Autocross #13 January 30, 2006
The car was was still wearing the Kumhos, the weather wasn’t unpleasant, extra seat time never hurts, and I woke up early enough, so I went to ER’s first event of the season.
Sometimes smart people do stupid things…
It took a whopping 45 minutes to register. The process was a model of bureaucracy — one line for someone to examine registration cards and drivers licenses, another to collect the money, and a third to enter all the info into the computer and assign a number. The lines were still going strong after I’d finally finished registeration, passed tech, and walked the course.
The registration delays put us an hour behind in starting the event, and in order to keep us from running late they cut us from 4 runs to 3. For three runs I should have just stayed home. And it turned out we could have done four — against all odds the event ran smoothly once the runs started and we wrapped up just after 3pm.
In ER tradition the course was very fast — the organizers seem heavily biased towards high-horsepower, RWD cars. Lots of sweeping turns, just one slalom, no heavy braking sections. I thought that I did alright but it turned out that two Mini Cooper S were in my class. I got beat by by 0.959 and 2.228 seconds. Ouch.
I took videos of my seconds and third runs with my digital camera, they actually turned out pretty decent. Reviewing them it’s pretty clear that I’m giving up time on the big sweepers. Hopefully I’ll do better the next time I’m on a fast course.
Foiled January 26, 2006
Arriving home this evening I was excited to find a giant envelope from RallyDecals.com. I promptly tore it open. The decals sure do look nice, but… I’m #11, not #16. STX, not SM. AutocrossAddict.com, not auto-x.com. My name is not Triad Sports Car Club and I paid extra to remove the RallyDecals.com logo.
Oh well.
Maybe whomever received my decals will stop by and drop a comment…
Autocross #12 January 17, 2006
I’ve started the 2006 autocross season the right way: with a 1st-place trophy in STX. Unfortunately it wasn’t against Jorge, I haven’t seen him at an event since Hurricane Wilma, but a couple other WRXs showed up in STX.
Overall turn-out was huge for a CFR-IRCC event, 80 total entrants with 16 claiming novice status. My brother took some pictures. Temperature was a factor in the morning, it was in the low 40s when we arrived at the site and didn’t warm up much until the afternoon. Cold air == lower tire pressure == larger pressure gain from the tires heating up. I started at 38PSI and gained 4PSI after the first run.
The course was pretty short with many of the top cars / drivers running 37s to 39s, my best time was 43.973. The only “fast” sections were the slalom along the front and a straight along the back, both of which only covered about half of the lot’s width. All of the turns were fairly narrow, taking any of them wide would put you into a cone. Several drivers, myself included, took the opening slalom on their first run so fast that they end up smacking the outside cones of the first turn…
For my work assignment I got staging. More like pre-staging, I suppose. Someone else took the start, my job was to manage the lines: single-driver cars, multi-driver cars who need time to switch drivers and numbers between runs, and cars that have a legitimate reason to cut the line — re-runs, instructor-driven laps, etc. Keeping traffic flowing is easy enough, there’s always someone ready to take a lap, but keeping the flow balanced so that nobody gets pissed off or falls behind and has to make back-to-back runs at the end of the session is a delicate juggling act. I settled into a groove pretty quick, picked up a couple of compliments, and at the end of the session had no cars had fallen behind on their runs.
For future CFR events this season I have a “permanent” number, 11. I just wanted something easy to form from my segmented number kit but I’ve gone ahead and ordered a proper number panel from RallyDecals.com.
Scheduling January 8, 2006
I’ve updated the schedule for the 2006 events. The SCCA Central Florida Region has their dates set for the entire year, for the IRCC site they always have practice on the second Saturday of each month and points the next day. Equipe Rapide has only booked the first three events at Homestead.
I skipped the final ER event of ‘05. I was still beating myself up over a miserable performance at the last event, the shredded MXs for the Saabaru hadn’t been replaced out of holiday budget concerns, the stock Bridgestone Potenza RE011s are too much of a handicap, and the M3 — which has four brand-new Kumhos — still hasn’t left the shop.
And in general I’m just sick of ER. Too many cars, poor organization, and worst of all, too many occurrences of unsafe conditions. During my coursework last time we had two non-participants drive on to the course while cars were running. I think it’s only a matter of time before there is a serious collision and I do not wish to be a part of that.
Anyhow… I just sent my order to TireRack for two new Kumho MXs in 225/45/17. If they get here this week and I can get them mounted before the weekend then I’ll participate in the first CFR event of the year. If not, I’ll go to the ER event two weeks later. Beyond that I’m limiting the Saabaru to CFR events and perhaps the Subaru Challenge if it comes to Florida again this year.
