Having never been there, one thing I can say is that you must see the site/course in person to fully understand the scope of what the course will require regarding a line. Also, pacing a course on your walks is huge. I know from my own experience, for example, that any slalom 30 paces or longer is flat-out fast. So, one has to see what precedes or follows that. Or, how far is it from one offset to another element?

Wait until you get there and don't mind f*%k yourself.

 

Give 'em hell!

 

thanks for the pro tips! can't wait!

 

well, ended up 12th out of 18 here. hooray for the big class again!

i was actually relatively happy with my run on the west course, i felt pretty good about it aside from being 3s off pace. i shouldn't be satisfied with that though. i was about 4s off pace on the east course, which is terrible as well. turns out everyone from my region struggled with the east side - we apparently don't have a lot of experience with the high speed & sweepy stuff. lot of work to be done. any tips are always appreciated.

i'm still shooting for winning in 5 (now 4) years. hopefully it's possible. i'm 2s/side out of trophying, 3.5s/side out of winning. i'd like to trophy next year but asking for 2s improvement is a lot. easier to pick up time early on with "low hanging fruit" of improvement though. we'll see. i'm at ~23 events & ~170 runs so far this year, with about ~10 events & 50-60 runs to go to finish off the year. I'd like to keep this pace up but we'll see if I can, I may have to back off to 20-25/yr, you never know.

 

Haven't been updating the thread too much, mainly been sticking to the blog but I thought I'd update this bit at least:

Received some awards for some of the end of the year stuff our region does





17th in index overall, most improved of the year, and class champion.

who knows what will happen with overall index, since most classes except HS got a huge drop in index. still a lot of improvement to be had, but not sure that I can make the leap required for most improved again. Class champion I'm hoping for, but who knows if any fast driven Fiesta STs come to play. I'd welcome the competition though

 

 

thanks bud! that's what i'm hoping... if it turns to that I'll probably jump to a 15+ GTI after the Mini is paid off lol. If you shoot me a PM with your e-mail I've got some #s on something I worked out with a friend regarding what we talked about previously

 

oem auto-dimming rearview mirror bought! to be honest this was one of the few only things i didn't like about the mini, so looking forward to fixing it!

 

all but ready for the new season here. i've upgraded to stiffer bumpstops in the rear and set the sway bar back to the middle setting to start off. i was really happy with how the car handled in the cold and wet, but super hot & dry grip left me understeering a lot, so hopefully this gives me some flexibility.

first event will be this weekend!

 

event 1 review here - http://r56hs.com/2015/03/23/ccscc-03...event-of-2015/

would really appreciate driving criticism if anyone's got any

 

A pretty nice run, especially for the first of the season runs. Glad that your GF had fun doing it too. I tell a lot of beginners that it is better to finish with a slow time than not finish at all and just finishing is learning how to read the course. It sounds like she is picking up the "reading the course" thing pretty quick. With that quicker times will come with seat time, as you well know. It may not be too long before she is pushing your times. Watch out

Some small things. Keeping both hands on the wheel seems to be working for you and it shows in being smooth at the beginning of the run. But you reverted back later in the run. Also, later in the run you seemed to be playing catch-up with yourself and your inputs became more jerky. Not sure why the change. At about time marker 15-16 sec, you make a steering correction in what appeared to be a continuous turn. If you didn't need to make it because of the course being tight there, then you might have been pinching that turn a bit. I liked the slalom part at the beginning; nice and smooth. Any idea if there was any extra space between you and the cones? Hard to tell with the camera angle.

You said that the sway bar was at the middle setting - maybe try it a little stiffer?

Thanks for posting. It is nice to see a place that looks warm and has no snow - still below freezing here - Gives me hope that my May 1st track day won't be on snow tires

 

great input, thanks for your help - you're right, and that's kind of weird - i did take my hands off the wheel a lot there. I think what happened was, with my girlfriend driving the car, I put the steering wheel closer to the dash because she sits up close, and didn't really put it back. made it a farther reach and a little less natural to keep my hands on the wheel. I'll have to adjust that next.

I'll be focusing a lot again on my steering inputs. I think my distance to cones is pretty good, most of the time. Once per event I nick a phantom cone that I never feel, which tells me I'm probably backsiding pretty close. i think i could definitely go at the slalom harder.

i'm "saving" the rsb at the stiffest setting for the dead heat of summer - also, with my gf driving for the first time i didnt want the car to be too loose for her. come summer, the gloves will be coming off...

thanks for the input, greatly appreciated. i have a ton of work to do

 

No pointers - just jealous!

Thanks for sharing, and I wish you a ton of fun and a great year.

All the best,

Charlie

 

keeping your pro tips to yourself eh???

you'll be out there soon. i'll be driving an "STU" evo and an ES miata for combined as much as the Mini this year, so it'll be an interesting year

 

Wow, I have enough to do to learn one car...go kyoo

 

here's a vid of yesterday's tnt! got about 20 runs in the mini which was nice. i noticed most that attacking the slalom was what i got most uncomfortable with over the 5mo hiatus, and really picked up some time there as i got more comfortable with it. the other time saver was sticking close to the cones in the sweepers. line could still use work and i could still get closer to the cones. any other observations? basic course as it was a tnt, but still very nice with a lot of good elements

 

splitting my autox runs this year 55/35/10 for mini/evo/miata, about 240 total runs or so. here's some from the evo this past weekend!

evo was given a lot of attention during the offseason. despite my mods i was still getting a mid corner front end wash in that car. not terribly irregular, it's a heavy car with 60/40 split or worse. I bought caster plates and a rear sway bar for the car in hopes of adding a little more front end grip. well it turned out while i was installing the plates that the springs were installed incorrectly - 10k/8k rates F/R, but it should have been 8k/10k. I don't regret the mods as the car feels great and not too loose, but just goes to show - if you want something done right you gotta do it yourself. Everything has been corrected and the car is very neutral compared to before.

http://r56hs.com/2015/04/12/ccscc-sc...2015-04122015/

 

long time no update to this thread but i have been diligent on the blog!

here's my last event.. i think overall i've actually been slower this year than i have last year, which has been very disappointing. i now have the car set to full stiff (most oversteer i can get) and it's still not quite loose enough. i might have to ask to start playing with toe to get this car to rotate like i want it to. otherwise, my driving has been very so-so. doesnt feel like i have a lot of grip in the car, somewhat contributed by my 160+ run RS3s. i really should get some re71rs but i cant throw down that kind of cash right now...


i know i'm overshooting a few corners, a little too much late braking and a meh line overall.. need to fix these badly

 

Nice to hear from you...Sorry to read the disappointment. Here is what I see...
- Two hands on the wheel
- Your transitions are smooth
- As usual, you did well in the slalom, even with the double cones.
- You could tighten up your line; there was space on a number of cones that left you swinging wide.

I think you are right, if you are loosing speed, it is your tires. While a tighter line would be faster, it would not be by that much. As you know it is a trade better speed and less distance. Don't give up on yourself or the car if your tires don't have grip...been there. If you are not in a position to get new, then compete only against yourself by working with the "tools" that you have. Look at your past run and the next run pick a spot to improve and see if your time improves. Start taking data with something like Harry's lap timer and the add on GPS antenna.

Most of all, have fun...

 

Thanks for the input! You're definitely right. I think it's just a little more frustrating because there is a Mini here with 2 very capable drivers that are on the RE71Rs, beat me by about half a second at this last event. I can't swing for those, so like you said I'll have to work with what I've got. I've got SoloStorm lol, just been too lazy to use it but probably is time to start. I'm at a point where tenths are really counting and adding up and doing one thing right in one spot will be negated by one thing wrong in another, and for me it's too minute to tell at this point.

I have to remind myself once in a while that I'm more learning than competing, and it is all just for fun.... for now

 

+1

 

Have a look at Racechrono too. If you do a lot of runs in a day, it can string together your best sectors to show a potential best time to aim for. And you can export data for dial / position overlays on your videos.

Looking good. Still a few mid corner steering corrections and jerky transitions, but I am not a racer so can't tell if that is how it needs to be. And it is much better than your earlier videos, so improvement is always a good thing!

James

 

Thanks for the input! I have Solo Storm, but it's hard to gather much data from it during an event.. That and I've been lazy but I definitely should use it more.

In order to get the car a little looser, I've decided to open up the front shocks (inverted Bilsteins) and cut the bumpstop maybe 10mm or so! Should be 58mm in there and it feels like I pretty much ride on them. Should be a significant improvement, maybe to a point even where it's too loose! One can hope. Then i can dial back the rear a bit. I'll post pics when I do it!

 

Here's yesterday:


The tires didn't feel so bad yesterday. I ran 38/42 as opposed to 40/43, and the car felt a little more neutral than before, still want to get the car a hair looser though.

I think I was a little ballsier in the slaloms than before, just had a really bad push at the very end right turn as well as a slightly bad one at the turn around

 

still been racing but haven't updated this for a while - drove like a wild man today, and actually did the best i've prob ever done overall.


:: I noticed I REALLY haven't updated this in a while - I got used tires on the Mini from the Miata we've been running which we're planning to sell - went from 180 runs RS3s to 120 run Z2 star specs which had plenty of life - the Miata is very kind on tires. I immediately jumped about 0.3-0.5s faster compared to my benchmarks, and have been doing better than I ever have been. it's too late points-wise to do anything about this year, but I think there were both bad and good points to having spent most of the year on uncompetitive tires. The good is that I really had to hone in on my driving and inputs. The bad is that I've 1) blown the year, but 2) underestimate now what I can do with the car with tires. I started getting there with the latest event though.