This one has rising tension and a surprise ending, but I won't spoil it.

Yesterday was round one of the "Slush" autocross series at the Oakland Coliseum. It wasn't clear if this one was going to happen thanks to what's going on in baseball, it was possible that the Oakland A's would have been playing in the Colliseum, so we were watching the baseball results carefully. In the end the Red Sox won, so Oakland would have played in Boston, and then the A's lost to the Tigers so that was moot.

We started auto crossing last year with round one of the Slush series, so this now we're seasoned veterans, with our success this year, we could no longer in compete in Novice. So the first question is what class should we compete in. My plan last year was to graduate to the "T1" stock street tire class. That's a San Francisco regional class, for all stock classes on street tires, indexed. I'm quite happy to run the MINI basically stock but with sticky street tires, I didn't want the hassle of changing onto competition tires at the event. (I change on to the competition tires in the garage the day before and drive to the even on them.) So T1 sounded like just what I was looking for.

But then with the Street proposals for next year, the world changed to suit what I was looking for. So I was thinking Street would be the way to go. When it was first proposed I hatched a plot, for the Slush season I'd prepare the car to street rules (with camber plates etc), and get some practice in so we'd be ready with a Street class car at the beginning of 2014. Hopefully getting a jump on the competition. I ordered some 15x6.5" wheels in June with the though of using them at BMW club events in the meantime. Then all the proposed changes were withdrawn, except the wheels proposals, so now I'm still thinking of STF, but with just the wheels keeping us out of stock. However, the wheels haven't arrived, so we're basically running a stock class car on street tires in STF. That's so that we won't change classes, if we want to have any hope of winning a trophy we have to at least enter in the same class consistently.

So we entered in STF, but I'm still keeping an eye on whats going on in Stock, specifically H Stock (HS) and in T1 and also in the next stock class up, GS. The GS/HS merger was off, but I was keeping an eye on the potential competition. The rules for next year were actually set in stone on Friday, so at least we know where we're going now. We took Bertie, even though Tristan seemed to be faster, we're planning on tweeking Bertie to behave more like Tristan.

STF was scheduled for the 3rd morning run group, so we had to get there early as usual. HS would have been in the afternoon and allowed us to sleep in. First thing was to sign up for work assignments to work group 1. Cathy was keen to get the gate waiver assignment (where you get to sit down, she'd done too much walking on Saturday), so she helped with setup to where we could find the worker sign up sheets. I signed up for tech. Then we walked the course. The course was interesting, with some tricky bits and some bits which looked like trouble. In a couple of places there were what looked like slaloms, but the pointers didn't actually alternate. They'd all point one way, but just have one cone pointing the other. This might catch out the unwary who treated it like a slalom and it totally changed the course. It was now a fast bit of course with a slow kink, which required a different line than a slalom. There were several places where there was one pointer cone offset from the general flow of the course. Someone even described it a "MINI" course, as in one well suited to MINIs.The run to the finish was like that, and the actual finish looked like it could be trouble and we were expecting to see some cars finish backwards. One guy on the course was even practising the backwards exit on his course walk (as a joke). There was time so we could have a second walk now we'd got the overall flow and concentrate on the tricky bits. There was even time I could walk it a third time (though Cathy was complaining of walking too much by this time and didn't join me).

While I was working tech during session 1, I was hearing lots of times in the 42-44 second range, so I was thinking high 40s would probably be good. (Looking at the results I see there were also some 39s, but I did't notice those. I did notice that Chris in the Tangerine Scream, my main rival from Novice, was entered in T1 and also had a co driver who sounded like he was an old hand. I had a question about his car, the premium option amplifier in the trunk didn't seem to be screwed down at all. That a, seemed like a safety problem to me (as tech inspector) and b, you could take it out under the rule that if its not screwed down it can be removed. We had a long discussion about this, his co-driver (Mark) was of the opinion that as there was no specific allowance to remove it he wouldn't want to and be open to being protested by a competitor. (Unlikely to happen at a regional like this, but something to worry about at the national level). I wasn't a direct competitor so couldn't have protested, but I said I wouldn't as a competitor. Eventually someone senior looked at it an pronounced it safe. There may be a request for clarification over this.

I also talked to Tyler who was STF champion (he also won STF in last years slush, even though he could have entered as a novice) to say I was competing against him. I was aiming to close the gap to Tyler, I was thinking I was 2.75s behind him at the previous event. He was of the opinion that a MINI, even if not modified to the full extent of the rules was tough competition. Tyler was also event co-chair, and thus very busy. Then it was time for us to get ready, we had run group 2 to prepare the car and get teched. It was getting late in run group two and there was no sign of anyone doing tech when Tyler came along to do tech. I'd guess no one had signed up for tech for the group, its the event chair's job to notice things like that, and organize coverage, if necessary do it themselves.

It was finally time for us to run. After the 3 junior carts got to go out (very slowly), Cathy was up first and I got a lift. She got a 47.7 which sounded like a very creditable time, with "high 40s" as the target. I gave Cathy a lift for my first run and got a 47.3, unusually, not that far ahead of Cathy's time. The usual pattern is I start out fast and don't get much faster. (My second run has most often been my fastest.) Cathy will start out some way behind and catch up some during her runs. Except for our very first event, I've always ended up faster than Cathy. Tyler went out and was about 2.75s ahead of me, so I was on target there. (My arithmetic was off, it was 3.75s.) I'm thinking I'd got a bit rusty in the long break since the last event, which had been 2 months earlier. I'd been trying to keep in practice with about 2 events a months, so this was a very long break in comparison. September is usually a break as that's when the National championships are. We'd also missed one event and one BMW club event, while we were on vacation.

For Cathy's second run she knocked a full second and a half off here time to come in with a 46.1 ahead of my first run place. She was very pleased. So I went out and knocked even more time off my run and got a 45.6, regaining the lead. Cathy's third run was another good improvement, 45.4, 0.2 ahead of my second run. Again Cathy was very pleased. Now things were getting serious, I know that my second run is quite often my fastest, so I needed a boost. I looked at the data from our runs on the lap timer. It has a handy function to compare two runs. I'll usually use that to see where I'm improving. This time I could use it to see where Cathy was gaining most time. The plots were pretty similar, except for the "sweeper in a box" over to the left of the course. It was a reasonably wide sweeping 180 degree turn, but was hemmed in with cones on all side to restrict the lines available to you. I'd been braking heavily on the way in, taking a late apex to the first 90 degrees and then powering out the other 90 degrees. The data showed that Cathy was much faster through the whole thing, there was at least half a second there.

So for my third run I went out with the intention of keeping my speed up through the sweeper in a box. It worked I knocked a half second off Cathy's time with a 44.9. Cathy went out for her last run and also got a 44.9, looking at the digits to the right of that she was 0.070 s ahead, or as I said to her "seven one hundredth of a second". So now I was feeling some pressure. If I just kept my head and got a clean run, natural progression times should be able to make up those hundredths. I looked at the data and compared our runs, they were practically identical. She gained time in some places, I gained in others, but nothing stood out as a big win in times. All I had to do was put in a clean run and I'd win, so naturally I went flat out, pushing as hard as possible and I flubbed it. There were a couple of places where I made mistakes, which probably cost me 0.5-1s. I ended up with a 45.2, only 0.3 s behind, so without the flubs I probably would have done it.

There's video of course, Cathy's best (4th) run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxOct13OakCBest.mov
My best (3rd) run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxOct13OakBBest.mov






(thanks to Mark Mervich for this picture)


The results are out. http://www.sfr-solo.org/solo2/Result...h/round01.html

We got the last two places in STF (out of 5). 0.2 back from #3, 1.1 sec back from #2 and 1.8 sec back from Tyler (#1). So we've got some good targets to aim for.

With the change in class, there's also a change in index. STF actually has the lowest index of all the classes. That's because the cars should be faster, but the tires hold them back. Or put another way, we've been running too high of an index, because we're not taking advantage of the stock tire rules. With our improved index, we were 50th and 51st out of 157. (That would have been 62nd with the old index.) Which is a good showing 32nd percentile. Its the highest up the order we've been. (Though with equal indexes I would have been higher with round 3.)

If we'd been in HS, Cathy would have been 2nd and me 3rd out of 4. We were 1 sec behind Brian and 1 sec in front of Rob. So next year looks good, we would have a chance to win it.

We were ahead of everyone in GS, so If GS and HS were combined we'd have been 2nd and 3rd out of 7. (This is of course just academic now.) It looks like this was the first time I've managed to bear Jourdan, who was always just ahead of me.

If we'd been in T1, we would have come 7th and 8th out of 14. Chris came 5th would have beaten me by a full second.

Looking at the trend in our times, and our times vs Tyler (using Tyler's times as a handy benchmark). There have been several times where Cathy was only a few % behind my time, so the result is not that surprising. There are other times where Cathy was 10 or 20% behind my times. My times vs Tyler show more of a trend, Cathy's are a little more erratic. Looking at just the data, I'd say I'm a more consistent driver, which is a bit of a surprise. At our best we're pretty close, Cathy has more off days.

The times of Cathy's good days are trending down faster than mine, at about 0.4s per event. Mine are flattening out at about 0.04 per event about 2 sec behind Tyler. If Cathy keeps this up, she's going to be beating me more often. It may depend if Cathy plateaus somewhere.

 

Today was the second round of the local SCCA's "Slush" season at the Oakland Coliseum. We took Bertie continuing our preparation for 2014. He had the new 15"x6.5" wheels with the 225/45-15 BFG Rival tires I'd used for the first time last week. This week I was also trying out a Scroth "Quick Fit" racing harness (thanks to Kyoo for the idea). You bolt in a couple of extra seat belt anchors to the existing attachment points and it also plugs into the regular seatbelt receivers (both front and back). It holds you nicely in place during your runs. Cathy doesn't like harnesses, so we clipped it out of the way behind the seat when she was running.

Bertie is as yet otherwise unmodified, but I'm making arrangements to modify the suspension. I've ordered a new rear sway bar, a Tarett Engineering adjustable one. Hopefully it'll adjust so its pretty normal on the street, but we can dial in oversteer for autocross. I've also ordered some custom shock absorbers from Fat Cat Motorsports. There's a lot of voodoo associated with shocks, and some people like to fiddle with their adjustments depending on multiple factors. However, there is a theory, to which I subscribe that there is a right shock for the suspension, and if you get the right shock you don't need any adjustments at all. That's what I've ordered, simple shocks with no adjustments, which are custom valved to be the right shock. Its possible the shocks will be ready for the next event, in any case they should be available for the Slush 4 event in December.

We were running in run group 4, the first session of the afternoon, so we could get up at a more reasonable time. When we got there at around 11:30, run group 2 was underway, I thought it was almost over. But it went on, and on, and on. Also a large portion of the usual space for the course was fenced off an unavailable to run on. It seems this was a surprise to all concerned, and the course had to be hastily redesigned at 7am. The course was in two segments. A loop around one quarter of the lot, nest to the fenced off area, then off snaking around the main portion of the lot. The finish line was unusually right over the far corner of the lot.

I'd volunteered to take on the afternoon novice course walk (which would happen during the lunch break), so I was wondering around trying to get an appreciation of the course without having walked it, so I could have something to say. It was 1:15 before the group was finished, it wasn't looking good for the day to be over before sunset. We gridded up while run group 3 was running, and started chatting to to other guy with a MINI. Then the group was over and it was lunch time. The group seemed to go much faster than I expected. I think they cut the group down to only 3 runs, I think they had more runs for the first two groups. There are notes on the local forum about problems that group 2 suffered, causing it to run long. These seemed to be fixed by the time group 3 rolled around. I did notice that the Tangerine Scream (my old nemesis) managed a time of 44.3, so I'd be looking at a 44.9 to match that. What I didn't take into account was that that time was set by Mark, a very experience driver, not Chris my nemesis from the novice class. Mark is about 2-3 seconds faster than Chris, so I should have been thinking nearer 46.5 as a target time.

Also during the group I chatted to Mark the head of tech, he offered annual tech for Bertie. That is where you're inspected once a year, and you're responsible for making sure the car conforms to the safety regulations. You have to have done at least 12 events to qualify for annual tech, so I now qualified. When I'm working tech annual etched cars make life much easier, as we don't have to look at them (just trust the driver to have done it himself).

The lunch break was announced as only 20 minutes. I had wondered if I could walk the course first, before leading the novice course walk, but 20 mins didn't give me enough time for that. So I waited for the novices to show up, and no one did. Then just as I was about to give up, one arrived. A more experienced autocrosser was bringing his girlfriend to her first event. They were sharing an Acura RSX. So we walked the course the boyfriend tagged along, and so did Cathy, so we shared our collective wisdom with the newbie. I just hoped I didn't confuse her too much. I caught up with them later, and asked if it were helpful, she said it had been quite helpful. The boyfriend also said he found it quite helpful as well.

So it was finally time for us to run, it was almost 3pm by this time, I hoped they'd be able to fit everything in before sunset. There was a little delay awhile they appealed for more workers. For some reason run group 5 was really small, and they were providing the workers for our group, so we didn't have quite enough. I was the first of the group to run, and I gave Cathy a lift. Out on the course I almost ran over a pigeon (I have video), which was disconcerting, but I was also not happy with the run. On several of the 180 switchback I didn't brake enough or early enough so I missed the line on the way out and it was in general sloppy. I also got a bit lost and missed the final cone, so DNFed, but I'm not sure anyone noticed (still waiting on the results). The time was a 48.9, which was very disappointing as I still had the 44.9 figure in my head. I didn't think I was going to pick up 4 hole seconds even from such a sloppy run. Cathy went out next and gave me a lift, and also got a 48.9, but hers was 0.017s faster, so she was very pleased.

For my second run I concentrated on getting the braking right and did a much better job, but things still didn't feel right around the 180s. Bertie just felt a bit dead, like the traction control was one, but I had turned it off. The time was 47.8, a good improvement, but there was still a lot of scope for more. Cathy's next runs as faster than her first 48.0, but she picked up a cone which spoilt it. I have yet to examine the video to work out where the cone was.

My third and final run was better still, but still it didn't feel right coming out of the 180s, I wondered if the speed was just dropping to much and we were out of the power band, and if I really should have changed down, or change my one to keep the speed up. But looking at the data, I see that the revs never fell too low, so what the problem was is a bit of a mystery. The time was an improvement at 47.1, but still no where near the 44.9 I had in mind, and still a bit off the more reasonable target of 46.5. Maybe if there had been more runs I could have worked it out. Cathy's final run was clean but not that fast at 48.7. I'm eagerly awaiting the results so I can see how we did.

I have video of course, My best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxNov13OakBest.mov
Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxNov13OakCBest.mov
And the pigeon: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxNov13OakB1P.mov

 

Preliminary results are out.

I came 3rd and Cathy 4th out of 6 in STF. First and Second were the usual suspects of Tyler and Jeff who were battling throughout the season. Tyler actually got the top overall indexed time. It looks like Jeff was the boyfriend who tagged along for the novice course walk. Its quite high praise for him to say my talk was useful. Tyler got a 44.8, bettering my overoptimistic target. Jeff got 45.6, and his girlfriend (or maybe wife, they have the same surname) got 52.0. The other entrant came third in novice ST for the year, he got a 50.6.

We would have been 2nd and 3rd out of 4 in HS, Brian in the Focus got a 46.6. Mark in the Tangerine scream (who set my overoptimistic target) came first in T1, Chris came 3rd with a 45.3

I came 28th and Cathy came 60th out of 150 overall on indexed results. I was 3.0 "seconds behind", Cathy was 5.3.

 

So are you still planning on running in street class next year or are you actually moving to STF? If you're moving to STF why just shocks and why not full coilovers?

While it is important to have shocks that are well valved to your spring rates/corner weights it's best to have some adjustment available so that you can adapt to different surfaces (grip level and bumpiness), different weather conditions, and different tires (if you're going to do tire testing). Although when working on getting faster there is definitely something to be said about a car setup that you don't have to screw with so that you can focus on improving the driver.

 

good stuff! thanks for the harness e-props lol. did you go with the quick fit or the quick fit pro? i'm leaning toward the regular quick fits for cost. how does it feel? Does it pinch your neck at all when you tighten it?

very nice on the dampers too, FCM has some baller status stuff. Is it a custom revalve of bilsteins/konis, or something totally custom of their own?

Never heard of the RSB as well.. specs?

 

I got the pro, just in case I ever want to run HANS (which I probably won't).

No problem with the neck, the shoulders are the problem, it pulls down on them. The first time I tried it, it was hard on the shoulders. Installing the optional shoulder pads helped a lot. I also don't tighten the shoulders all the way until the last minute. I'd be at the line waiting for the flag and tugging on the shoulder adjusters, then relaxing them on the way back to the paddock. Also the optional adjuster tugs help a lot, if you can fit them. There's not obvious way to get the extra **** on the spindle. I ended up using a mallet, and one of the ***** went flying and is still missing.

They're Bilstein HD, with custom valving.

The specs are in the link. http://www.socalsportscar.com/swayba...sba-detail.htm

Its a 23.8mm hollow bar, the one thing they don't tell you is how stiff it actually is, the equivalent solid bar or relative to the standard bar. I asked them and I think I got the wrong answer, they said it was 3x as stiff as the 18mm sport bar I have and would adjust between 2.3x and 5x as stiff.

That put me off originally as I wanted something which is not much stiffer than the 18mm bar at the softest. But analysing the numbers I think they misquoted, a 23.8mm solid bar would be 3x as stiff, being hollow should make it less stiff. User reports I've seen suggest it adjustable to between the equivalent stiffness of 19 and 22mm bars. There's also a 25mm upgrade if you want something even stiffer than that. The bar is in 3 peices, so the bar can be changed without dropping the rear subframe.

 

I'm aiming for H Street next year. The wheels aren't currently legal for stock, so I'm only temporarily in STF. The PAX in STF is better than HS, which is nice.

That's the voodoo I was referring too. There are sound theoretical reasons (backed up by empirical evidence) that any suspension has a damper which is matched to it, any adjustment away from that setting is actually degrading the setup. Here's as good an explanation as I've found of this: http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets23.html

He also said that some setups felt better to him as the driver, but were actually slower when tested. I'd guess that that's the direction that fiddling with the shocks is taking such drivers.

Adjustments can be useful to help find this right setup, but I'm trusting that FatCat can do this in one shot (that's the biggest if here). If data later shows that the shocks aren't quite right, we may revist the valving, or just live with it. The other use for adjustments is to actually get the shocks to the right setup, as there seems to be a lot of variability in consumer grade shocks as delivered. But theory would be you find the right setting, then never fiddle with it.

That's basically the theory I'm subscribing to.
That's also a very good reason for not fiddling with the shocks.

 

Interesting - I've got the Schroth Profi ASM's, haven't noticed any pulling down on the shoulders - is it more pulling "back" on your shoulders?

Very nice on the Bilsteins. The sole reason I'm considering Sports instead of HDs is that it'll supposedly work better with the JCW springs.

Sorry about the RSB thing - for some reason that site is blocked at work. I am personally getting that Hsport 25.5 hollow. As far as I understand, the fastest setup for Minis is to make it very very loose

 

I definitely get pulling down on the shoulders. It maybe that my torso is quite long, I'm 5'11" but I have short legs so have the torso of a taller person. My shoulders would be hitting the head rest if I hadn't put it up a few inches.

I'm still new at this an not used to oversteer yet, so I'm being cautious. I'm being especially cautious as the car is one of our daily drivers. I don't want something which would bite us on the street. We will have the stability control on on the street to help with any misbehavior.

If we get good at this, then I might revisit this, and there's always the option of fitting the stiffer bar.

 

The real results are out now http://www.sfr-solo.org/solo2/Result...h/round02.html

I've been analysing them. I was quite unsatisfied with my performance yesterday, but on an objective analysis it may have been my best performance at SCCA yet. I have a spreadsheet model which compares my performance to an average of several of the top drivers, this puts yesterday as my best result at an SCCA event, only second to last week's BMW club shootout, where I thought I did really well.

Also interesting in the results is that Tyler, also in STF, came first overall in PAX. That was his best ever result, his previous best was something like 15th. I did wonder if a lot of the usual suspects had failed to show up, so it was artificially inflated. But he beat a guy into second place who'd previously got top PAX, as well as several others who are usually at the top, so this seems like a legit victory for Tyler.

When I was analysing the course I was thinking it was almost tailor made for a MINI, tight and twisty. Tyler is in a Honda Fit, I'm in a MINI of course and we both had the best results of our careers. So the course may have favoured MINIs and other smaller cars.

By the way, the spreadsheet I mentioned earlier was designed to predict how well I could do at nationals. That predicts a result 144.5 for HS or 146.3 for STF, which would put me not last in the results. I was wondering how worth it would be to go to nationals. If you want to play along at home, the methodology is to find several of your local competition who went to nationals. Look up their PAX results at:
http://www.sccaforums.com/Portals/0/...ombo_Final.pdf
http://www.sccaforums.com/Portals/0/...ombo_Final.pdf

Find their seconds "from first", normalise that to 1 minute, given the top PAX was 116.992s. (Ie mutiply by 60/116.992.) Then look up your local results, mine give normalised "seconds behind", and find the average for those same competitors. Work out how far back you are from that average, add it to the average from nationals, which gives you a theoretical "seconds behind" for nationals. Denormalise that, and add it to the top PAX (i.e. multiply by 116.992/60 and add 116.992), and you have your theoretical PAX result.

For yesterday, that works out at 116.2. For the road tire classes you have to apply a road tire PAX (0.975) to compare your results. (119.2 for me.) Makes me think I wouldn't come last, or be wasting my time at nationals.

 

good stuff! The car's set up well enough at least!

 

Yesterday was round three of the SCCA's "Slush" season out at Marina. As its late November the weather was perfect, mid 60s and sunny. It was warmer than it was during some of the mid summer events, which is pretty typical of the coastal weather. It may have been a bit chilly for the early runs, but we were running in the last group of the afternoon, so we got there in time for registration to close at noon, having picked up a takeaway lunch.

As we were registering Mark, the head of tech asked me if I wanted to tech the run group which was forming on grid. It was run group 3, run group 2 was still in the middle of its runs. So I did after eating lunch. It was quite a large group, and group 2 looked pretty big as well. So it was 2pm or so by the time both of the run groups ended and we had a break to walk to the course. I was not surprised at the timing, the morning run groups always seem to tae the bulk of the time. People don't seem to want to run in the afternoon, possibly because you have so much wasted time if you have to be there for noon and don't get to do anything for a couple of hours.

I watched a few of the morning cars run to get a feel for the course. It looked pretty interesting, there was a sweeping turn just in front of the trailer and spectator area. The commentator seemed to be calling that the "showcase" turn. That lead into a slalom, which unusually was oriented diagonally across the available space. That meant it could be longer than the average slalom. There also seemed to be a straight which ran in the opposite direction just next to the slalom. With the right combination of cars on course you had cars running startlingly close to each other at full speed in opposite directions. I hoped that this conformed to the safety regulations and just looked close together from my perspective.

Walking the course it looked like it would be a fun course, with several challenging elements. The slalom was about 7 cones long. They were far enough apart (about 65 ft) that you could get going fast, but not so far apart that its not a challenge. When we did a slalom like that at one of the autocross schools I came to the conclusion that if you felt like you were in control you weren't going fast enough. On the really fast runs it felt like I was just about to lose control of the car, there's a lot of time to be picked up in a slalom like that. The straight did run antiparalel to that, but I didn't notice how far it was from the slalom, I was concentrating on finding a line. The corner before the slalom was very tight, about 130 degrees. That would also be very important in a fast time.

During run group 4 it was our turn to work, I'd signed up for tech and Cathy had signed up for gate waiver. Both of the afternoon run groups looked very small, maybe a dozen cars each, so they were short of workers and asked for volunteers to help. I worked tech even though I'd already done one work assignment and could technically not bother working the group. There was also an interesting PA announcement where the announcer called for two people who hadn't signed in for work. He said they'd better show up or "they would never compete in another event as long as he was in charge". There are dire warnings in the rules that not completing a work assignment is grounds for disqualification ("DNW" did not work) and repeated violations is grounds for exclusion. I've never known the penalty be applied.

In run group 4 was Mark, one of the fastest guys in the street tire (T1) class. Last week he'd been co driving with Chris in the Tangerine Scream, so he would be setting a good time to aim for. I was thinking that last week he was 2 seconds faster than me, so when he got a 48.2, I was thinking a 50.5 would be a good time. (I was misremembering, he was 3 seconds in front of me, it was Chris who was 2 seconds behind him, so I should probably have been aiming for 51.5.)

Finally at 3:40 it was time to run. The grid guy warned us that with such a small run group, we'd be cycling through pretty fast as a two driver car, he'd probably be able to send us as soon as we were ready. For the first run, Cathy went out and gave me a lift. She promptly got lost, and tried to go the wrong side of the "bus stop" at the far end. It was a DNF, but again we're not sure anyone noticed. That upset the rest of the run, so she only came in with a 59.0. I pointed out that if you're going to DNF like that taking out the cone would have made the run correct (but with a cone penalty). The rules are its a DNF if you go the wrong side of the cone, but taking out the cone, even with the wrong side of the car is not.

For my first run I gave Cathy a lift and had a lot of trouble with several of the 180 corners, nowhere near my intended line. I still ended up with a 52.5, which wasn't too bad but seemed a long way from my target of 50.5.

There was a little trouble getting Cathy to her next run, the other two driver car, a heavily prepared Saturn Sky Redline, had expired on the grid and was blocking the way. Luckily the grid was quite empty enough we could just drive around it. Cathy's second run was a much better 53.4 and then she showed her usual steady improvement and ended up with a 51.3. The commentator then said that she was still 0.13 seconds behind me, which was a bit of a surprise as I hadn't been taking that much notice of my times and thought I was slower than that.

For my subsequent runs I worked on correcting the problems I'd had in the first run, amazingly enough I could actually remember some of the problems I'd had. I was braking earlier and trying to tighten up my apexes on the 180s, I was still missing some of them quite badly. The corner before the straight was particularly troublesome as I always seemed to hit the apex much too early, which would limit the speed I could get on the straight and lose time. The video of the later runs looks reasonable but at the time it didn't feel right. The second run was a 51.2, which is actually pretty good, 3 seconds behind mark, but I was thinking it wasn't so good at the time.

For the third run I ran straight over the final cone of the slalom, I just found myself approaching it and not having any hope of missing it, I'm not sure what I did wrong there. I may be able to review the video and work out what happened, but I don't have any data for my last three runs, which will greatly hinder any post mortem. We ran across a bug in the lap timer, I've seen occasionally where it stops timing laps at 4pm PST. I think that's a bug due to the day changing as that's midnight GMT, which is the standard time on an iPhone. I've seen the bug occasionally before in our winter track days. It'd have to be winter because the bug would happen at 5pm in the summer (due to daylight savings time), and track days are usually over by then. That's prompted me to finally submit a bug report to Harry (of Harry's Lap Timer), he going to investigate.

For the fourth run I hit two cones in the slalom, but got a 50.6 which seemed like a very good time, and elicited a whoop! from me. The cones would have spoiled it though leaving my second run as my best time, still just 0.13 seconds in front of Cathy. Reviewing the video I see that I was rather wide entering the slalom from the showcase turn. That seems to have carried over and I just hit both cones which which should have been on the right side of the car. I was about a foot wide on entry and hit the cones by about 6 inches.

After the runs we hung around helping to clear away the course. It can be surprisingly energetic lugging stacks of cones around. Then we hung around some more chatting to the stragglers until they decided it was time for dinner. It was past 5pm and the sun had gone down by this time, I was glad to have thought to pick up lunch. So we tagged along with group who quite regularly do this. It was interesting, one of the guys was on the "Stock Advisory Committee" who advises the SCCA board on rules changes for the Stock categories. He had some interesting things to say about the rules changes that happened this year.

As I write thus the results are published: http://www.sfr-solo.org/solo2/Result...und03.html#stf

As expected we came 3rd and 4th out of 4 in STF, behind the same two (Tyler and Jeff) who've been first and second in all the slush events. So we're 3rd and 4th in the championship, though there will probably only be two trophies. Cathy's DNF on her first run was noticed.

Overall I was 28th and Cathy 32nd out of 86 on the indexed results. I was 4.5 "seconds behind". The results, even with the cones, are slightly better than I did at Slush 1. Without the cones they wouldn't be quite as good as my slush 2 result.

I have video. My best scoring run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxNov13MaBest.mov
Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxNov13MaCBest.mov
My fastest run (with two cones): http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxNov13MaBFast.mov


Me dissapearing into the setting sun:



Cathy at the showcase turn:

 

Yesterday was the last round of the Slush Autocross season at the Oakland Coliseum. Our last event of the year, we're not planning on anything until next year's championship starts in February. The plan for the day, apart from competing, was to compare the old tires we'd run for most of the season vs the new tires I'd been running for the past few events. I think the new tires are faster, but I'd like to know for sure and how much faster they are. The plan was we'd run as usual in the morning (we were scheduled as the first run group), swap the tires, work an extra shift and run in one of the afternoon groups. We'd signed up to work the lunchtime gate waiver (i.e. getting anyone arriving to sign the insurance waiver), which is a very easy shift, but difficult to fill. Anyone running in the morning doesn't want to hang around after they've finished, and anyone running in the afternoon likely wants to walk the course, which you can't do working the gate.

The plan was also to have the new suspension ready on Bertie for this event. But the shop doing the shocks flaked on getting them ready in time. So no new shocks. I considered changing the rear sway bar myself, I got as far as jacking up the rear end and taking off the wheels to inspect the situation. But it looked a little more complicated than I wanted to get involved in the day before we wanted to run, so I decided not to in the end.

After our test of Tristan vs Bertie, I'd thought that swapping wheels between cars an event was a little ambitious, but just changing one set of wheels is a much easier task. I do that all the time in the garage at home and can manage it in about 20 minutes or so. We loaded up the extra set on the back seat, there's just enough space to fit 4 wheels/tires back there.

That was the plan, the only problem was the weather didn't cooperate. California is having unusually cold weather, which in California style the rest of the country might not even notice. Unusually cold means lows down near freezing. Forecast was varying, but showing a low between 32 and 38 degrees. Two things about the forecast matter, what would be the temperature when leaving home around 7am and what would be the temperature when competing, which would be somewhere around 9-9:30. It matters because we're running summer tires.

The tire manufacturers are distinctly unhelpful as to how low a temperature is too low for summer tires. The general advice is to not use them if the average temperature is less than 45 degrees. Not very helpful as you can average 45 degrees with a 60 degree day and a 30 degree night. I wouldn't want to run summer tires in 30 degree weather. With that hint I'd probably think that summer tires are safe in temperatures above 45 degrees.

Lack of grip is a concern at an autocross from a performance point of view, but is probably not dangerous. Lack of grip when getting to the event is a definite concern and could be dangerous. If its not too cold out we could probably manage to get to the event safely, the tires will be relatively warm when they leave the garage and will probably stay warm enough to be safe. If it were icy that would be a problem. Such temperatures are unusual, but not unknown, we'll get them every few years or so. That's one reason why Bertie's regular tires are all season. If I hadn't been planning on the tire test, I might have planned to get to the event on Bertie's regular tires and change once I got there. If the forecast were for near freezing temperatures when we were running I might have tried to run on Bertie's all season tires, particularly if it were wet as well.

It turned out that the overnight low of 33 degrees, Bertie told us the temperature out on the way there was 34-38 degrees. We took it slow. Bertie's tires were about 50 degrees in the garage. When we got to Oakland I measured the ground temperature as 30 degrees, it wasn't looking promising. When it was time to run the temperature had risen to the low 40s. With the California sun out it was actually quite pleasant out, when there was no wind. The rest of the time there was a breeze blowing and it felt freezing. The ground temperature was up to 45 or so when were were running.

As usual the first run group grids in reverse order. The first to grid runs last and the last to grid sweep the course for them. I was actually the first person to grid, so got to run last of all, and I gave Cathy a lift. I promptly spun. The course went off to the left and came back and passed in front of the start again, then went around a sweeper and there was a jink before the next element. It looked almost like a slalom, but was only one cone, so became a jink. Walking the course I thought it might be trouble. It was the jink where I lost it, trying to turn back again, the rear end just carried on going around, and nothing I did could prevent it from doing so. I ended up running backwards quite sedately, but I was headed directly (backwards) towards a light pole. So I thought I should brake at that point. I'm not sure why I hadn't gone "two feet in" (i.e. jamm on the brakes and push in the clutch) before that though. I think I stalled at that point as well, I got going again forward and finished the course quite gingerly. I got a 52s, where I'd been hearing times in the low 40 and high 30s. The official time is 54 sec including 1 cone, but reviewing the video I see I got at least 2 cones.

After the run the front tires were around 80 degrees and the rears around 60 degrees. The front tires are usually warmer, they have a lot more work to do than the back tires. I'd also provoked quite a bit of wheel spin, you can quite effectively heat a tire with wheelspin, but that will only work the front wheels. That is quite a bit colder than the tires on an average run, and with the rear tires being even colder the rears would be losing most grip, hence the spin.

Then it was Cathy's turn to run, she gave me a lift and got a 38.s. As I'd gone out last, Cathy was actually running out of sequence with the rest of the group. She was only having her first run after the rest of the two drivers had had two runs. I should have thought about getting the grid guy to let us run out of sequence, but I suffered brain fade and thought we'd got back into the right order. This mattered for the last runs, the grid was almost empty when I started my last run, and had to go straight back to the line for Cathy to have her last run while there was no one else on grid.

I was more careful on my second run, I didn't spin, that was a relief, but was red flagged immediately after. I never did find out what the red flag was for. By the time I stopped I didn't notice any problems on course. So I finished my run and immediately went for a rerun. I had hopes that the immediate rerun would mean my tires were warmer, but I didn't notice any more grip. In fact I noticed a distinct lack of grip things were definitely slidy on that run and the next. I got a 35.6 on the second run and the announcer announced I was in first place in STF. That's not happened often, as Tyler is usually winning. He'd gotten a 45 on his first run and a DNF on his second. I passed by him on the grid, he seemed more puzzled about his problems than anything. That didn't last long as immediately after that he got a 34.4. My 3rd was 35.5 which was announced as good enough for second in STF.

For my last run, I didn't notice it was particularly slidy, but I may have been concentrating too hard. I was trying not to hold back, and I kept Bertie headed in the right direction and ended up with a 35.2. Cathy unusually peaked on her third run with a 36.9. After her final run I measured the tire temps again as I had been doing, they were still only 80/60. Usually the tires warm up throughout the event. 120-140 for the fronts is pretty typical.

Then it was time to work, I had hoped that the San Jose State students would be there so I could bribe one to do my work for me while I changed the tires, but they didn't turn up. So I did the starter's job and Cathy did timeslips. First up were the Junior Carts. As no other cars are allowed to move while junior carts are running, they run all in one go at the beginning of their run group. There was Rocco who'd been a regular this year, and JD who was in his first event, his father had mentioned this on the local forum and was very proud. Rocco spun a lot, but in the end managed a 38. At the end of the session they ran again, which were officially fun runs in run group three. Rocco still spun a lot, but managed a 34.6, faster than me. I commented to his dad about that.

One important thing being starter is the overlap point. When a car gets to that point you feel its safe to send the next car, confident that the following car won't catch up to the previous one. The overlap point was just about the jink where I spun, so I'd wait until the car had successfully negotiated the jink before sending the next car. There were plenty of car which managed to spin just there.

While starting run group two, I could see run group three gridding up. There were about 9 cars. That made me wonder if I'd have time to change the tires before I was due to work. So after the group was over I headed over to change the tires. I'd actually changed one wheel before the first car was on course, but then I slowed down when a burrito arrived for lunch. So I finally got the new tires on and to grid as the last cars were running their last runs for group 3. I now have annual tech for Bertie (he's inspected once, and then you're trusted to do tech yourself), so at least he didn't need to get teched on the grid, or I might have been a bit late for that.

After lunch and our gate waiver assignment, it was time to run again. Like our last test, I tried to run the same as I had in the first runs, not make any improvements to my driving. The ground temperature was 65 degrees this time, but the air temperatures was still in the low 40s. For my first run I got a 35.2, about the same as my morning time, which may count as slower as it doesn't show the expected improvement. The tires were also 120/80 degrees after that. It was the first runs in the afternoon I was going to pay most attention to, if the tires were equal, I'd expect an incremental improvement over the morning times. Cathy's first run was 36.8, slightly better than her morning time.

My second afternoon run was the best of the day at a 35.0, but I coned. The following runs were slower than my morning runs. Cathy's best was a 36.0. On my third run I went the wrong side of a cone, approaching the finish the last cone before the finish line is another jink. Several times I'd approached that too fast and needed to kill speed to get around it. This time I couldn't see myself getting around it, so just blew on by it. It should have been a DNF, but no one noticed. It was only a fun run, and it wasn't my best time, so it doesn't really matter.

The cold made it difficult to to actually work out how much better (if at all) the new tires are. My feeling is that the new tires were "about 20 degrees better". That is they turned in similar times, while being 20 degrees colder than they old tires. Those 20 degrees are the important 20 degrees where the tires start to work at their best. The tire temperatures seemed quite reasonable for the afternoon runs, and I didn't notice any particular slidyness. Cathy on the other hand said she did feel she was sliding.

The results are out: http://www.sfr-solo.org/solo2/Result...h/round04.html

I came second and Cathy third to Tyler in STF. That's mainly because Jeff the other regular was not there. For the season I'm third and Cathy fourth in STF. Though there are only enough entries that the first two will get trophies, so we don't get any hardware for that. Our attendance does mean that Jeff in second place will get a trophy where he wouldn't otherwise. Talking of trophies, there's a similar situation at Fresno, I was first in Fresno's HS for the year, but I hadn't been to enough events to earn a trophy. I was first because I was the only person to turn up twice in HS.

Overall I was 31st and Cathy 59th out of only 101 entries. The cold seems to have put off a lot of potential entrants. The same event last year attracted 164 entrants. I was 4.1 "seconds behind". Though its difficult to know how the cold affected that. We got the worst of the cold in the first run group so the subsequent runners had an advantage. Similarly I was only 0.8s behind Chris in the Tangerine scream, but he got to run in the last group out. I was a full second behind Brian in the HS Focus, who's probably going to be my main competition for next year. I was pleased at the last event as I got a better time than Brian for the first time ever (however my runs were coned).

There's video, my best morning run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxDec13OakBest.mov
Cathy's best morning run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxDec13OakCBest.mov
My spin: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxDec13OakB1Spin.mov

Here's me on a morning run:



Cathy on an afternoon run:



Cathy approaching the jink:



Edit: Stupid autocorrect, Jink, not Junk.

 

We've decided on our competition schedule for next year.

The main priority is to get to the Nationals, I also wanted to do a couple of National tour events. I had been thinking of San Diego and Packwood, which would be a bit of a hike. But next year the local SCCA is also putting one on in Crows Landing, which will make life easier. There's also the Pro Solo tour I'd like to try. Again, there's a handy event at Crows Landing for that.

For the rest of the autocross season, I wasn't sure if we should focus on the SCCA or the BMW events. I think I'd have a chance of winning the BMW B class, I beat most of the competitors at the TDS event in November. The modifications we're making to Bertie might put him in C or B class depending on which wheels he ran. But given the tours and the Nationals we're already going to miss several BMW events. So we're going to focus on the SCCA, with a few BMW events. If we can make 3 BMW events, we can do the top driver shootout as well.

Hopefully there's also an "Evolution" school sometime next year. We were due to do that this year, but it was cancelled. We'll also be doing a few track days as well. We're taking Bertie to MINI Thunder in February, and may be splitting the other events, I'll drive Bertie and Cathy drive Algy. I want to give Bertie a try on track, and Cathy is more comfortable in the faster car.

The plan looks like this:

Jan
18 BMW Rewind at Marina
Feb
9 SCCA Round 1 at Oakland
(16 Mini Thunder (missing rd 2) at Thunderhill)
(23 Laguna with Hooked on Driving)
Mar
2 SCCA Round 3 at Marina
16 SCCA Round 4 at Oakland
April
5/6 SCCA National tour at San Diego
13 SCCA Round 5 at Oakland
(24 Sonoma with Hooked on Driving)
27 SCCA Round 6 at Oakland
May
18 SCCA Round 7 at Oakland
24 BMW Round 2 at Marina
June
7/8 National Pro Solo at Crows Landing (maybe)
14/15 SCCA rd 8 and National tour at Crows Landing
July
5 BMW Round 4 at Marina
13 SCCA Round 9 at Oakland
27 SCCA Round 10 at Oakland
August
3 SCCA Round 11 at Crows landing (maybe)
9 BMW Round 5 at Marina
Sept
2-5 Solo Nationals at Lincoln, NE
Nov
1 BMW Top Driver Shoot Out at Marina

The January BMW rewind event is a rerun of one of the courses they put on this year. I'm thinking of taking Algy as this is a fun run only. With the BMW club, Algy has the same number of classification points as Bertie will after the modifications. So I've been wondering how they compare, and I'm keen to give Algy a go.

There should also be the SCCA slush season October-December. We should also have 2-3 more track days later in the year. We're not sure we'll get to do the pro Solo at Crows Landing, we'll decide later. We may skip the round 11 at Crows Landing, that would be the 2 events we can drop with round 2 (when we're at MINI Thunder).

 

Yesterday was the BMW club's "Course Rewind" event at Marina airport. This was due to happen two weeks ago, but the FAA took a long while about approving the permit. They're also threatening that it won't be approved next year, which has been causing considerable consternation with the local autocross community. Marina is heavily used by many of the local car clubs. You can probably find an event there every weekend day from March through November.

This is a fun run event where they replay one of the courses from last year. You can see the course options in this thread: http://ggcbmwcca.org/forums/topic/20...ewind-options/ Those signing up were given a vote as to which course to run, I voted for the TDS afternoon course which was my best performance last year. The vote was heavily in favor of the August course, which we managed to miss because of the clashing Crows Landing event. Being a fun run, timing was going to be set up and running, but no one would be taking note of the results (except the participants). Being non competitive, I decided to have a go in Algy (a competitive event would void the warranty). This would also be our warm up event for the SCCA season, which starts next weekend.

I was interested to see what he difference was between Algy and Bertie was, in the BMW classification system Algy only gets a few more points even though he has almost twice the horsepower. Last year Bertie was classified with 36 points and Algy with 41 points, which should give a half second difference over a 60 second course. This year with the modifications we're making to Bertie he'll have about 40 points, thus be pretty equal at least according the classification system.

The obvious difference between the cars is the horse power, though on an autocross course that's not necessarily a big help. On track the power is a big help, it helps a lot on the straights. On an autocross course there aren't many straights, if the front wheels are trying to steer, they can't handle so much power. In first and second gear we can spin the wheels even in Bertie in a corner, so it wasn't obvious how much help it would be. The other main difference is the tires, we used Algy's track wheels. The tires are a bit bigger diameter, which helps stretch the gearing for use on track. At autocross it'd mean you could get going quite a bit faster before you have to change up, if you ever found a situation where you could use some of the power. The tires were also Bridgestone RE-11A, which so far I've not been impressed with on the track, they seem a couple of seconds slower than the RE-11 we used to use (and which we used for autocross last year).

I had been wondering if a change in tire pressure would help. The RE-11A seemed to need a quite high pressure, around 50PSI hot, this produced relatively even temperatures on the track. But it was a lot higher than I used to run the older RE-11 tires. I'd been thinking I needed to experiment with tire pressures. I also needed to come up with some pressures to use for the autocross. I did the usual thing and measured their temperature after driving around on the street. That suggested I needed really high pressures, possibly higher than the max pressure for the tire. So I compromised on 48PSI expecting them to warm up some, and was planning on letting about 5PSI out for later runs to see if that made a difference.

This is the course, with some of my annotations:



There wasn't any obvious particularly fast line for this course, its almost all sweeping corners. I thought the most important bits (longest straights) were probably A-B and E-on, which would mean paying attention to setting yourself up right at A and E. But al the bits B-C and D-E might also count as "straight", so B and D might also be important. I decided to aim for a late apex at A, take an early apex approaching B, brake and then take a late apex leaving B. A early apex at C might also work, before setting yourself up for the slalom. I was going to treat D similar to B. E depended on ow straight you could make D-E, whether you took and early or late apex to set yourself up for the final straight.

When we got there we found the shaded area was no longer available, but the grey shaded are was available. It seems this is how the August course was as well. That changed my approach to the last conner. I had been considering a late apex the running down to the sideline to the finish. This needed a much earlier apex to straighten out the last kink.

The weather forecast was promising mid 40s at the start warming to mid 50s at midday. But on the way there the frost warning dinged (at 37F), and approaching the site the temperature was down to 34F at times. I was hoping we weren't going to have a repeat of our last event where frozen rear tires made life very difficult. Once we arrived, I found I was in the first run group and Cathy was in the third. I was to work the second run group and had been assigned the announcer's job after my attempt at last year's fun run. I can't say this thrilled me, its difficult to announce when you have zero information from of you to talk about. Cathy would be working the first run group, where she was to be the starter. As the club's classification system was not yet working, they hadn't been able to assign us to the same run group. For the regular season we should get back to running and working in the same groups.

There was a slight hitch getting Algy ready. I'd lost the screw to attach the camera to the interior camera mount. The nut on the mount had fallen off and got lost a couple of weeks ago, and I forgot to do anything about it. When I was fetching the mount I heard something fall off, but I didn't think of the screw at the time. So I borrowed the nut and screw from part of the external mount. The left external camera couldn't then be made level, but I managed to compensate for that in post production. I've since discovered a source for the nuts that the GoPro mounts use, they're a 5mmx.8 "cap nut" and are available in the specialty fastener box at Home Depot. (UPC 30699 71558 (9), 74¢ for 2.) I've got a few spare in the camera gear now. Also adding to the drama was the camera batteries didn't seem to charge fully, and were showing mostly empty when I turned them on. I turned the cameras off between runs to cope with that.

For my first run I went out and got a 46.4, I have no idea how good that was. It later occurred to me that I should have looked at the times for August to get some idea of hat times to expect. That's not a perfect gauge as the local conditions, particularly temperature would change how fast the course was. I had a lot of trouble using the power (pretty much as expected) and hardly seemed to be on the throttle at all. The back end also felt particularly lively, which I put down to cold tires. When I measured the tires after the run the fronts were at a reasonable (though lowish) temperature, the rears were really cold still (about 50F). I then tried desperately to get some heat in them. About the only thing I could think of was to drag the parking brake on the way to the start. I'm not sure that was effective.

Its uncertain what my second run time was, I was given a 73.6 which is obviously a mistake, I thought someone from the trailer called 42.7 to me as I passed, but I'm pretty sure that isn't right either. The video suggests about 44.5. My next three runs I tried to get the power down, to not much effect, trying to use more throttle or for one run, trying to drive straighter lines (later apexes). The results were pretty similar 44.5, 44.5, 44.7 (straighter didn't seem to work). So next I thought as I couldn't get the power down, maybe I should let the computer help me. I tried turning the traction control back on, into the intermediate "DTC" mode. For that run I could floor the throttle mid corner and not get wheel spin. It did feel like the throttle was dead at times though, the result was actually (slightly) faster 44.3, I turned the traction control off again for the next runs. The rear tires were staying resolutely colder than I'd want them to be.

I wasn't sure how many runs were left, so I decided to try the tire pressures, I let 5PSI out of each tire. I wasn't sure if it was going to help. If it seemed to make things much worse I was going to have to find some time to pump them back up before Cathy ran. I'd already burnt out one tire pump the night before pumping the tires up. The result was just about the same, 44.2, so I declared the tire pressures a wash. Either it made no difference, or they were now too low, where they were too high before. Which ever it was, I could live with them. The tires were a bit noisier now, and there was one unexpected consequence, the rear tires warmed up about 10 degrees. I'm not too sure as my IR pyrometer seemed to be going wrong. Even a change of battery didn't seem to help. I was using my probe pyrometer to measure surface temperatures instead.

The tires heating up with a lower pressure makes sense. That's why you're warned about low tire pressures, the extra flexing caused by the low pressure heats the tire up, in extreme cases, it can lead to tire failure. (Like with the Ford Explorer). This may be a handy technique if we ever need heat in the rear tires again.

My last two runs (we had 9 runs in total) were a 44.2(00) and a 44.3. So I think 44.2 is about as fast I could manage the course in Algy on those tires.

Then it was lunch. I also borrowed a cable to charge some of the camera batteries, so Cathy would have them working. After lunch it was time for me to work, as expected announcing was difficult with no information about the drivers or cars. As a fun run, numbers weren't a necessity and most people didn't have them. There was also no list of drivers or cars running. To fill in the commentary, I named parts of the course (as marked on the map), starting out going around the "roundabout", through the slalom and "Esses" around the "hairpin" into the final corner or complex followed by the "jink".

Next it was Cathy's turn to drive. We decided to not worry about the cameras and just left them running. The right camera ran all the way through, but the left camera ran out of battery during her 6th run. For her first run, she got a 49.6, obviously a lot of room for improvement. I offered to ride with her for her second run. I switched the lap timer to display throttle position, and tried to note how she was driving. She got a 49.2. I noted that she had her foot down most of the way from A to B, but for most of the rest of the course she was largely off the throttle. My comment was more throttle would help, and I pointed out some of the lines I was trying to take. Her next run was 47.2. I put the improvement down to my coaching, she said it was the lack of ballast.

Her next 4 runs showed incremental improvements, down to 46.2. I looked at the data which compared it to my best run. That showed that most of the time was being lost in the segment B-C. So I suggested the late apex at B and at C. Then for her 8th run, she got a 45.2, she was very happy with that, it turned out to be her best run. There was not much more obvious that the data showed for an improvement, and she slipped back slightly for her last run.

Now the question is how well did we do? It difficult to to tell as you don't know how fast the rest of the participants were going, or how hard they were trying. Comparing my results to a couple of the fastest drivers I do know times for, my performance wasn't up to my form from the end of last year. My performance might have been enough to beat my time in Bertie back at the SCCA's round 7, when we tested Bertie against Tristan. Looking at the August results when the course was run before, my time would have been good enough for 3rd place in class C, or 9th place in class B. (And Algy would be in the B class.) Cathy's would have been good enough for 4th in C, or 12th in B. So the performance was not too good, compared to our past performances, and I suspect the tires are just not that good. Algy is not that much faster than Bertie at Autocross.


I have video of course. My best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxBMWFunJan14Best.mov

Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxBMWFunJan14CBest.mov




[Thanks to Mark Mervich for this picture.]

 

Today was soggy.

It was also round one of the SCCA's championship at Oakland Coliseum (which is traditionally called "Boondoggle".) The original plan was to do some tire testing. We've got new 16"x7" wheels with Dunlop ZII tires in 225/45-16, I wanted to test them against the BFG Rivals (in an inch smaller size) we were running for the slush season last year. When it was obvious that it was going to be wet today, we abandoned that plan. If there is any dampness around it will invalidate any tire testing we could do. The next question was which tires should we run. If it was wet I'd press Algy's into service, he runs Continental DW tires, which people use as dedicated rain tires. If it were merely damp, I'd try running the ZII. The weather forecast is never very certain about this sort of thing, so I fitted Algy's tires and took along the ZII in the back. If it looked not too wet I could change the tires before we started. I set the DW tire pressures a little low in the hope that that would let them heat up a bit.

At home in the morning it was dry, the weather report here says it hasn't rained since 10am yesterday. Looking at the weather radar it showed big storms dumping on the North bay, I saw a weather report yesterday which said they'd had 2.6" up there, but the weather radar showed the rain stopping, just around Oakland. Oakland may or may not have been dumped on. Once we got to Oakland, it was clearly wet, it was definitely time for the DW tires.

We entered in H Street (HS). Looking around the grid there were several other HS cars. There was Brian in the Focus (on ZII tires), who was my main target for this year. The Red MINI we saw occasionally last year also put in an appearance (on DW tires), it was actually showing it was entered in the Ladies class (HSL). Cathy had decided to enter in the open class because there was no obvious competition in the ladies class. If we'd have know there was going to be some competition, she may have entered in Ladies instead. Last year the Red MINI had the wife in Novice and two very experienced guys who entered in the indexed class. Indexed was going to run in the afternoon. There was also an old guy in a Mazda 3 I hadn't seen before, he said he'd been around for years. Unfortunately I'd heard from Rob and he was having to withdraw from Autocross on health grounds, so wasn't there.

After a soggy course walk, it was time to run and it was still wet. There was a lake just next to the start, I guessed the start had been moved over 6ft so it wasn't in the lake. Also at several places around the course there was standing water, or rivers running across the course. It was going to be tricky. Cathy went out first and I got a lift. We decided to leave the stability control on in its intermediate "DTC" mode. Even taking it easy, I could feel the car sliding all over the place, she ended up with a 48.8. Then I went out and gave Cathy a lift. It was slippery and treacherous, and even with the stability control helping, the car felt very twitchy, I managed a 45.7. On Cathy's second run she went out and got a 44.4, and was very pleased to best my time, so I got a 43.6 to answer that. Those turned out to be our fastest times, whether the rain worsened, or we just didn't do as well is unclear.

I had a quick look at the data and saw that Cathy was losing time just after the first corner. There was a "slalomish" bit there. It was only 3 cones, so more of a jink, but there were five pointer cones each drawing attention to those cones. The data showed I was gaining 1.5 seconds through there and on the following straight. I told Cathy this and she tried to attack the slalom even harder, but found she had to back off, and couldn't make up the time. Later analysis of the data showed that I took a slower entry to the slalom, which enabled me to keep my foot down longer, Cathy entered faster and had to back off, thus slowing her all the way to the next corner. Which was worth those 1.5s Cathy's third run was red flagged when a Corvette took out all the cones in the "showcase" corner. (The one nearest the spectators, in the middle of the deepest lake.) It took three of the cones with it, and the workers were still trying to put the course back together when she came along. She got a rerun. Her last two runs were 45.3s, my third run was another 43.6. For my last run I decided to try it without the stability control on at all. Things got very hairy, I did manage to keep it pointed forwards, but ended up with a 44.2. I checked the tire temperatures several times, they never got much above 60°F.

After our runs, it was our time to work. I chose the gate and Cathy did timeslips. We both got even wetter and started to freeze. The session took quite a while due to technical difficulties, we were glad when it was over. Among other technical difficulties were the PA never seemed to work, so I had very little idea of how the other drivers were doing. I think I saw Brian got a 42.5, but I'll have to check the results to see how everyone else did. When we were working, it cleared up and got worse a couple of times, so the course could quite easily have been getting faster and slower during the session. That sort of thing may explain our unusual results.

I have video of course. My best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxFeb14OakBest.mov
Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxFeb14OakCBest.mov


Here's me crossing the start line, water splashing all over. You can see the pointer cones of the "slalomish" bit to the right, and the actual cone just in front of the mirror.

 

that is a LOT of water - you're lucky to get out there so early though! How many events are u planning to hit this year? Very interested to hear how the tire testing goes for the next time.

 

The plan is for 9 or 10 rounds of the SCCA championship, including the Crows Landing tour. Then the slush season, 4 or 5 events. 3 BMW events and the TDS. The San Diego tour, Crows Landing pro and Nationals.

There are plenty of other events around if I feel like more practice. We could get to some Sacramento (in Stockton) or Fresno chapter events (though Fresno have lost Castle, where I went last year). Not to mention UFO, AAS or the Porsche, Audi or Lotus clubs.

 

sweet. be sure to let us know how the tire comparo goes

 

The results are out, a little later than normal thanks to a web master retiring and a new system not quite in place. These ones are only preliminary: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...kE&usp=sharing

I was quite prepared to discount the results given the conditions, we may have had the worse of it and it cleared up quite a bit later. Though the guy running later claim their conditions were also tricky. But we actually did pretty well.

In HS I actually beat Brian which is a surprise. My best result against Brian has been 0.3s behind him, though I've been catching up to him. I was 1.1 sec ahead of Brian, which is quite a bit ahead of projections. Cathy very nearly beat him, only 0.066 behind him. Maybe I do well in the rain, maybe we had a better setup (the tires worked pretty well). On the other hand, I came second in HS because Steve, the guy in the Mazda 3 came 1.4 seconds in front of me. That's the first time he's beaten me in a car. He's been in supposedly faster cars and I beat him, he needed a Kart (KM) to beat me, that has a 20% better index, and one time I even beat him in that. Cathy came 4th (of 4), but did beat Michelle in the red MINI (who was the only entry in the Ladies class).

Overall (indexed) I was 41st and Cathy was 61st of 136. I was 6.1 "seconds behind", which is a bit worse that I have been doing. But Mark in first place was over a second clear at the top. I was only 3.9 seconds behind the guy in second place.

The results also differ from my timeslips. My third run is listed as 43.427 rather than 43.667. That would make my third my best run, rather than my second. Looking over the results I think the conditions got worse about the third run and then cleared up a bit. In our run group (all the Street classes), most people (10) got their best run second, followed by their fourth run (where 9 got best times). The third run got less best times (6 of them). The averages of everyones times are also best in the 2nd runs, followed by the fourth runs.

 

Today was round three of the SCCA's championship series at Marina airport. (We missed round two as we were at MINI Thunder.) Apart from competing, we also wanted to test some tires, and try out the new suspension.

For the tires we wanted to test the tires we were running in the slush season (BFG Rivals in 225/45-15) vs some new ones (Dunlop ZII in 225/45-16). As always with new tires I'd been trying to find some good pressures for them. I'd found some good pressures at the track day last weekend, but those were hot pressures, I didn't know what cold pressures I needed to set so the tires would warm up to the right pressure. So I set the pressures at the hot pressures and intended to monitor the tire pressures and bleed off air to keep the working pressure right.

The tire test had been rained off at the previous event, so I'd been checking the forecast. It had been changing between dry and possibility of showers, but the day before the event the threatened rain had moved off to the south and it was expected to be dry. Then this morning the weather report was showing showers to the North of Marina and the chance of showers in the afternoon had gone up. We were driving through heavy showers on the way to Marina, it wasn't looking good.

The new suspension included new shock absorbers and a new rear sway bar. At our tack day last weekend I'd adjusted the rear sway bar progressively stiffer in the hope of finding some oversteer. I hadn't found any, so I set it to its stiffest setting, I was a little worried that things might get a bit lively.

The plan for the day was to run as normal in the morning, we were in the third run group, just before lunch, so we would work the first run group. At lunch we'd signed up for gate waiver duty as an extra work assignment, then I'd swap the tires during run group 4 and run again on the other tires in run group 5. The San Jose state students were there and could be bribed to do your work assignment for you, I hoped to get them to work lunch for me, so we could do the test in run group 4 instead. But the students didn't want to work over lunch so it was back to the original plan.

For run group 1 I worked tech and Cathy worked the gate. I occasionally felt spots of drizzle but I don't think it actually rained. Run group 1 went remarkably quickly, it almost finished before I finished teching run group 2. Run 2 included the new class "Classic American Muscle" (CAM), so there were some old muscle cars. These actually had throttle return springs to check, this is one thing on the tech list and most modern cars don't have one. Also during run group 1, I noticed Chris in the Tangerine Scream (my nemesis from last year), he got a 42.3. He's been over a second ahead of me at recent events, so I was thinking a 43.3 would be a good run.

When run group 3 finally arrived, it was definitely drizzling. There windward side of the car was definitely wet, but it didn't look like it was wetting the ground. I decided to run first, even though it was Cathy's turn, I wanted to get an idea of how Bertie would behave with the new sway bar setting. So I went out and gave Cathy a lift. Bertie was definitely very lively. There was certainly some oversteer, but it didn't seem to be unmanageable. I got a 44.1 which seemed like a good start, but with a cone. When it was Cathy's turn, I got a lift and she came in with a 46.0.

The rest of the rungroup went quickly and we didn't have much time to think between runs. Despite increasing drizzle, my times came down steadily and I ended up with a 42.4, which provoked a bit whoop! I think that may be good enough to put me ahead of Chris when the index is taken into a account. For the last runs the drizzle was heavy enough I turned on the windscreen wipers, so we joke that the wipers caused our times to get better. I was monitoring the tire pressures and bleeding off the air. I also took tire temperatures, and the temperatures showed the pressures were pretty good. The tires seemed to work well, despite never getting very warm. They were 75-85°F. Cathy was a little more variable, and ended with a 44.2.

I talked to Brian in the Focus who was my target for the year. He seemed displeased with his performance, indeed he seemed displeased with his performance all year. He only managed a 43.8 so it looks like I was going to win the class.

The we worked the gate at lunch and then swapped the tires over. Again the run group went quickly, so I was finishing up swapping the tires as the last stragglers from run group 4 were running. As we were getting ready to run, it started drizzling a bit again, though not as hard as it had in run group 3. I went out trying to run like I did for my last run, I came in 0.014s ahead. After that I wasn't too worried about my performance, which is good as my driving went to hell, I made lots of mistakes and never came close to that. Cathy went out and got a 43.6, which is pretty much on the improving trend she'd been on with the previous runs.

As we were leaving I noticed there was a MINI Roadster running, I'd noticed it drive in earlier. I thought that might be one of the denizens of NAM (Grantsfo), so I went to say hi. It was indeed Grant.

The results of the tire test are inconclusive, not least because of the changing conditions. The ZIIs are at least as good as the Rivals, if not slightly better. The ZIIs seem to work very well in slightly damp conditions. The other variable is the surface, Marina is a concrete surface and conventional wisdom is the Rivals don't like concrete. The national championships are run on concrete and people were disappointed with their new Rivals performance. I think I may be running the ZIIs in future. This will simplify matters as the 15" wheels I have are not quite legal for stock, they have 2mm too much offset (in other words they stick out 2mm too much).

Also we did at least find some oversteer. I think we'll get used to this for a few events, which will take us to the San Diego tour, before I try to work out if we need more or less of it.

The results are already out, at least preliminary ones: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...=sharing#gid=2 I did win the class ahead of Brian, Cathy was third. There was another competitor I hadn't noticed in a Honda Prelude rounding out the class.

Overall I came 35th and Cathy 71st out of 123. I was indeed ahead of Chris. I was 4.0 "seconds behind", that's not a bad result, not stunning, but I can blame the changing conditions. We seemed to get the worst of the rain, but its not clear if there was enough rain to affect the results.

They haven't published the points total for the various classes yet, but if they did I think it would show Brian is in the lead, because he'd done one more event than we have. Once we take a "drop" into account (for every 4 events, you drop you worst result), we should be even with one first and one second each.

I have video of course. My best scoring run (on ZII tires): http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxMar14MaBest.mov

Cathy's best scoring run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxMar14MaCBest.mov

Here's me cocking a wheel at the first corner on the Rivals. One guy taking pictures was ratehr amused by the behaviour in the slalom of lifting alternate rear tires.




And Cathy approaching the first slalom.

 

Yesterday was round 4 of the SCCA's season at the Oakland Coliseum. This was going to be the first event for a while (since slush 3) where the weather was going to cooperate. We'd had cold, wet and damp events since then. The weather forecast was resolutely dry, 0% chance of rain and mid 70s. (The weather was good even by Californian winter standards.) Looking at the results for those events, I'd noticed I hadn't done particularly well (nor particularly badly) in general, but I had gained a second or two on several individuals. In HS I'd been ahead of Brian in the Focus. In STF, I was almost catching Tyler (0.6sec behind in the wet), where I'd previously been seconds behind. At the last event I almost caught Chris in the Tangerine scream, I did on index. So I was wondering was I doing well, or these individuals doing badly, or did the conditions complicate matters.

I also volunteered to be junior chair in training. I wasn't quite sure what an event chair did, I don't think most competitors who've never done it do. Mostly it seemed to be doing, or arranging to be done, everything no one else had done and to make the event run smoothly. That basically turned out to be what the job was. Ahead of time, the only other person to volunteer for chair was Jourdan, who I'd been hoping to beat at my first few events when we were both Still novices. He'd only been junior chair at one previous event, so not very experienced. He turned out to have an ulterior motive for this, he wanted to design a course. He reasoned that no one would let him design a course, unless he himself was making that decision. One of the first things a chair has to do is arrange for a course designer.

I also had the idea that as our next event will be the National tour event in San Diego, we should practice running like we were at the tour. That would mean no giving each other lifts, and the lowest number (i.e. me with 94) runs first.

On the morning of the event Tyler showed up as the co-chair, he's only chaired a couple of events himself. For me the morning started early, I wanted to be at the site for 7am (yawn!). I was a little late setting out and had to stop for gas, so I arrived at 7:10, by which time setup was already in full swing. I was told the first thing a chair needs to do was get all the crap out of the trailer (there's a lot of equipment which rides in the trailer, but the trailer needs to be largely empty to serve as the nervecentre of the operation. Then arrange for the grid to be setup and finally ride around with the course designer dropping off cones, then go around again and actually place the cones.

Things seemed to be in hand, so not much for me to do immediately, but when registration was setup, there didn't seem to be anyone to run one of the reg computers. Isaac, the solo chief was there running one of them, so in my role of doing everything no one else is doing, I sat down at the other machine to do reg. I've never done reg before, and I missed the class they ran on how to use it, so Isaac gave me a quick demonstration. I think I mainly managed to make it work, my first practice run was to register myself, and that seemed to be in the system later. I may have clicked on a few wrong buttons, and there's a big gotcha which had been discussed on the forums. There's a radio button for "function" which has the choices "Event Admin" and "I'm just practicing" (or something like that). Event admin doesn't sound like the right thing, but it is and the other choice causes nothing to happen. That occasionally seemed to default to the wrong thing. Also when I went to look up people I'd previously registered, I couldn't find them. Once Issac could find the record on his machine, but I couldn't, not sure what happened there. Issac took to registering newbies with temporary memberships, and I registered existing members for run group 1. Only people in run group 1 should register before run group 1 starts, this message does not seem to have made it to lots of the members. When no one in line said they were for run group 1, I went to walk to course.

The course initially didn't look challenging, it looked like a fast horsepower course, not my favorite but made me glad I'd chosen the tires I had which have a larger diameter so we don't run out of revs so fast. The course started off with a quick left-right and off down a long, long straight. Then there was a kink, and a short bit of straight, before a tight corner and it went off all the way across the back of the lot, it looked like it was all one long, long slalom. It wasn't immediately obvious what the best way to approach the kink was. Once you got to the far corner it became obvious that it wasn't one long slalom. The first few cones were offset to open it up, making it practically a straight, at least in the MINI. The second half was a slalom, and a very tight slalom at that. The first two cones were just over 60ft apart, that makes for a challenging slalom in a MINI even when you're entering it at low speed. For this slalom you're entering it after travelled half way across the lot on a "straight". That was going to make a tricky transition to judge you braking to enter the slalom fast enough that you could just make it through, not too slow and lose time. The slalom then added a couple of yards for each successive cone, the last two cones were getting to the point where the MINI might not notice. The rest of the course included a decreasing radius corner in a box a couple of jinks and a finish line around a corner which would encourage people to lose control as they crossed the line.

After the drivers meeting I checked off the workers for their assignments. This may seem like a simple job, but it isn't always. If the run group which is currently working is small, you end up with a shortage of workers. You have to make sure certain key positions are filled. There had to be someone working the gate, if necessary someone would be pulled off another assignment and sent to the gate. I assume the safety steward had to be filled, but that didn't seem to be a problem. For some run groups, the sign up was very sparse, so the workers were rearranged. I assigned more people to where the cones were being hit, and let the other stations be understaffed. The kink seemed to be causing a lot of cones. I did worker sign off for all three morning run groups. The worker who'd signed up for starter of the first run group didn't turn up, so Jourdan did the starter's job, later Tyler took over. The worker it seemed had managed to sign up for the wrong run group, so when he turned up later the mystery was solved and I sent him to where he was needed. This seemed to be a common occurrence.

During the first run group there didn't seem to be much to do, so I prepared the car. I didn't know how much time I'd have to do that later. Sometime later I decided to register Cathy who hadn't arrived yet. As chair I could just sit down at the spare machine and put in her registration. At some point Isaac mentioned that chairs run for free. I'm not sure if I payed when I registered myself or not, I did pay for Cathy. Cathy arrived near the end of the second run group and brought over some lunch from the truck. Looking at some of the times going by, I thought 43s would be a good time, 42s a very good time.

During the third run group, we didn't have a cone counter in the trailer so I jumped in and did that. I'd never done the job before, so I had another quick learning experience. I'd never signed up for it before as I didn't know how to do it previously, now I've done it, I don't think I'll sign up for it again, it may be the most stressful job I've done. This run group was particularly thin on workers, so I'd done a lot of rearranging of assignments and had to send out inexperienced people to man a station all by themselves. So the radio operators didn't necessarily know what they were doing. The software for cone counting makes it very obvious what the car number is (in 36 point type), but not the car type/colour (in 9 point type). So as cone counter the ideal cone announcement would be "Station X, Car Y <class>, +Z cone(s)". Bad would be "the grey Posrche got a cone", after some requests for restatement I settled for "Y, Z cone". But couple that with radios of varying clarity, and a noisy environment, the cars were starting in my right ear, the announcer was announcing in left ear, it was quite trying. Not to mention that if you get this job wrong, you could spoil someone's day. I hope I didn't mess up.

During lunch I made sure to walk the course again. At the kink I decided to try an early apex on the first cone and "dribble" around the kink, sacrificing exit speed for time, the following straight wasn't very long. I still wasn't too sure what line to take around the two 180s.

We were in the first run group after lunch. Per my plan I ran solo for once, not giving Cathy a lift. This was strangely different from the normal first run. I'm not sure if I was just tired from being co-chair or if it was the lack of the audience, I just wasn't very aggressive. At several places I braked way to early, and I was hesitant at the kinks. I got a 44.1, which didn't seem like a good time, then Brian in the Focus got a 43.x, not a good start. I'll normally pick up half a second on my second run, probably mostly due to weight, and then not gain much time. I was going to have to come up with a better "first" run the second time to have a hope of beating Brian. Cathy's first run was a 46.2, she did not get on well with the course.

For my second run, I tried to put in the aggression I should have had in the first run, it was a lot better, 43.4. However Brian's second run was even better 42.x and Cathy was stuck on 46s, 0.3s worse, and picking up a very rare cone. She was complaining that she wasn't getting the course. I compared her data to mine. It was obvious that she was getting a much worse launch off the first corner, wasn't getting through the kink so fast and was slower in the slalom. It wasn't totally obvious where she was losing time, the lap timer had a glitch so it wasn't displaying the track map, I had to guess where on course from just looking at the data plots. I suggested my line at the kink, aim for the first cone, and dribble through it.

For my third run I tried even harder, but the result was only 0.1s better and I got a cone. Brian continued to extend his lead. My coaching seemed to help Cathy, she got a 44.8. For my last run I tried even harder, I messed up in several places, I found myself digging myself out of a hole in a couple of places, too close to the cone in front of me, losing time getting around it. I reckon I lost a second with these mistakes, so it was very annoying that the run turned out to be as fast as my second run (give or take a 10th). Without the mistakes, it might have been close to Brian's time. I again compared my data to Cathy's, she was still losing time running slower down the first straight. I suggested her best option was to try to get the best launch off the first corner. She protested she was already trying to launch from the line.

The previous week I'd been coaching on how to launch the car, as in a drag race start, get going fastest in a straight line. This is sometimes necessary at SCCA, but the rules encourage a right angle start, and quite often necessary at the BMW club. It'll be necessary when we do the "Pro Solo" national event later in the year. However as the start lead straight into the left-right corners before the straight, I hadn't thought it was necessary to concentrate on speed off the line. It was necessary to concentrate on speed off the first corner. Cathy's data showed a slower start than me, then a dip in speed, then slower down the straight. My data showed a strong start, still accelerating around the first corner and a good launch down the straight. I'd been delaying changing up from first till after the corner to get a good launch. I thought she might be concentrating too hard on the launch from the line, so encouraged her think about sacrificing the launch off the line for corner exit speed. She dropped another half second with a 44.2. The data showed she never did manage the better first corner launch, but ended up faster down the straight (not sure how that worked), faster through the kink and slalom and faster around the final corner.

For her last run I staked out the finish line to get some pictures. I saw a lot of cars doing their final runs, and the finish was causing them lots of problems. We'd regularly been seeing people take the finish backward. Now I could see even if they didn't make it backwards, taking it too hot and mowing down the cones at the right of the exit box was a popular line. 3, 4 or even 5 cones could be taken out with a too wide a line there. One Corvette (which was making worse times than we were) mowed down three cones with a too happy tail, then overcorrected and ran over a couple more forwards, then drove off course for a DNF.

After my runs, I went back to chairing. My regular work assignment would be during run group 5. I should have been doing tech. The head of tech had been trying to set it up so we'd regularly take tech, so he'd know all the groups were covered ahead of time. No one else had signed up for tech, so I took the assignment, I'd already said I'd take it if there was no one else around. The group I teched included all the novices running in run group 6, so of course no one had annual tech (annual tech makes the tech job much easier). Even the non novices didn't have annual tech. Run group 5 took a long time to get through, about 1.5 hours, as had our run group, and I needed most of that time to tech all the cars on grid. It was 5pm before the last run group started. Luckily with the time change sunset wasn't until 7:17.

I felt worn out after working the whole day, and running, and teching the large group, so after making sure there were enough workers to cover everything, I just had a rest and checked out the live timing. The new system in use has a page you can connect to if you know the magic address. I was indeed second to Brian and Cathy 3rd in HS. Before rg6 I was 49th out of 145 overall by index. I was 4.5 "seconds behind". Tyler was running in the last group, his results were several seconds ahead of mine, so it looks like the last few events may have been unusual, and the results are back to their usual pattern. The full results aren't out yet, so I can't check exactly how I was doing.

After run group 6 we helped pack up and then head off to find something to eat. It was about 7pm by this time, and the sun had set by the time we got to the restaurant. Chairing an event is a very tiring business. I'll probably volunteer for an event later in the year, but first I'll give it some time so I can forget how much work it is. I'm not sure if I want to chair when I'm running in the afternoon so Cathy can join me later like today, or in the morning, so I'm not so tired when its my time to run.

I have video, my best (2nd) run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxMar14OakBest.mov
Cathy's best run: http://btwyx.com/Movies/AxMar14OakCBest.mov

Here's me at final 180:




Cathy around the first corner:

 

The preliminary results are out: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1041738008

I also analysed the video of my 4th run vs my 2nd. It was only the first kink where I really messed up, I braked maybe a little too late, and approached at too shallow an angle. I ran right up against the second cone (the point of the kink), I actually brushed it and I can see it move and almost ran over the exit cone, I think I moved it as well. At entry to the kink I was 0.2s up on exit 0.7 behind, so I reckon I lost 0.9 sec there. I ended up 0.017s behind, so overall I think the mistake was worth 0.88s. That raises a lot of what might have beens.

With the mistake my results were much the same as recent events, pretty good, but not stunning. Without the mistake, it might have been my best ever performance.

In HS I came 2nd and Cathy 3rd out of 5. Brian was 0.983s in front of me, so the mistake didn't change that, but it would have been so close. It looks like Brian was down on recent form, and has regained his former glory. This is going to be a good battle for the rest of the season.

Overall I was 53rd and Cathy 71st out of 169. I might have been 32nd without the mistake. I'm 4.5 seconds behind (but it could have been 3.2s.)

I was misremembering Tyler's time. He was only a second in front of me, I did slightly better compared to Tyler than I did at the last event. Without the mistake, I would very nearly have caught him.

Chris was not at this event, so I can't make a comparison there.

 

We're all packed and ready for this weekend, the San Diego tour event. This will be our first national event. Its a 500 mile drive from here, so we're driving on the regular tires (which will also be rain tires) and packing the wheels and tools, as well as the usual crap, and a long weekend's worth of luggage (all for two people). Its a tight fit in the MINI.

 

May the force be with you!

Cheers,

Charlie