At the weekend, I started my 2013 autocross season. In an attempt to gain an unfair advantage, I wanted to do a warm up event before the season started, and then I'd be fresh and practiced while everyone else was still shaking out the cobwebs. My best result last season came at the third event when it was only a week after the previous event. Practice makes perfect obviously, and the best mod I can make is to the lose nut behind the wheel. I had thought about doing the BMW club event the previous weekend, at the Marina where they promised you 50 runs. But in the end I went for the Fresno Chapter of the local region of the SCCA, who put on a driving school on the Saturday and their first event on the Sunday. That's probably the only reason I'd go to Fresno out in the howling nowhere of the central valley.

It worked better than I could have hoped, and came in 10th overall (by PAX). I'm somewhat stunned.

For the school we stayed overnight in Fresno got there at the usual much to early time of around 8. Then we discovered due to our vast experience we were put in the "advanced" group. It seems our 20 track days and 4 autocross from last year are enough to give us a head start. This had some advantages, as there were only 5 of us in the group, there were about 11 in the other groups. So we got a lot of seat time.

The school was 50 drivers in total was split into 5 groups and each group was assigned an instructor for the day. The groups rotated around 5 different exercises for the day, each exercise seemed to have its own instructor. So we had the one instructor who stayed with us and got to know us, and the instuructor who knew the exercise, this was quite an effective format.

The 5 exercises were:
1. Skid pad
2. Slalom
3. Apexing
4. Accelerating and braking
5. Figure 8

We started on the figure 8 and then moved on to the other exercises in order. We spent about an hour at each exercise and got lots of runs and seat time. Reviewing the video I see I had 17 laps around the figure 8, 19 laps around the slalom and 42 attempts at the apex exercise. With repetition like that its almost like a trackday, except you work on one element at a time. I decided my goal for the day was to hit some cones. I've very rarely hit any cones on course, which may seem like a good thing, but probably just means I could be going faster. Even at the last event when I'd decided to go all out on the first run, and then slow down. I couldn't go fast enough to get any cones.

I'm not sure the figure 8 exercise had a particular point it was trying to teach you. It may have been transitions, from turning left to turning right or the other way around. Or it may have been a general put it all together exercise to follow the others. For us it was a reasonable warm up exercise. Our instructor thought Cathy was very smooth and was very complimentary. He thought I was a bit jerky. That's been said before, but most times I've been faster than Cathy even if not as smooth. Looking at the video I see that our "lap" times were almost identical, with Cathy getting in a couple which were 0.1s faster than mine.

The second exercise was the skid pad, or driving in circles. The course was laid out with an inner ring and an outer ring of cones. The idea was to drive around the course in a circle, either close to the outer edge, or close to the inner edge. Then get faster, and faster, and faster until things started to come apart. Its an exercise in finding the limits of the car in steady state cornering, and an exercise in getting as close as possible to the cones. Especially on the outer loop I could get a lot closer to the cone than I thought I could before finally collecting any. It was also an exercise in getting dizzy. One guy stopped as he was feeling ill, I felt a little queazy.

After doing that a few times in both directions they changed things slightly. They put in a couple of coloured cones, you had to get as close to the one on the outside and as close to the one on the inside. That sent you on an ovoid course braking and accelerating. I again managed to collect a few cones. Watching cathy run we could see she was managing to lift the inside rear wheel off the ground. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it does show she's pulling quite a few gs.

Next up was the slalom exercise. It was a pretty simple course there was a wide offset slalom down one side and a narrower straight-line slalom on the way back, with a couple of gates at either end. (The straight line slalom is where the cones are in a straight line and you just need to go around them on alternate sides. The offset slalom is where the cones are offset from each other so you need to travel more than a cars width back and forth to get through the cones.) The instructor advised me to blip the throttle just before you pass a cone to speed up, then lift off a bit to actually line up for the next cone. Doing that I found I was getting quite a bit faster to the point where it felt like the car was on the point of losing control. I didn't lose control, but I did collect a few cones. I got about 2 sec faster for the lap over the course of the exercise. After a few runs the second slalom was changed to have the cones further apart and it was made an option. You could take the slalom either starting to the left or to the right and go either side of any cone, as long as you went the other side from the previous cone. That was to show you the difference it made, you could go faster in certain parts but put you in a less favorable position at the end. Cathy started out about 2 sec/lap slower than me, but closed that to 1.2 sec with the help of the instructor. You can hear her on the video saying she felt quite out of control after her fastest run with the instructor.

The next exercise was apexing. The course had a simple loop just to get you back to the interesting bit. There was one cone you had to apex at. The cone could be moved to make the apex earlier and later. They were encouraging you to try to hit the cone, particularly with your rear wheel. I did manage to hit the cone several times, once with my front wheel so the instructor called out "now try that with your rear wheel", and I did indeed manage to get the cone with my rear wheel. On Cathy's first run you could see no brake lights, so the instructor encouraged her to enter the corner faster so she'd need to brake. In later runs we did see brake lights. Its difficult to compare times as the course was changing, and most of the time was spent in the looping back to the apex, which was not the point of the exercise. I may have gained a second overall, and Cathy a half second. I was consistently faster (but that just may have been pushing the loop more).

By now I was getting very concerned over the state of my front tires, so I took a time out and swapped the front and rear tires. The tires have a reasonable amount of tread left on them, 3-4/32nds, but have been getting very worn right on the outer shoulder of the tire. The tires had between 1/4 and 3/4 of 1/32nd right on the shoulder. I had been hoping to get a few more auto crosses out of the tires. I'd pumped up the fronts a bit to try and protect the shoulder. However, with all the tight running in circles we'd been doing, it was waring the shoulder right off. I'd been monitoring the tires all day but now it'd got to the pointer where the was no perceptible tread right on the shoulder. You couldn't see it, you couldn't feel it (my tire gauge measured 0.005mm). I was worried if I carried on it'd get down to the chord and then we wouldn't be able to run the autocross tomorrow. I have some new tires on order now. I'm getting the same model (Bridgestone RE-11), but in a smaller size (/45 vs /55), I was tempted by the new Dunlop Z-II, but wanted to only change the one variable at a time.

The final exercise was accelerating and braking. I arrived a little late after swapping the tires around. There was a simple course with a 180 at each end and a slight bend on one side. The idea is to get you used to maximum acceleration, and maximum braking, in a straight line, or round a corner. Braking around a corner could very well provoke oversteer, but I never felt it threatening to do that, which was a bit disappointing. I found that I was underestimating my braking points, so I was quite wide around the end. By pulling my braking back a bit I could manage to get very close around the cone. By this time, there were only me, Cathy and one other guy. The Miata had had technical issues (stuck throttle) and retired. The Lexus had decided he'd had enough for the day.

After the last exercise you were supposed to be able to pick one of the exercises to run again, but both me and Cathy were so pooped we decided to give up at that point. That seemed like a popular move, there were only about 5 cars running over all of the exercises by that time.

So we retired back to the hotel to rest up for Sunday, and I started sorting out the video. The video isn't exciting, and we took no pictures.

So on Sunday, we got to the Fresno fairgrounds at the time the flyer said registration would open (11:30), only to find no one registering anyone. The morning run groups were still running, and when we did find someone they said once the morning runs had finished, they'd have lunch, and then open registration, probably about 12:15.

Meanwhile, a result was announced as a DNF along with the comment that the guy should know his own course. It sounded like the course designer got the course wrong (though later I heard it was the event chair). And the guy affected went to the scoring trailer exclaiming that it wasn't a DNF. It seems there was an optional slalom and the guy had been DNFed for going the uncommon way. I was hearing lots of times around 60 sec, so I was thinking 60 sec would be a good time. We also bumped into our instructor from the Saturday, who gave us our certificates, complete with comments. (including the one where I "was so good, I thought it was your wife driving.")

When the morning runs did finish, we went for a course walk. Using what we were taught yesterday, we analysed the course in depth with reference to the apexing exercise. We recognised several of the elements we'd done as exercises. One bit was reminiscent of half of the figure 8, though scaled up a bit. Several of the corners looked like constant radius corners, like we'd practiced with the skid pad exercise. There was the optional slalom, we decided which way was going to be best making an easier exit, sacrificing the entrance, where we were already going to be slow. One part looked exactly like half the acceleration and braking exercise, because it was, it was I'm pretty sure the two end cones were in exactly the same place.

For Cathy's first run she DNFed by missing the gate at the end of the slalom. She had a raw time of 1:02.6, pretty much inline with expectations. For my first run, I also DNFed, I missed the gate after the one that Cathy missed. A slightly too fast exit from the slalom pointed me in the wrong direction and I didn't notoice where the gate was. But the real surprise was the time, 55.1. I was shocked, and very pleased. Now if I could only do the same time while getting the course right. After that the instructor was pleased and said I was in danger of beating his time, he got a 51.3 in a Corvette with Hoosiers.

Our times improved through the afternoon, Cathy pulled her's down to a 58.1 on her last run. My second run wasn't so good, but clean. For the third run I thought I'd try downshifting, which I've never done on an autocross before. At the acceleration/braking exercise there's a very slow corner, it was quite reasonable as an exercise when we were in 1st gear, but in second it was a bit slow and required a wider line to keep the speed up. The course was fast enough I was upshifting after the first couple of corner. So if I downshifted going into that corner I could take a very tight (and slow) line and get a good launch off the corner. I muffed the shift and got 3rd and it really bogged down. I realised the mistake and got back into first, and still managed a better time (55.0) than my first run. I was pleased.

The 4th run, I got the downshift right and scored my fastest time of the day 54.1. On the final run I really went for it, I had a good time in the bank, and I thought I'd try another downshift on a really tight corner just before the last constant radius corner. I made the downshifts, but the time was slower 54.3. Despite throwing caution to the wind, I still didn't hit any cones all day, so obviously I could have gone faster. On the Saturday I could never get the car to oversteer, despite some very great provocation. I was thinking it may have been the tire pressures I was using, slightly too high up front to protect the shoulder. I resisted the temptation to play with the pressures and for my last few runs I was actually getting a little oversteer at times. I think the car was handling well.

After our runs, we had to work of course. As we'd worked an SCCA event before we were given charge of one station and they sent a newbie to help. I had the flag and the radio, and Cathy and the newbie went for cones. The cones knocked down were of course the ones farthest from any station, so took a bit of a run to get to, and it wasn't always clear which station was going to go for the cone. I called in a couple of DNFs, which always makes me wonder if I'm spoiling someone's day. I'm also not sure if one cone got called in, it was knocked down between us and the next station and I wasn't sure who was going for it. The newbie ran for it, then a cone was called in, I thought it was for that, the other station had called in a cone like that before. Then after a few more calls for the previous car which was still on course I started to wonder if that call was for the other car which was behind me. The radio message just said "one cone". It didn't identify the calling station (station 6 was in front of us, station 1 was behind us), I always prefaced my radio calls with "station 5". It also didn't mention which car it was for. By the time I was wondering about that, we had another car coming by to watch, so I never called in that there may have been another cone, and I forgot what type of car it was. Someone may have got off easy.

It was freezing out there, low 50s, and breezy. The last runs finished close to 5 as the sun was going behind the neighboring buildings. We'd bundled up as best we could, but it still took us several hours to defrost after that.

So in the indexed results, I came 10th overall. A big woo-hoo! By that measure I came in ahead of the instructor, who came in 19th. Cathy came in 46th which would have exceeded our expectations wildly, not bad for a throwaway event. Overall there were 86 entrants.

The results are here: http://www.fresnoscca.com/results/20...nt1_fin.htm#HS
The indexed results are here: http://www.fresnoscca.com/results/20...event1_pax.htm

I have video of my best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AXFresno1Best.mov
and Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AXFresno1CBest.mov

and we took a few pictures:

 

Thanks for the tale, I greatly enjoyed reading your account.

Props to Cathy - I grinned at the instructor's left-handed compliment...

Cheers,

Charlie

 

Today was the local SCCA's first autocross of the season up at the Oakland Coliseum. We were in the first run group, so we go there early about 7:50 and gridded ourselves. The first to grid run last, the last to grid run first and sweep the course for the earlier arrivals, so its a good idea to get there early. It looked like we were about half way up the grid, but them more and more cars arrived and the grid started to overflow. It was a very well attended event. They're saying there were about 260 entries.

We went off on our course walk and it looked like it was going to be a fast course. Not many twiddly bits and lots of wide open space, with a slalom at the end. I noticed the course designer had doubled or tripled up the cones at some corners. I was thinking that it might be an advantage to cut the corner and take a 1 second penalty for the cone. If there are more cones, that makes that less reasonable to sacrifice a cone, you'll get double or triple penalty. Then there was the slalom. It started off with one cone, then 2, then 3, then 4 and finally 5 cones.

At the driver's meeting, they said they had celebrity course designer, Sam Strano out from the East coast. He's been the course designer for the national championships. I thought I recognised the name from other autocross forums I read.

It was my turn to run first, so I went out, trying to go as fast as possible, and I still didn't get any cones. I got lost a couple of times, and I didn't get the braking right a couple of times so the front end went plowing into the corner and lost a little time I got a 51.something (not sure of the exact time, the results aren't up yet). I really have no idea how good that is, and I still don't, I'm waiting for the results to come out. Then it was Cathys turn and I got a lift, she managed a 52.7. For the second run I didn't get lost, but still messed up the braking again. 49.7. Cathy got a 50.9.

On the next run I went for it, I tried to keep my foot down during the slalom, it was quite widely spaced and was going really great when I came around the last corner and almost screeched to a halt. I managed to hit the brakes, not the gas coming out of the corner. I must have lost an entire second due to that. I still managed a 48.6. Maybe I'd get it right for the last run. Then I noticed that the grid was emptying out, like they were only doing 3 runs, not the 4 we'd done at previous events. I checked and we were only getting 3 runs, so I wouldn't get to try again. Cathy's last run was a 49.7, she was pleased to break 50 seconds.

Then it was time for us to work. I'd signed up to be the starter, just for a change. Cathy had signed up as a flagger at one of the stations. It was interesting being the starter and seeing all the cars go by. I noticed that there was a news satellite truck parked off course, so I wondered if someone was there covering the event. And indeed a cameraman put in an appearance. He made a little nuisance of himself trying to get low shots of the cars at the start, placing himself where a car might want drive. I asked him to move back a bit. I asked him which station, it was Channel 2 (KTVU). They'd had some peices recently about illegal street racers causing havoc (a group of them blocked the freeway, then proceeded to turn donuts on the freeway, putting the video up on Youtube). I wondered if they were doing a peice to contrast the legal way to race. That is in fact what they're doing.

They had a peice on the 5pm and on the 10pm. I'm in those waving the green flag when the camera man was getting a lift in Sam Strano's Corvette. They did a live piece and I recognised the Ferrari which was running in the background, it was a guy I know from work, I'd been talking to him earlier.

I wish they'd hurry up and put the results up, I want to know how well I did.

There's video:

My best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AXOakFeb13Best.mov
Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AXOakFeb13CBest.mov

Here's me kicking up some chalk:



and Cathy avoiding the triple cones:

 

Holy cats - 260 drivers! My oh my...

Imagine my feelings reading this account, with over two feet of snow outside...

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,

Charlie

 

The results were finally posted at 11:50 last night. First I'm not sure they're correct, and the powers that be aren't certain either, they're reviewing the results. My first run is listed as a 49.8, but my timeslip says 51.295. There seemed to be various computer glitches going on and they asked me and a couple of other drivers to bring our timeslips to the motorhome for something. Maybe the 49.8 is a glitch, or maybe my timeslip was wrong. Also I didn't do quite as well as I'd hoped. After Fresno two weeks ago I was wondering how well I'd do against the local competition, without having practiced the day before. If I could do that well against the locals, it'd be worth me being in the Stock Street tire T1 class instead.

The results show I'm Third in novice, and Cathy's 7th out of 30. I'm only 0.6s from first place, so my mistake braking at the last corner could have cost me that. Looking at the video, my time from the last element of the slalom to the finish line is 1.2s worse in my last run than the second run.

Also the guy in first place is miss categorised, he should be in a different novice class (Novice-ST). They have Novice ST for ST classes, and Novice for all over classes (Stock, Street Prepared, Street Modified) as the ST classes are already running on street tires, where as the other classes the indexes are based on R-comp tires. If you apply the street tire index (0.975) to my time, I beat the misclassed guy (and would have been 2nd). If I'd have entered in T1 I'd have come 20th out of 24. I'm not quite sure about the guy in first place either. I've cunningly arrange to be just experienced enough this year to not get kicked out of novice, to give me an advantage. The guy in first also seems to have done the same. He did however get the first place trophy in AS for the slush series last year, and the rules disallow slush trophy winners "unless as the only eligible competitor in the class", there was one other guy in AS in the slush series, but he didn't compete in enough events to be eligible for a trophy, so I'm not sure he counts.

Overall the results (indexed) are showing I'm 93rd and Cathy is 109th out of 173. 10.8 "seconds behind" the leader. That's my best result so far, my previous best was 11.5 seconds behind, but not the bump I was hoping for. Though the number used on the indexed list are different than those listed on the main results. So its bit confusing, the local forum's result thread has a bunch of people noting problems with the results, I'll have to join in. The overall (indexed) winner is also causing a bit of comment. He's in a Fiat 500, he and two of his friends were originally going to just run fun runs. However, Rob, another guy with an H-Stock MINI persuaded them to switch to HS so he had some competition. He's runs are listed as 52, 41, 50, it sounds like his second time was incorrect.

If I knocked off the 1.2 sec my mistake cost me, I'd have come first in novice, or 11th in T1 and 69th overall. I'd have been only 9 sec behind. (There's always what ifs.)

There were several other MINIs running. In our run group there was the STX Cooper-S we call the "three wheeled MINI", because of its tendency to life the inside rear wheel in corners. I though that was because of whatever suspension tweeks he'd done for ST, though after our experience at Fresno, we notice we were doing the same.

There was the girl in a JCW coupe. First, she'd been misclassed. They'd entred her as Novice-DSP. I asked them what mods they'd done to be in DSP, and they said it was stock, so should have been in DS. There's a thread on the local auto cross forum complaining that something similar happened to a novice in an RX-8. (CSP vs CS). She wasn't having a good time of it, I saw she DNFed while I was watching with a scratch time of 78s, looking at the result I see she DNFed all her runs. She complained she kept getting lost, maybe I should have offered to coach her. I hope that doesn't put her off completely.

There was the MINI which won the 2011 nationals (with a different driver). The girl was running with us in novice, she came a second behind Cathy. The guys driving it were in T1 and setting some fast times. I was seeing 44.something, quite impressive. That was good enough to win T1 (44.7), the other guy came third with a 45.3. I'm pretty sure he was in indexed, but on street tires last time. So now he's in street tire on street tires, and seem to be doing well out of it.

Rob was there in HS. He's still trying to persuade everyone to come compete with him in HS, but he still wants to run street tires. I think he should try T1 instead. I was only .2 of a second behind him, with my mistake and all.

http://www.sfr-solo.org/solo2/Result...p/round01.html

My 50 frames of fame from the news yesterday:

 

The revised results are out now, these seem to be final. http://www.sfr-solo.org/solo2/Result...p/round01.html

After prompting the Novice-ST interloper was moved to Novice-ST (where he came first). So now I'm 2nd in novice and Cathy is 6th out of 29. Overall (PAX) I'm 113th and Cathy is 139th out of 214. There were 48 fun runs for a total of 262 entrants (some running twice). I'm 8.3 "seconds behind" the leader which is more satisfying, if I hadn't make my silly mistake, I'd have been 6.6 seconds behind, which is getting up to where I'd like to be. If I could manage to be 6 seconds behind the leader consistently, I could be about 3rd in T1 on last years results.

 

Today was the second event of the SCCA season down at Marina. As today was also the day the clocks changed and Marina is over an hour's drive away we stayed in a hotel overnight so we could be fresh for the (earlier) morning. It was very foggy driving up to Marina, when we arrived we could hardly see the closest cones on the course. Luckily that cleared up by the time we walked the course, bit it was still freezing out there (42F actually).

This time we were in the second run group, so we didn't have anything to do while the first run group was out, except register. So we hung around and chatted to the other competitors and watch the first group run. This being my 7th ever autocross, I found I was one of the more experienced competitors in the group so I was trying to be welcoming to the newbies. One of the new guys was there because of the news coverage of the last event. The first run group seemed to be managing around 50s, so I was thinking 55-60s would be a good time.

When it was our turn to run, it was Cathy's turn to run first, so I got a lift. Out on course she got lost, at the other end of the course was a sort of chicane, with a bunch of cones in a triangle pointing back towards the start. After that there was another triangle pointing in the other diection, you steer around the points of both triangles. Cathy saw the first triangle and started heading off in the direction it was pointing, potentially cutting out an entire loop of the course. A quick shout of "wrong way!" and she got going in the right direction, but she lost at least 4 seconds and came in with a time of 1:07.

I gave Cathy a lift for my first run, it went pretty well and I got a 58 (I think , the results aren't up yet). A good start, there were a couple of places where I thought I could brake more. There was also a cone down in the slalom. I should have stopped and pointed it, then I'd get a rerun. By the time I thought of that I was past it, so there wasn't anything I could do about it by that time.

What I wasn't thinking of at the time is getting a rerun gives you an extra run to get used to the course, so its an advantage to get a rerun. That happened to Cathy for her second run. A kart went out ahead of her, but then abandoned the run without even making the first loop. So it didn't run through the end timing lights, and the people running the timing didn't manage to clear the timing in time. So when Cathy got to the finish, the clock was reading 203.446, but was probably a 58.9 s really. She got a rerun and got a 58.3 instead.

My second run turned out to be my best, a 56.9. There were a couple of places where I thought I should have braked earlier and had trouble making it into the next element. For my last two runs I made some flubs which cost me time, so got a couple of 57.1s. Cathy managed to steadily improve and ended up with a 57.3.

The results aren't up yet, so I'm not quite sure how we did. They were trying something new and there was live timing at the event. If you connected to the motorhome's Wi-Fi, you could get a timing summary. It was showing me as 2nd in Novice, about a second behind the guy in first place. It was showing Cathy was 5 (out of 8), but didn't seem to count her last run which was a second faster, so she might end up with a better result.

After our runs, we were supposed to work the course, but we'd bribed some students to do that for us. The Students from San Jose State were there again offering to do people's work assignments for them for a suitable donation. We took advantage, it was already 1pm by the time we got away. It would have been even later if we'd stuck around to work. The SJSU entry didn't fare well it conked out at the end of the slalom. They said a differential problem.

I have video, but the lap timer crashed while I was exporting the data, and seems to have lost all the data for the day, so no fancy overlays.

My best lap: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxMar13MaBest.mov
Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxMar13MaCBest.mov

Here's me:



and Cathy at the same corner:

 

The results have been posted, about 5 seconds after I posted that.

Notable is both me and Cathy beat Rob the other guy who has a MINI, he came in a with a 58.5. Cathy's last run is listed as a 58.356, not the 57.395 on her time sheet. That would have put he in 3rd, just behind me.

Overall I came 91st and Cathy 107th (indexed) out of 145. I'm 8.5 "seconds behind", not quite as good as the last round where I was 8.3 seconds behind. If Cathy's 57 was scored, she'd be 96th overall.

 

Discussion on the local Autocross forum has revealed that my first run was credited to Cathy. So I'm only shown with 3 and she had 5 runs. They didn't count the "5th" run, which was her best. After showing the powers that be the timeslips, I've been credited with my first run instead. Its not clear what caused the mix up, we're pretty sure we changed the numbers between the runs, the video shows we mentioned changing the numbers. There's also a photo from a bystander which shows me running with the correct number on the right side at least (the grid worker would see the left side though.) The video seems to show I was scanned correctly (they scan a barcode on your helmet), but I don't hear the confirmation because of a PA announcement.

So Cathy gets her 4th (and best) run counted, and is now 3rd in novice, and 95th overall (pax). I'm first in series points with my two second place finished, and Cathy is equal 3rd.

This shows that keeping the timeslips is important, and we should make arrangements to organise them better. Currently they just get scattered all over the place.

The results are here, by the way: http://www.sfr-solo.org/solo2/Result...round02.html#n

 

When you say the mini that won nationals in 2011 I assume you mean HSL (Barbara's old car?) Because the car that won HS open was from NC. And they still own it.

 

I don't know the details, they just said the car had won nationals.

 

Sunday was the third SCCA event of the season up in Oakland. We got there early as usual to walk the course. It quickly became obvious that the course designer had listened to some forum posts complaining about last week's course. The complaints about last weeks course were that it was too tight and twisty. In particular the first slalom had tight turns on entry and exit to the slalom, which slowed you down a lot. This course was wide open an with no such twidly bits.

The slalom along the back was a straight shot from the previous corner, and the last cone of the slalom was pretty superfluous and you exited straight into the next corner. We were wondering if we were going to need 3rd gear for this one. The slalom was also even more open than last weeks. This one was 100ft between cones, last week it was 60ft. Last week I managed to mainly keep my foot down during the slalom, this one I was sure I should be able to take it flat out.

We were in the 3rd run group, so we got to work the first run group. For a change I signed up for the sound check and Cathy signed up for timeslips. My work assignment immediately got more interesting as one of the regulars was there asking for a sound check. So we found the person who knew about the sound equipment and went and set up the sound station. It was set up near the second last cone of the slalom. The guy said the rule was 100db at 50ft, though I just checked on the local regs and its actually 95db at 100ft. (Which actually works out pretty much the same.) I'd paced out 50ft and set up the sound meter. The meter was a very common one you can get from Radio Shack, I actually own the same one, so I was familiar with it.

While I was waiting for things to start, the course designer came by and decided to move the sound meter, to about 80-ft. That would give a reading about 3db less than where it was initially sighted. He also decided it should be set to a higher scale. There was only one car during the first runs which actually registered on the sound meter the way it was set, so for most of the rest of the day I set the meter to a lower scale, so it'd actually show something. The placement may also not have been the most ideal, quite a few drivers had lifted off the throttle by the time they got to the sound station, so not getting a maximum reading.

The guy who wanted the sound check didn't move the meter on his first run, on later runs he was running about 88-90db. He was one of the loudest cars, the loudest got upto about 95db. I also tweaked the meter to get a reading from the MINIs which were in that run group. I'd been curious as to how loud MINIs actually were, the loudest reading I got from them was 76db. They had live timing again, so after the session I could check on the times the MINIs got. Rob got a 45, so that sounded like a good target, and I saw the other MINI got a 42, so that would be an excellent time I wasn't expecting to get to.

After a break for run group 2 (and a burrito from the food truck) it was finally time for us to run, it was already 1pm by this time. It was my turn to run first, so I gave Cathy a lift. I set out with my usual intention to go too fast, collect cones and then I'd work out where I needed to go slower. I still didn't manage to collect any cones, but I was very surprised to get a 42 and let out a big whoop! (It was a 42.8.) Then it was Cathy's turn and I got a lift she got a 45 (45.3) which she was very pleased with.

For my second run I got a 42.2, so I was even more pleased, that turned out to be the fastest time of the day. I seem to be making a habit of that, going out fast, getting faster for my second run then not being able to match that again. Part of the problem is while I'm running I can see I made a mistake and think I'll have to fix that in the next run, then I get distracted by all that driving, and forget what I was going to do. For my third run, I picked up a hitchhiker. I was just about to move up the grid when someone stuck his head in the window and asked if he could get a lift, and I said "sure". I'm not sure how smart a move that was I got a very similar time to the first run when I was giving Cathy a lift. I'm not sure that's just down to the extra weight, I made some mistakes (which I promptly forgot). I was keeping my foot down through the slalom, and I was very nearly hitting the limiter in several places. I thought about trying for 3rd gear, but never got to do it.

For the last run I went out trying to go faster. There were some parts of the course where you could possibly go faster by taking an earlier apex and carry more speed, but then you have to sacrifice the next corner a bit. I tried that, and things got a bit messy in places, but I was matching the first run pace when I tried another early apex and overshot the braking for the next corner, I lost a few seconds desperately trying not to plow through a line of 3 cones. I got a 45.0 for that one. Checking the video I was actually 0.1s down on my second run pace when I lost it, so the strategy wasn't working for me.

Also during the runs I was noticing something they'd covered at the driving school we did in January. When we were doing the skid pad exercise, ie driving round and round in circles, the exercise was to drive faster and faster until you couldn't go any faster, and the front end would start plowing straight, not where you were trying to point it. The instructor said at that point you could unwind the steering a bit and the front end should start to behave again.

That didn't make much sense at the time, but last week and this week I'd been finding if 'm suffering understeer like that, unwinding the steering did indeed help. On the video you can see me "sawing" at the steering, I feel I've gone to far, so I unwind a bit, only to find I want a bit more steering, repeat ad nauseum. This ties neatly up with some theory as explained by my favorite autocross site ("Autocross to Win", about alignment.) That shows a graph of steering angle ("slip angle") vs cornering force, this rises to a peak as you steer more, then falls off and becomes a constant as you increase the steering. That peak and fall off is the point where unwinding will help you. He also makes the point that you get as much steering effect on the near side of the curve as the far side, but the near side is much easier on the tires. I think I have a habit of getting to the other side of the curve, which is why I scrub so much off the corners of my tires. I really need to learnt to keep to the nearside of that curve.



Cathy as usual showed a steady improvement with her runs. She ended up with a 43.9 which she was extremely pleased with. We both beat Rob's time.

We later talked to Rob, he says he messed up so didn't do as good as he could. He got a passenger on his third run, who gave him some pointers on how to do the slalom better. He said that made such a good change to his technique and he got so much faster through the slalom that the next corner came so much faster than expected and he blew it. 4 wheel lock up and some cones. The guy in the other MINI said he got a 39 (not the 42 as I though), but he was running racing slicks, which should be good for one second of the difference. I think I was looking at the wrong results when I thought he'd done a 42. That was the HS results I was looking at, te other MINI was running in the indexed group (with an HS index).

After our runs we checked the live timing again. It was show that I was first, and Cathy was third in novice. A most satisfactory outcome. The guy in second place was the same guy who beat me last week, in the yellow Ford Focus (SVT). I also chatted with him a bit, he said that I was the one he was aiming for and hoped to eventually be able to beat me. He thought that I had an off day last week. Interesting being someone's inspiration like that.

The results aren't up yet. When they are they should be here: http://www.sfr-solo.org/solo2/Result...p/round03.html. I've been eagerly awaiting the results all day, now their's been a forum post on the local forum to say the "results are ... delayed". The software's been misbehaving and they're having to rebuild the database. Also on the forums was some discussion of the sound issue. I posted my observations that the results may be 3db too low. The guy who wanted the sound check was interested to hear this, he thought his 89db would give him enough margin, he's looking at the San Diego tour over Easter. That's got a sound limit of 93bd at 50ft. He's glad this wasn't a surprise at San Diego, or he'd have been screwed. Now he can make plans. There was also a forum post saying they're looking for a new sound chief. There's also just been an explanation of why the sound meter was moved. The rule is the meter should be 50ft from the edge of the course, but where the edge of the course is is uncertain with the slalom. The designer said if he'd marked the other side of the course it would have been 25ft from the cone, so he moved it to 75ft from the cone.

Video of my best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxMar13OakBest.mov
Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxMar13OakCBest.mov

Here's me:



and Cathy:



Here's the hitchhiker, he doesn't look too scared.



There was also a Mini running:

 

The results are finally posted. The 42s time I thought would be a good time to get wasn't a MINI as I first thought, it was Brian in the Focus that won HS (41.6 actually). The other MINI got 39.3 in indexed (with Hoosiers).

I was 1st and Cathy 3rd out of 16 in novice. The time would have been good enough for 3rd (out of 11) in street tire. Overall I came 64th and Cathy 95th out of 176 (indexed). I'm only 5.9 "seconds behind", which was my goal for the year. At that rate I reckon I could be 3rd in street tire.

In the championship I'm still first, and Cathy is 3rd. I'm 70 points ahead of Chris in the other Focus.

Overall I'm very pleased.

 

Always an entertaining read - thanks for sharing!

Cheers,

Charlie

 

Today I drove in the BMW club's pre-season fun run autocross up at Candlestick Park. (Ie in the parking lot of the stadium where the SF 49ers play.) The event was billed as a fun run, they'd have the timing equipment set up, but no one was going to be recording it and the times didn't count towards anything. I went just to get some more seat time before the next SCCA event (which is in two weeks time.) Cathy didn't make this one, she was visiting her Mom.

It went very well, I went much faster than I expected. I didn't see many other cars getting a better time that I did, on raw time. If you calculate indexed times I came somewhere near the top. (Using either the SCCA's or the BMW club index, which are different.)

As the sign up for the event was online, I knew who was attending ahead of time. Of particular note was the guy who came first in novice in the SCCA's first round, and hadn't been seen again. I particularly wanted to beat him. He's running a much faster car than me (a Lexus ISF), so I calculated the different in our index and worked out he'd have to better 95% of my time to beat me, or be 3 seconds ahead over a 60 second run. When I bumped into him, he was one of the guys from our group at the Fresno School. They also sent out a track map ahead of time, so I analysed the course as a theoretical exercise in choosing the best line. I'd identified the 6 most important points on the course (in order of importance) and was going to concentrate on hitting those.

Candlestick is only half an hour away, and the event wasn't due to start until later than the SCCA does (absolutely had to be there for 9am for the drivers meeting). So I could get up at a semi-reasonable hour for once. After donuts and the drivers meeting we got to walk the course. They layed out a different course than the map they sent out, so I had to do a quick rethink while walking the course. I still identified the 2 most important points on the course, they were the corners before the two long "straights", or what passes for straights, one was a slalom one had several kinks in it. But they'd be the places I'd get going fastest for longest, so any speed I could carry onto the "straight" would pay dividends.

They organised the day into four run groups. The work groups were offset from the run groups, so you'd have a spare session between your work and your run group where you had nothing to do. It meant the run groups could change over quickly, but it also meant you had some hanging around. I was in the second run group, so it was hang around, run, hang around, work. After hanging around for the first run group, the best time was a 54.something (by an M3), so I'm thinking if I break 60 seconds I'd be doing well.

First timers at BMW club events get assigned a coach, and they'll ride with you until they think you're ready to run solo. I wanted to see how I could do solo right off the bat, so I persuaded the coach that I had enough experience to run solo for my first run. I got a 59.0, so I already exceeded my target and was happy. I had however run the slalom the wrong way, the slower way. The entry to the slalom had a pointer cone, followed by the first slalom cone with its pointer. The first cone pointed the same way as the previous cone, which is not what my brain was expecting. While walking the course I'd found myself trying to run the slalom the wrong way, obviously I hadn't shaken that misconception yet.

For the second run the coach rode along. This time I ran the slalom the right way, but I bogged down in a couple of places, braking too late, so I really had to dig myself out of hole, and of course I had the ballast of the coach. So I got a 58.8, a nice improvement. The coach was quite complimentary, apart from the two mistakes I'd already pointed out he said I was doing well, attacked the course nicely and didn't really need his help. So I ran solo for the rest of the day.

So I made ready to rectify the mistakes. They were at the ends of the two "straights". I was making a deliberate choice to cut the corners at the end and take a very early apex at them. The reasoning was that they both lead onto very slow sections, really very tight sections where the other cars just seemed to be crawling along. So carrying speed through the corner wasn't an advantage, and cutting the corner, at full speed just meant you spent less time there overall. I just needed to pull my braking point back a bit, so I'd end up with my front wheel adjacent to the apex cone ready to turn in.

I put my plan into action and promptly ran a 55.7. That elicited a big "Ya-Hay" from me. With the plan coming together and a good lap "in the bank", I tried going faster. That didn't work out so well, I slayed a lot of cones. I hit a couple in the slalom, a couple down the back "straight", and a couple in the corners just before the finish, and almost went sideways through the finish, and it was slightly slower at 55.8. That's looking like my plan of starting fast and working out where to slow down. Only I've never managed wholesale cone slayage before. I don't know how hany cones I hit, no one was counting. In fact I've hit very few cones in my autocross career, its been worrying me that I could obviously go faster, so this was probably a good thing. I'd be more circumspect in those places in future.

For the first four runs, I'd left the stability control on. That wasn't deliberate, I'd just forgotten, but I hadn't noticed it getting in the way at all. But for the next run I remembered to turn it off. Things got a bit lose for the next run, I almost got sideways in the places I'd killed the cones in the previous run, and I overshot my braking after the back "straight", so I had to dig myself out and only got a 56.8. The stability control was still off for the next and final run, but I didn't get sideways, and I didn't kill any cones, and I got a 54.4, which got a really big cheer from me. As I said I'd have been happy with breaking 60 seconds, so I was pretty ecstatic with 54.4.

After the run group, I had another session of downtime when I went to take some photos of 3 of the other MINIs that were running. (There were only 5 MINIs in total). There was also a Tesla Model-S running. Unusual to see an electric, but I expect they're going to get more common. The Tesla guy said he ran 3 miles off the range on the one run, and said it had plenty of power, but the car is heavy (due to the half ton of batteries it has). During the session I was thinking the commentrary was a little uninspired, he was just saying which car and what time.

Next it was time to work. The guy running it offered me the job of announcer, something I'd never done before and then realised how daunting a task it was, but I gave it a go. As the event wasn't fully set up for scoring they weren't worrying about numbers, so the list of cars was just random, and no one had the right number on the car, so you had no idea who's who. I've got the number 394 at the BMW club, but I was #86 on the list, so I actually ran with E6 (with the 3 backwards) as my number. This made the announcer's job especially difficult as you didn't have most of the things to say you normally would. I could just announce the car, by sight, not reading exactly what it was off a list and the time. I tried to make more of it, I did get some compliments, but it is a difficult job, so I probably won't be criticising the announcer (even internally) in future. Also usually there is a trailer full of people doing various scoring tasks and typing away at the computer. For this there was just me and the timer which showed the 4 most recent times, including the timers which were still running.

I have very little idea how well I did relative to the others, as the results are not published, they weren't even being written down except on the timeslips handed to the competitors, so there's no results on the web. I was 1.5 seconds behind the Lexus, so on indexed times I won. One of the fastest guys there was the guy next to me on grid, in a modified '97 M3, he was running in the 50.something range. If you indexed my time to his, I'd have a 50.8 (BMW index) or 50.4 (SCCA index). Of the other MINIs there, Eric was running his STX Cooper-S, I've seen him at SCCA events, he ran a couple of seconds faster than me, as I'd expect. There was a guy in a Cooper (R50), he got a 57.something. There was a guy in a JCW, I don't think he got better than 58.something. Overall I'm very pleased with my performance.

I have video of my best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxBMWFunBest.mov



Eric's STX MINI:



and the JCW:

 

Yesterday was round 4 of the local SCCA's autocross season at the Oakland Coliseum. I'm a bit disappointed, I made some mental errors so left some time on the table. So I came second and slipped to second in the championship.

We were running in the afternoon sessions, so we could get up at a reasonable hour for once and left home a little after 10:30. When we got there run group 2 was still running (we were due for run group 4), so I was going to be a while before we got to do anything. We saw Rob in the other MINI there he managed a 53.2 and gave us some pointers about the course. Coming top in H Stock was Brian in the Ford Focus with a time of 50.7, so that was my target.

When we got there I'd already decided that my work assignment for the day was going to be tech inspection. The chief tech guy had put out a call earlier for more volunteers to learn tech. I'd said I was interested, so I went to find the tech guy and tagged along with him as he did the tech for run group 3. Most of the entrants in group 3 were well established, so they'd had annual tech done on their cars. (The techs look at the car once, put a sticker on it and trust you to keep it safe for the rest of the year.) So there weren't a lot of cars to look at. He then left me on my own to carry on with tech. So when run group 2 finished, run group 4 started to grid and I started to tech the cars. As group 4 included all the novice entries, almost no one qualified for annual tech (you have to have run 12 events), so I had a lot of work to do, there were 29 novice entries in total. Its surprisingly more energetic work than you'd expect, particularly at noon on a hot Californian day (it was around 80F).

Then run group 3 ended, so it was time to walk to the course. They seemed to be trying to hurry things along a bit, as we were only half way around the course when the announced it was closed for walking. So I never got to walk it a second time.

We'd forgotten who's turn it was to go first and as Cathy had put my numbers on the cars (while I was teching everyone else), so I went first and gave Cathy a lift. (It was Cathy's turn to go first.) My run was clean with a 53.8, a quite satisfying first run, getting close to Rob's time. There was only a slight hesitation at the end when I almost missed the exit gate, it needed a sharp right turn, and I almost ran straight on towards the timing light box. Cathy then gave me a lift and then it was time for my second run.

I promptly missed a turn. Going up the right side of the course I found myself going the wrong side of a cone. I couldn't correct the error without some very slow maneuvering so I just ran on straight and picked up the course the other side of the cone. That was a 52.2, but should have been a DNF. I didn't hear them call it as a DNF so I wasn't sure what to do at that point. In the end it was moot as the results show I also had a cone (which I didn't hear on the announcements), which put the time back to 54.2. For the next run I went out determined to not make the same mistake again, I slowed enough to make it around the corner, then found myself doing the exact same thing. The corner I was having trouble with was the second kink in the straight. That run was a slightly faster 52.2 but was called in as a DNF.

So for my last run I was not in a good place. i hadn't had a good run, and I needed to go slow up the right side to appreciate what my error was. In the end I managed to keep on course and ended up with a 53.1 which was my fastest time of the day. If I hadn't been being so careful, I might have managed 52.7.

The real problem was I was treating the right side as a straight. I couldn't go that fast and still make the corner. If that side wasn't a straight I might have altered my approach to it. I was aiming straight at the first corner, not worrying about make a fast transition through the next segment in order to line myself up for a good run at the "straight". Most other cars were taking a more roundabout approach to the first corner to carry more speed through there. I was trying to chop the corner off to spend less time making the corner and the extra speed didn't matter as you had to line yourself up for the "straight". I might have shaved another second of if I'd taken a different line. That would have got me much closer to Chris' time.

Cathy showed her usual steady improvement and ended up with a 53.7. Not quite better than Rob. After the runs it was time for run group 4 to work while run group 5 was out. As I'd already done the tech for run group 4 as my work assignment I had nothing to do but watch. Cathy had signed up for starter. She seemed to have a few problems with drivers not noticing when she waving the flag, so tok to waving it in a very exaggerated manner and also telling them they can go.

Overall, I came second in novice. The guy who came first was was Chris the guy in the "Tangerine Scream" Focus ST. He'd been also working on gaining an unfair advantage. He did an event with the Reno SCCA a week or so ago (when I was doing the BMW club event). He also got one of the fast locals to drive his car in the morning. So he'd seen the course 4 times already, including a 49.6, Chris himself managed a 50.7. I'd have had to get down to 51.5 to match that, with the mistakes I was making I never got a chance to do that.

Cathy came fourth in Novice, apart from me and Chris, Rufus in his Subaru (who goes by the handle "Subi-Roo") came in third. Rufus had posted on the forums that his index was killing his competitiveness. His Subaru is modified in ways that kicked it into a class with a very high index (X-prepared), overcoming that would be a herculean effort. So he'd obviously removed one of the mods which was inflating his class. This time he was indexed to street modified instead, which reduces his index by about 4% (worth almost 2 second in his results). That put him 0.3 sec above Cathy. However he was running on r-comp tires (race tires, not street tires). That gives him a considerable advantage (around 1 sec worth) and is not allowed in novice. I'd actually teched his car and talked to him about that, but spaced on the actual novice requirements. Its not tech's job to ensure class compliance though, that's enforced via protest from your class competitors, so Cathy could protest him and regain 3rd place. The discussions online are already moving towards him asking to be reclassed.

On the indexed results I came 103rd and Cathy 120th out of 192 entrants. I'm 7.5 "seconds behind" the leader which is a step backwards. Matching Chris' time would have been more like where I'd hope to be. In the championship, I'm now second to Chris, and Cathy is still third.

Also at the event were Eric in his STX Cooper-S, he came 8th by PAX. There was a new guy who turned up in a Sparkling Silver Cooper, I chatted to him while teching his MINI. He'd entered in STF as he'd modified the suspension, but was on the stock 15" wheels and tires. He came last in STF, if he'd entered in novice he'd have come in the middle of novice-ST. The classic Mini also turned up again, this time he was entered in SM rather than STF, he was running on r-comps and had a few other mods to push him out of ST. Unfortunatly, he broke something on his rear suspension and needed to call AAA. (Who took several hours to arrive, they were only arriving as we were driving away around 6pm.)

Video of my best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxApr13OakBest.mov
Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxApr13OakCBest.mov

Here's me getting clsoe to a cone:



and Cathy:

 

On Saturday we did the "Advanced Car Control Clinic" with the BMW club. This was a new venture for the club, they've previously offered (and we'd attended) a "Car Control Clinic" which was aimed more towards safe street driving (and is a prerequisite for their track events). This one was aimed more towards the autocross. Me and Cathy attended and we took Tristan, this one at Candlestick park.

We arrived before 7:30amas they suggested, so we could get registered. The driving didn't start immediately, so we chatted to some of the other drivers, including one guy who had a MINI. There were about 3 MINIs in total, lots of M3s as you'd expect at these sort of events, a smattering of other BMWs and an assortment of other cars including a Porsche Cayman, a Scion FR-S, a couple of Tesla Model-Ss and an AC Cobra. The Cobra got some attention.

Before the event they'd sent us a student handout to print out, and then we never looked at it again. That was promising us a couple of exercises in the morning, "Figure-8" and "Paper clip" and a couple of exercises in the afternoon, "Triangle slalom" and "Mystery mini course".

After the drivers meeting we started on the figure-8 exercise. This could be run in various configurations to highlight various handling characteristics. First we all piled into the available 4 door cars and the instructors took us on a low speed orientation of the course, then it was our turn to drive.

We started with just running around one half as a skidpad exercise (similar to the regular car control clinic). Then we ran around the figure 8 as an exercise in transitions and they wanted us to "trail brake". Trail braking is turning while still braking, its a useful technique for several reasons. This contrasts with the basic high performance technique of brake in a straight line, then turn.

The theory goes back to the "friction circle" which had been covered in the drivers meeting. Basically the theory is you have 100% grip you can use for accelerating, braking or turning. You can use the grip in any reasonable combination, but whatever you do you still only have 100% grip. In this case while the braking effort transitions from 100% to 0% your steering effort ramps up from 0% to 100%. If you get it right you can use all of your 100% grip while transitioning from braking to turning. If you're braking in a straight line then turning, you have a phase while you're transitioning where you're not using all your potential grip.

The other advantage of trail braking is smoothness, you smoothly transition from braking to turning. My style is usually somewhat jerky as I'm trying to minimize the transition time, where I'm not using all my grip. As if that wasn't enough trail braking also helps you maximize your grip and induce "rotation". As you're on the brakes still, sone of the car's weight is transferred to the front wheels, which increases their grip potential making a sharper turn possible. It transfers weight away from the rear wheels, so they loose grip which may allow them break lose. This may be a good thing, as it aids the car in rotation, the car turns even sharper, or if taken to excess is a bad thing, you spin out.

For the exercises we split into two groups, one to drive, one to watch and pick up cones. As we were sharing a car, me and Cathy were in different groups, so we got to watch the other perform the exercises. It was informative and entertaining. Some drivers started out quite timid, but then you could see them get more aggressive. I was quite impressed when Cathy managed to spin out a couple of times, though she tells me the instructor was helping by yanking on the handbrake, thus encouraging the rear wheels to brake loose and spin the car. Its still impressive as at the regular car control clinic, the instructor had tried that and Tristan still refused to spin.

The final phase of the exercise was the "dog bone". Running around the figure, but not crossing over in the middle, so the sides are now like offset slaloms. This gave us some more practice in transitions.

The second exercise of the morning was the "Paper Clip". This was basically an oval course but it had two different length straights, a short one for high horsepower cars, and a long one for slower cars. So the course plan looked roughly like a paper clip. The exercise was about apexes, early, mid, late with late being the preferred and again more opportunity to trail brake. It again started with the instructors chauffeuring us and then splitting into two groups.

During lunch the instructors quickly reconfigured the cones for the afternoon exercises. I was also a little worried about the state of the front tires. Autocross has been wearing the shoulders off the tires quickly, and the repetitive nature of the exercises meant they were getting more wear than at an average autocross. So I decide to pump up the front tires by 5psi, in an effort to protect the shoulder. I expected that to cause the car to understeer a little more, but that's not what happened.

First up in the afternoon was the mystery mini course. This was a short autocross style course which featured some tight transitions. We first walked the course, then were chaffered around, this time in a Mercedes which really didn't seem like an autocross car. Then it was my turn to drive. They didn't have timing there, they said they'd liked to have had timing but the insurance wouldn't allow it, this being an educational event, not a competitive event. I extracted some approximate times off the video so I have a rough idea of how we were doing.

No matter what the times were, Tristan behaved wonderfully. It was one of those times when everything seemed to just go right. He had a hint of oversteer, just enough to get around the really tight sections. It was fun from my seat, and the instructors seemed to be enjoying it as well, I was getting very positive comments from the right seat. I had 3 goes at the course, a total of about 12 laps.

Then we swapped groups, Cathy got to drive and I got to run (or limp really) after cones. This included one very enthusiastic BMW convertible who ran right over the really awkward cone with its pointer cone and dragged one of them away. I ran out and replaced the stolen cone with a spare and was looking around to see where the other cone had been deposited. I didn't see it anywhere and I didn't see that it was still dragging under the convertible. I didn't see it until Cathy did, she was next up and coming around my corner (behind the dumpsters) she had an extra cone to negotiate. The convertible had had deposited it almost exactly one lap later, I hadn't noticed it. Cathy's comment later was that it was useful to have multiple laps at the same course, a luxury you don't usually get in autocross.

Dissecting the video I see that in my usual fashion I started out fast and didn't get much faster. I was quite consistent in my "lap" times, 33-34 seconds. My fastest lap was the 3rd lap of my second run at 33.0 sec. Cathy on the other hand worked at getting steadily faster, her fastest lap was her last full lap at 33.1 sec.

The last exercise of the day was the triangle slalom. It was a triangular course with 120 degree corners at each corner. One side had a straight slalom (cones in a line), one side had an offset slalom (more zigzagging needed), and the third side was just a straight. I was thinking the exercise was about the slaloms, but those weren't really a problem, the 120 degree corners were.

For my session I felt like I was having real trouble with the corners. I was exiting them so slowly that the MINI just felt dead and that it wasn't going anywhere fast. The slaloms were pretty easy, I could keep my foot flat to the floor through the straight slalom. I was trying to take a wide line through the corners to attempt to keep my exit speed up, to avoid the dead zone.

Between the sessions I reviewed the lap timer data and I thought I was going slow enough during the corners that I could get away with trying a downshift. Although looking at the data again, I think I was fooled by the difference between the lap timer's plot of GPS speed vs wheel speed. The wheel speed is more important, the GPS speed did dip much lower. So for the second session I thought I'd try a change down into first in the corners. Reviewing the video my first lap was actually quite fast, but it didn't feel right, so I stopped changing down. The subsequent laps were actually some of my fastest, the corners still didn't feel right though.

For the third session I decided to try changing down in the corners again, this time changing down, taking a very tight line and short shifting a change up before getting to the slaloms. It felt a lot faster, and I was pleased with it, however, looking at the video the laps were slower by 0.5-1 sec than in the second session.

For the last session, another coach joined me and wanted to try a different tack. He was encouraging me to try a later apex on the corners. I'm not quite sure what I did, but one of the first laps was one of my fastest.

Analysing the video of my best laps I see that when I tried changing down for the corner, even when trying a very tight line, I lost about 0.6 sec in the corner, but then ran quite a bit faster down the following straight. I was quite surprised by this, I was expecting the corner to take less time. This does show for a sufficiently tight corner followed by a sufficiently long straight changing down might e effective. But for most circumstances, changing down is probably not effective.

The it was Cathy's turn to run. I checked the front tires and there was still noticeable tread on both the front tires. She had her laps about 20, spread over 6 sessions. She got faster through most of the sessions and ended up about 0.5 sec slower than my best time. After her sessions the outside front tire was completely bald on the shoulder. The triangle slalom was different from the other exercises, where they were running them in both directions to even out tire wear, this was all in the same direction, so the outside front really suffered. The other front tire was getting a little thin on the shoulder, but also picked up a nail. So we've now got two new front tires for the rest of the autocross season.

I have a couple of videos of our best laps on the autocross mini course:

Me: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxBMWAcccMay13Bgood.mov
Cathy: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxBMWAcccMay13Cgood.mov

 

What a great story, thanks. That sounds like a great day, despite the cost in rubber.

Another advantage of trail braking that occurs to me is that in the corner entry phase as steering angle is increasing and braking force is decreasing I have the chance to get right on the cone (unless my initial braking point was too darned late).

The challenge is, given the circle of friction, what to do in those few tenths of a second if the braking point was a little late, but not disastrously so. If I'm tracking to be a couple of feet off the cone on a tight turn I've got to balance the desire to scrub just a bit more speed AND the desire to add a bit more steering angle and tighten my arc. Doing both can easily demand more traction than is available and induce understeer.

In this situation the willingness of the back end to assist by sliding a little can be very helpful, which is why I prefer that the car be on the knife-edge of oversteer with a neutral throttle, and a bit tail-happy with the weight on the front end.

It sounds like you might consider keeping a few more pounds out front, as the protection of the tread shoulder actually helped the handling?

Cheers,

Charlie

 

The surface at Candlestick is a little loose, especially where we were doing the autocross course. So I'm not sure if the pumping up the tires encouraged the over steer (for which I have absolutely no theoretical reason), or if I managed to add just the right amount of understeer that it balanced nicely on the gravel where it would otherwise have been badly oversteering.

I'm definitely thinking of experimenting with pumping up the tire pressures at the next event. (That was due to be last Sunday, but the Rolling Stones came to town so the Coliseum wasn't available, then it was due to be tomorrow, but now the Golden State Warriors are in the playoffs, so the Coliseum is not available.) I'm still using the pressures which work for me on the track, they got pretty even wear, autocross is a bit harder on the shoulder. I'd previously tried putting in a couple more pounds, but that didn't seem to change anything (wear or grip).

I'm not sure how sensitive the RE-11 tires are to pressure, their sidewall is pretty sturdy, the size I'm using they have an XL load rating. As I mentioned I got a puncture in one of the front tires. I didn't notice until the flat tire monitor went off a few miles down the freeway, by which time the front left was down to 15psi. I hadn't noticed the handling getting strange at all. In fact Cathy probably ran half of her triangle slalom exercise with a deflating tire. I pumped up the tire and drove slowly home, it was down 10lb by the time I got home, and I never felt the steering pulling. Usually a softer tire will cause a pull in that direction, I've balanced slight tracking problems in the past with an extra 0.5psi of pressure.

 

I'm surprised there wasn't more emphasis on "looking ahead" especially during that triple slalom element. The first thing they should be telling you rounding the corners is to get looking where you want to go. Its amazing how once you see ahead, you will drive there and carry good speed doing it. On a 120 degree corner, you should be looking out the side window of the car. This is the single biggest key for auto-x.

 

Today we did the BMW club's second autocross event of the season at Marina airport. We couldn't make the first event, and we didn't think we were going to be able to make this one. We only found out on Wednesday we were free this weekend, so it was a bit of a surprise that we were there at all.

The BMW club classifies cars differently than the SCCA does. It assigns points to cars (BMWs and MINIs) and then points for modifications. Then splits the cars into 6 classes based on points. We took Tristan who fitted into class C, the lowest class. The MINI gets not very much points to start with, and then we had points added on for the wider wheels, and the sport suspension we got from the factory. The rather broad system means we were competing directly against at least one Cooper S, Z3, Z4 and various lower end 3 series. We entered this mainly just for practice, the last SCCA event was cancelled (thanks to the Golden State Warriors being in the basketball playoffs), so we might otherwise be a little rusty by the time the next event rolls around. The rest of the BMW Club's season fits quite nicely between the SCCA events.But I'm also interested to see how we did against these other cars, and drivers. I got the impression that the BMW club's drivers aren't quite up the level of the SCCA. The results aren't expected for a week or so, so currently I have no idea.

They helpfully supply the track map ahead of time:
so we had some idea of what to expect. I was expecting to be able to keep my foot down past the first few cones of the first slalom which made the top side of the course the most important element and the corner just above (1) to be the most important corner. The finish looked like it was going to be trouble. The temptation would be to run straight at the corner before it and hope to be able to stop before plowing into the cones on the left of the very narrow exit chute.

We got there early as usual (8am) for donuts and registration. There was the expected drivers meeting and course walk, and then it was time to run. We were in the first run group. We were a little late getting to grid, and they'd run out of 2 driver car grid slots, so we parked at the very head of the grid, which meant I was the very first car out, I went solo. My time was 54.7 and it felt like a very reasonable time, but I misread it and thought it was a 59.7. We couldn't hear the commentary from our end of the grid, so I've no idea how this stacked up against other cars. Cathy then went out and promptly got lost. Over by the corner by (3) she started heading directly for (4), not through the slalom. She got back on the right track, but her time was a pretty bad 71.8.

For my second run I got 55.0, a worse time, but I thought it was better. It felt a bit better. Cathy again managed to get lost. For my third run, I improved my time, but I felt it was despite my driving, not because of it. I made lots of mistakes, and several corners were just not working for me. I think I was braking too late and overshooting where I really needed to turn in. The entry to the second slalom was bad, the entry to the first wasn't much better. I'd also been collecting several cones (I don't know how many until the results are out). My usual complaint is that I don't hit cones, so obviously could be going faster. Maybe its because I felt the results really didn't matter, I wasn't worry about the cones so much and was hitting them.

For Cathy's third run, she finally found the course and scored a respectable 58.2. She was having a lot of problems with the first few corners (the zig zags on the plan). On the course they were just rather confusing, with lots of cones and the path tended to get lost in the clutter. My advice was once you got to the first corner, you should then be able to see the pointer cones at each apex more or less in a line. You could concentrate on just the apex cones, and ignore the clutter. More simply, look at the 4th apex cone (the one just to the side of (1)), and the rest should fall into place. I'm not sure if the advice helped at all.

On my fourth run I got my fastest time of the day, but my predictions about the finish came true. It may be my fastest run because they did. I went plowing off the side of the exit chute and took out two cones. I didn't bother backing up, but just went around the next cone which gave me a DNF. So the run wouldn't count if it was my fastest run. Cathy managed an incremental improvement with a 58.0.

Before the next run I did as I'd planned and bled some air out of the front tires. At the previous outing I pumped up the front tires to help with wear, I expected that to adversely affect the handling (cause understeer), but it actually seemed to improve the handling, even allowing some overs steer. So I was trying an experiment. I arrived for the day with pumped up front tires, and planned to bleed off some air midway to see how it affected the handling and times. My time was a disappointing 54.3. Though I wasn't sure how much of that was to do with the tires, and how much was to do with the cone worker running across the course in front of me.
At the time I wasn't sure what I should do, so I asked the instrutor who was hanging around. He said if it had affected my time, I should tell the grid worker who could give me a rerun. So I got a rerun.and still only managed 54.1.

Cathy went out with the pumped up tires and an instructor. She got a time pretty similar to her previous time, 58.6, when you account for the weight of the extra person (which seems to be worth about 0.6 of a second on average). She did think that the instructors comments helped. That could well be true as her final run was 56.4, almost 2 seconds best than her previous best. My final run was a somewhat disappointing 53.8 with a couple of cones. By the looks of the times, the car runs faster with pumped up tires, which is a bit of a surprise.

Now I'm wondering how to work out what the best tire pressures are. The pressure I was using previously were what I'd found worked well on the racetrack. They lead to relatively even wear. For autocross they seemed to still give relatively even wear, but I was closely watching the wear on the tires shoulder, which was somewhat accelerated. If the extra pressure is getting the tire off the shoulder and onto the main tread, that could account for the better performance.

After lunch (which the club layed on for an extra $5), we did our work assignments. We worked station (1). I had the radio, Cathy started out with the red flag. After the starter sent a car while the other guy working the station was still on course we took to deploying the red flag whenever someone was chasing after a cone. The powers that be objected to that and a guy came and said I should hold the flag and it should only be used in a dangerous situation. I called in quite a few cones, but the person at control didn't always radio an acknowledgment, so I'm not sure all of them got counted. I also radioed in a few DNFs. As always, I'm nervous about calling in a DNF, I really don't want to spoil someone's day. There was one car which seemed very fond of running the wrong side of the pointer cone on the very first corner.

I have video, though I don't know which run will be my best, that depends on the cone counts. So here's my fastest, which won't count because the of the problem with the finish.http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxBMWMay13MaB4.mov

And Cathy's best (final) run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxBMWMay13MaCBest.mov

Here's me:



and Cathy:

 

The preliminary results for last weekend are finally out: http://home.comcast.net/~mgarage/Aut...nalResults.htm

As I suspected, I coned on every run, which put my scores down. I came 6th in class, without the cones I would have been 4th. The cones are interesting, as I've complained in the past that I never hit cones, therefore I think I'm not going fast enough. This time obviously, I was going too fast, or maybe I wasn't taking it seriously (which I wasn't too much). Now I have to find the happy medium, where I hit some cones, but not too many. It would help if I could remember from run to run what I had problems with. But with everything going on, I instantly forget things as I concentrate on the rest of the course.

There was one guy in an R50 who came 0.6s faster (ignoring cones) than my best run. He would be a good person to keep an eye on.

Looking over the times, and the trend of the times, I think letting the air out of the tires was worth about an extra second on the run. So obviously, the tire pressures were incorrect. I'm going to be investigating tire pressures in the events to come. My first move is to get a fancy IR Pyrometer. This will help me see the heat profile of the tire after a run. I'd previously checked temperatures, and come to the conclusion they were right. Obviously, I was wrong, so I need to put more effort in this.

I'd previously got a nice probe pyrometer, only to find that it wasn't actually what I needed. Tires usually heat up because the tire flexes. Everytime it flexes it releases a bit of heat, this is one of the properties of rubber. The tire flexes everytime it rotates, so tires heat up when you go fast. This is actually a heating up from the inside out. So the probe pyrometer is the right tool for the job. That's what's typically used for racing on racetracks. For autocross tires mainly heat up from lateral loads, and only the surface warms up, so an IR pyrometer is the right tool. I'd previously used a cheap IR thermometer, which while it seemed to do a reasonable job measuring temperatures didn't make it easy to get temperature profiles. The new tool should enable me to get temperature profiles even during competition.

In other related news I also got the car corner weighted. Mainly for interest though I'll be comparing them to the new MINI when he arrives. The new one is destined to be the autocross car. I now know Tristan's total weight is 2427lb in competition trim, which was about 100lb lighter than I expected from MINI's specs. The other is the weight distributions. Its front/rear weight distribution is 61/39% with driver (strangely, the driver moves the weight distribution back slightly). Its also slightly biased to the right (0.5%), so its biased to the left (1.6%) with a driver.

 

Today was round 5 of the SCCA's autocross season at the Oakland Colliseum. This was due to be the 6th round, but that got cancelled due to the Rolling Stone and the Golden State Warriors. We were in run group 1, so we got there extra early and I helped with tech inspections and Cathy sat guard over the front gate. (Making sure no one got in without signing the insurance waiver.) The idea was we'd get our work assignment over early, so we could take off after our runs. This turned out to be not the best idea, it was difficult to fit in registration, teching cars, and walking the course. Cathy was also stuck at the front gate during the course walk and the driver's meeting. The powers that be forgot to send someone to relieve her until reminded.

I'd been playing with the tire pressures during the previous week. My investigations had revealed that the pressures were way too low. I had been running 35 psi all round, I upped them to 40 psi at the previous event and I started the day off at 45 psi. I was thinking that this might still be too low. I was planning to measure the tire temps after each run. I was also planning on lowering the pressure by 5 psi for the last run, as a comparison.

As Cathy had missed out on walking the course, I quickly pointed out the features of the course. It seemed to be quite a fast and wide open course, very few fiddly bits. Then I went out first and gave Cathy a lift in lieu of the course walk. The results aren't out yet so I've no idea how my times compare, I got a quite mediocre feeling 42.3. I was not totally concentrating as I was pointing out parts of the course to Cathy. Then Cathy gave me a lift and got a 42.7.

For the second run, I got serious, I got my fastest time of the day 40.4 which seemed like not a bad time. Then Cathy went out for a 41.6. I did notice that the tires didn't seem to be making much noise, which is not an unexpected consequence of pumping up the tires. I was trying to take the tire temperatures after each session, but it was proving difficult recording all the data in the time available. They were moving things along quite quickly, there was only 5-6 minutes between each run. I ended up just taking tire temperatures after my runs.

For the last (4th) run of the day I did let 5psi of air out of the tires.The car definitely didn't feel as good, though that might be psychological, but my time was 0.75sec worse than my best, so I'm thinking the extra pressure was worth another 0.5-1 second.

Just to contradict things, Cathy's times didn't show any effect from the tires. Her last run (41.0) was 0.3sec faster than her 3rd, which was 0.3sec faster than her second run. Looking at the tire temperatures, the right side started off 40 degrees hotter than the left. That was because it was sitting with the sun beating down on the right for an hour or two. The heat stayed with the tires through the runs. Also the tires were hotter after each run. I'm wondering if that's why I typically get my best run second, because the tires are getting too hot after that. The left was around 130F after that run. The temperatures were quite even (which is good) after the second and third runs, they were a lot more uneven after the last run. I'm thinking 45 is a good pressure, it may or may not need a few more psi, but it also may depend on the actual temperatures. I'll be experimenting more in future.

I have video, but the lap timer got very confused. It lost the start and finish points I programmed into it, and it thought the start and finish was in the middle of the course. So the data on the video is inconsistent and missing for parts of it.

My best (2nd) run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxJun13OakBest.mov

Cathy's best (last) run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxJun13OakCBest.mov

 

The results are out: http://www.sfr-solo.org/solo2/Result...p/round06.html

I came third in Novice, and Cathy was 4th. In first place was Chris in the Tangerine Scream who's been my main competition for the year. In second place was a new guy in a Mitsubishi Evo. Overall (indexed) I was 69th and Cathy 77th out of 135. I was 7.7 "seconds behind", which is a couple of seconds down on my best. I need to stop worrying about tire pressure and drive better if I'm going to win this.

In the championship, I'm now 40 points behind Chris.

 

^ good stuff - I too recently moved from 35-36ish PSI hot to 40-42 - tires seem happier with it. I envy your Mini! I desperately wish mine didn't have a sunroof...