Autocross

Yesterday (Sunday) was Autocross. Talk about a damn good time.

Scott and I, coming off a night of hard (slightly illegal) city drivin' followed by some drinking, woke up around 6:30 in the forsaken morning. We made the trip East to Euclid Mall (where the event was being held) rather quickly.

The course had an anti-Emily layout. (And, no, I do not mean "anti-Emily" in the sense that the course had turns.) About 6 feet from the starting point was an immediate 90 degree left turn. This is no good because Emily quickly exhausts the tires' friction abilities just trying to go straight. Trying to get to speed and turn... well... that's no good. I wish I could just do what the Vettes were doing -- mash the gas and slide the rear end around. Damn the FWD! At any rate, by the 3rd run, I was lining up at an angle; so I could basically take a straight shot to the apex of the corner.

Following the first left turn directly after the start, you immediately entered a 4 cone slalom. After the first slalom, a full throttle straightaway led you into another 4 cone slalom. Right after the second slalom, you entered an increasing radius, right hand, sweeper that began with a...

Ahh... Hell... I think I can mock up a really, really bad drawing of it. Let me see.

Okay, here is a really rough sketch of the layout of the course. Scott, feel free to chime in with any corrections.

My first run, I started off pretty easy. I was going about 70%. But, halfway through, I dug a little deeper and made out with a 49.5s run and hitting one cone. The second run, I went a lot harder and had Eric (Eric has no blog, so I cannot link to him) ride along with me. I bettered my time by 4s and ran a 45.9 (pegging two cones along the way). Eric pointed out to me that I was turning too late in the slalom and too early for the 90 degree hard turns. This was shocking to me because I thought I was turning in plenty early for the slalom cones. Any earlier, and I thought I would for sure just run them right over. He, also, pointed out that I could be taking all of the turns, especially the sweeper, a whole lot faster.

So, on my next run, I entered the first slalom and turned early enough to lead me to believe I was actually just aiming at the cones each time. I dug a little deeper on the throttle through the sweeper and tried to run hotter into the final 90 degree turns. I ended up with a 44.8s run (maniacally desecrating another cone on the run) -- another improvement of about a second. My fourth run, I had Eric ride along again. And, I turned up another notch; digging deeper into the throttle through the slaloms and sweeper. And, hanging on for an unnervingly long time before cranking the wheel through the 90 degree turns. Unfortunately, whatever semblance of smoothness I had in my other runs went away. I could feel myself being twitchy and harsh with throttle positioning, braking, and, especially, steering inputs. I improved my time, again, to 44.3s, though (nailing that third slalom cone... again).

Eric and I, then, played with the tire pressure on Emily. I was experiencing a lot of wheel hop under acceleration exiting turns. And, a lot of understeer when entering the turns (even more than Emily should be doing).

Overall, though, my main problem boiled down to not being judicious enough with the throttle when I could, and entering the turns too slow. My last run, I was going to try and remedy that.

I flew through the first slalom, and mashed the gas upon exit. I approached the second slalom rapidly and got onto the brakes. I navigated the second slalom and got back onto the gas. My plan was to enter the sweeper faster than I could. I entered the sweeper and surprisingly held. Once I got out of the sweeper, I mashed down on the gas again and mashed down on the brakes as I entered the pair of turns that followed. After coming out of the second turn and preparing myself to enter the third slalom, I caught site of some course workers replacing the cones. I let the throttle up and made a move for the brakes (I did not want to hit the guys). As I was doing that, I saw them scurrying away; so I got back on the gas and completed the run. I ran it in 45.1s. I lost a lot of time braking for the workers. Afterwards, I was told that I should have just come to a complete stop because they would have let me do a rerun. Oh well.

Scott and his Miata had a good day on the course posting a best time of 42.06s. But, Eric snuck away from him in his Civic Si with a time of 42.05s. (I rode with Eric. His Civic has some mad cornering abilities.)

Another funny excerpt, on Scott's two first runs, he came out of the first slalom a little bit fast and a little bit squirrely. His second run, he came out so squirrely that he ended up sliding sideways towards two course workers who high-tailed it and ran. There was never any danger, though, as Scott quickly caught the car and carried on through the course. But, it was funny to see Scott counter-steering and sliding towards two running workers.

June 15th is the next event.