been auto-xing since 02 but just recently started getting more and more involved as far as course set-up and stuff, I have to get up earlier and be there earlier but its really a great way to REALLY learn the course. I've even designed a few courses now and its great to drive a course you've designed you really feel as though you have a leg up on the competition....hehe. Unfortunately my 1g SM GSX is down and out right now, but I've been racing my DD 07 Civic Si Sedan in GS and it has been doing pretty good.

You mentioned getting "real" numbers and letters. What I did and what several of the people in my region have done is get some magnetic sheets from either a local craft store if they have it or here Flexible Magnetic Sheet - BLICK art materials
Then use MS Word or some other text editing program and choose a font you like, change the font size to fill up a sheet of paper in portrait mode for each # and then then to fill up a landscape sheet for letters. Print them out, cut them out, and then trace them on to the magnetic sheet and use an exacto knife to cut them out, or scissors. I ordered 3 feet from the art site I posted and they are super strong magnets and they have a nice glossy finish on one side. I went with black since my car is red, but they have many different colors to choose from. I cut 4 numbers and 4 letters and had plenty left over to do some more if I need to.

Anyways, thanks for the write up and the great pics!

 

[cmspaz]

Im a big believer in if you arent hitting cones you arent close enough. One thing to try is to hit them with your back tire in areas that have tighter turns like solemns.

+1 on that. I've never once had a front tire hit on a cone. You're trying too hard if you're hitting them in front, and not hard enough if you never cone away a run.