January 17th Post Event

[Anonymous]

To clarify a point that when I said courses I meant plural , not just one. I am not a writer so it may have come off confusing. I basically am echoing Tim's sentiments that the courses generally favor the smaller more nimble cars with less HP and I agree that this course favored them also.

As far as saying that someone intentionally designed a course to eliminate a V8 of some type from being competitve is not what I was saying.

What I was saying is that if I drive a Geo Metro I would want the course to be tight and short to benefit the abilities of my Metro and may unintenionally forget that a Corvette or 650 HP mustang is trying to drive the same course.

I would not want long straights because where the Vette may get 80 mph the Metro may only get 40 mph and wouldn't be any fun for my Metro.

So you can see by the quote I had posted above from Jeremy he has a different point of view than from Tim.

My question is: can we have courses that favor both points of view or anyone that wants to chime in. I am sure that we would get lot's of bitchers if Tim agreed to design a course and made it four 1/4 straights with turns at each end? No?

[Loren]

I was wrong about the 6 runs. (I thought that was obvious and went without saying) We didn't get started on time for various reasons, and it just didn't happen. Sorry. We got 4 really long runs instead.

Guys, this course was an experiment. We almost never run course that's anything remotely as tight as this course was. It is clearly understood that people don't want to do that again... and it should clearly be understood that we never intended to do it again, anyway. It was just a one-time thing. In other words, quit whining about it... we know it sucked (even though it was very challenging and many of us found it to be fun because of that), it's done, get over it.

I completely disagree that most of our courses are geared toward S2000's and Miatas. Most of our courses are pretty typical autocross courses. Smooth flowing turns, slaloms, turn-arounds, and the occasional tight turn... all with a max speed of about 65 mph for the fastest cars. That's autocross. The simple fact is that Miatas and S2000s are fantastic autocross cars and they SHOULD do better on a proper autocross course.

Easier turns and longer straights that get you up to 80+ mph... that's NOT autocross... at least not by any autocross club's definition, nor by any autocross club INSURER's definition. I've said it before, if you want to go faster than 60 mph, go find a race track. That kind of speed is not what autocross is about.

I also believe the statement that higher powered cars are at a disadvantage is very false. It's the DRIVERS who don't know how to maintain momentum, but instead always rely on their power to dig them out of a turn that they drove too slowly through who are at a disadvantage. Having the power available when you need it is certainly in no way a disadvantage, but it doesn't make up for the driver's inability to enter a turn at the proper speed and carry as much momentum through the turn as possible. I'm not trying to put anyone down here, but that's the way it is. Autocross is a driver's game.

Infamous Miata.Net quote: "If you can't drive fast with 90 hp, having 900 hp won't help."

[Loren]

My question is: can we have courses that favor both points of view or anyone that wants to chime in. I am sure that we would get lot's of bitchers if Tim agreed to design a course and made it four 1/4 straights with turns at each end? No?

A course with any 1/4 mile straight is going to be instantly modified for safety purposes. Even my econobox Yaris can get up to 80 (I think) in 1/4 mile, that's not appropriate for autocross, and it exceeds the limits of our insurance.

However, if Tim (or anyone else) wants to design a course that has as many straights as they want on it that will allow the fastest cars to accelerate up to 65 mph... more power to him!

The problem becomes... if you want that acceleration, you have to somehow slow people back down to accelerate again, right? How do you slow someone from 60 to 30-40? You have to include a tight turn! And it has to be somewhat tight, or the smaller cars (the one's y'all are bitching about) will buzz right through them and go from 60 mph in one straight up to 80 mph in the next straight because they didn't have to slow down.

Designing a proper autocross course isn't as easy as it seems.

[Bone]

CONGRATULATIONS are in order to ROBERT VINCENT and some dude in a red Mazdaspeed (#66) -

FOR BEING THE ONLY TWO BLOKES THAT DID NOT POP A CONE OR DNF!!!!

YOU GUYS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!

Signed,

anonymous

[Loren]

Robert Vincent must be another one of those Miata guys, too, huh? That, or he drove really slow to get through the course cleanly, right?

[Anonymous]

Wow.

[Bone]

Here' the funniest line of the day, from Dan "Dude, where's my flashlight?" Rasp -


Dan - "This course really separates the men from the boys........


I find it so embarrassing... ya know.... being separated from the men...."


RC

[Jordan Y.]

First off, wow, look at some of the times novices from the school managed to pull on that crazy course. That was a hard course to run as your first "real" autocross.

Second, V8 guys, c'mon, this is autocross. It's never going to be about big rampaging power storming down straights. That's a road course. My previous car was a 300whp AWD monster and I do not recall using more than half throttle the one time I had it out, partly because I suck but mostly because that's the way autocross is. I have a sub-150whp car now and it's still more power than I can use on your typical autocross course- again, I suck; but big power isn't going to help you much at autocross until you're darn good, good enough to use it effectively in the brief moments it is useful and not over-use it when it can hurt your times. Coming into this sport with a big, powerful car you just have to humble yourself and realize that the power is not going to be a huge advantage over the little Miatas and Civics and the driver is going to make all the difference in either car.

[Dave-ROR]

Anyone who thinks any of the courses favor a smaller car with low HP, let Jeremy, Ron, Jamie, Steve, Loren, Victor, myself (although I'm slow ) et cetera drive your big high HP car.

I was 1 second behind an S2000 on Jan 10th, in a friggen GRAND MARQUIS. Yeah, obviously we alway favor S2000s and Miatas cause you know.. normally a Grand Marquis would just kill the S2000's...

Get over it, autocrosses tend to be technical courses and tend to have some tight turns and are, a lot of the time, forced to have it due to the venue. If you want a drag strip autocross, go to Deland.

[Blacknot]

Anyone who thinks any of the courses favor a smaller car with low HP, let Jeremy, Ron, Jamie, Steve, Loren, Victor, myself (although I'm slow ) et cetera drive your big high HP car.

I was 1 second behind an S2000 on Jan 10th, in a friggen GRAND MARQUIS. Yeah, obviously we alway favor S2000s and Miatas cause you know.. normally a Grand Marquis would just kill the S2000's...

Get over it, autocrosses tend to be technical courses and tend to have some tight turns and are, a lot of the time, forced to have it due to the venue. If you want a drag strip autocross, go to Deland.

I agree. Look how well Loren's Yaris did at Brooksville last time. That course was in favor of high hp. they even had to tighten the slalom up because it was too fast. Yet Loren put down a better time then alot of high hp cars and carried more speed throught the corners. It's all about the driver not always the car. This makes autocrossing so chalenging

[impalanut]

Autocross is designed to test a cars handling, as well as acceleration, with the emphasis on driver ability. With that in mind, if you look at the national standings in stock class, the times for F stock (Mustang, Camaro) is always slower than the Miata/s2000 guys. The class for Zo6 and Porsche are faster, the class older corvettes are about the same as the Miatas, slower than the s2000. This is based on the pax times which reflects SCCA times. Once you start modifying cars, the smaller cars have the advantage due to lower weight. You can't defy the laws of physics, and the relative grip and horsepower of the modified small cars is put to the pavement more efficiently. At our events the single most important mod is tires. You can do whatever you want to the high HP cars, but if they have street tires, the sticky tire guys will beat them. Historically, when Kenny came out with his Impala with R comps not only was he competitive, but at two events he was second only to Danny Shields. These events were at SPC, not Brooksville. Also, the year before last we had a number of events with course design by some of the high HP guys trying to design courses more favorable to them. This didn't really stop the little car guys from winning. The best course design that will favor the high HP cars is one the slows you down and then gives you a relatively straight area for acceleration. If you do this multiple times you will probably tilt the balance a little, however, as Loren said, the only way to slow people down is to make tight turns. The real answer is to do a few things: first- become a better driver (more seat time, autocross school, etc), second-race rubber, third-check to see what mods make the most sense for autocross, this will likely be suspension and not HP mods. Mods will only make you faster, however, if you are driving your current set up at its limit, otherwise the limit is the driver and more mods won't matter.

[Charles]

My plan for the day was to head out of the house at 7:15am, got paged from work at 7:08am.

It turns out it's not good when an air handler craps out and the server room floor in your data center goes to 130 degrees

See you guys at the next one......

BTW: If someone wants to, good luck designing a course to favor the power cars. This is autocross(<65mph), and it's probably not going to happen, a well driven miata will still likely give you a run for the money even if you have 10,000hp

[snookwheel]

Fixed the video's to include sound...

Jeremy coaching Mary.
http://blip.tv/file/1680084" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Jennifer's Nismo:
http://blip.tv/file/1680050" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Solo Vee eating cones early:
http://blip.tv/file/1680103" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Still trying to get your run with sound Jeremy. Worth the effort, great sound from your car.

Scott

[snookwheel]

Finally got the sound to work:

http://blip.tv/file/1681668" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Jack]

it was not a flowing layout ! i got a real bad damage to my bumper from the lame cones they used. that was a bad idea to use the spc cones.
not friendly at all. i agee with jeremy its auto -x not police school.
next mo in brooksville should be a great time! much faster and flowing
see you all there!!

[aparke]

CONGRATULATIONS are in order to ROBERT VINCENT and some dude in a red Mazdaspeed (#66) -

FOR BEING THE ONLY TWO BLOKES THAT DID NOT POP A CONE OR DNF!!!!

YOU GUYS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!

Signed,

anonymous

Robert Vincent must be another one of those Miata guys, too, huh? That, or he drove really slow to get through the course cleanly, right?

Actually, Robert was in the Subie Legacy wagon. Rob is an instructor at the police course so I suppose he's used to navigating big cars through tight spots. Either way, I got a change to ride with him and it was quite impressive! Yes, congrats to you both for no cones!

[JWSmythe]

Good afternoon,

I wanted to post a note saying "thanks" for Saturday. This was my first FAST event, but it wasn't my first racing event. I've been to quite a few races of different types over the years, including short oval track (spectator class), drag, and road races. I know a few of you had to tolerate the ramblings of the "new guy" (me).

This was a little different. The hardest maneuvering course I've been on was the Buttonwillow Raceway Park in California. Their track is 36' wide, and their longest straight is over 3000'. Speeds were between about 30mph to 100mph. Over the years, I learned how to turn (County Speedway, 1/4 mile oval). I've blown clutches (Pomona Raceway 1/4 mile drag with, +150hp NOS). I've almost kissed walls spinning at 80mph (Desoto Speedway 3/8 mile oval, trying too hard)

Every track, and every group is different, so I appreciate everyone putting up with my questions. Most tracks/groups have looked down on the "newbies" at least a little, and are pretty rough when you don't know the rules that weren't covered in the drivers meeting (or forget to tell you where and when the drivers meeting is).

I noticed a few people were commenting on the track this time. I'll agree, the lanes were very tight. There wasn't a lot of room to move. It doesn't seem like it, but I'm pretty sure mine was one of the widest cars out there. Mine '00 TransAm is 16' 2" long and 6' 2.5" wide. For comparison, the '96 Impala (BTW, nice car!) 17' 10" long and 6' 5.5" wide. Except for a few places, I didn't have a lot of opportunity to set up for the next turns. That was pretty obvious on my first pass with a cone count of "many". Sorry. I cleaned that up on the rest of the passes. The track itself has to be the loosest I've ever been on.

You can't honestly complain about a track (but we always will). It's the same track that every other driver ran on. My times sucked, because I had a hard time gripping. I was only ever hard on the throttle for maybe a couple seconds before I was standing on the brakes. I ran the entire course without leaving first gear a few times, so it wasn't long enough to even bother. I did listen to others advice, and ran it in 2nd to try and keep some traction, but then I built up too much speed. Really, those were my problems. Any track takes practice, practice, practice. I didn't expect to come out in the top 10 (and as it turns out not in the top 50), but if I did, would there be a challenge for next time? Not really.

I will say though, this is the first event of any kind that I've hit anything on the track.

I did some measurements, assuming the map is to scale. The last cone (the double cone) at the decision point would be 10' wide. The map can't be exactly to scale though. On the Southwest corner of the track, the north-south (NNW-SSE) gate indicates 7.5' between the center of the cones, which would have been impossible for the F-bodies Corvette, and Impala to fit through. Regardless of the map scale, it was very tight.

A long time ago (about 1993), I went through Florida law enforcement training. It wasn't at this school, but the general idea is similar. As I recall, the course was very tight, but the maneuvering was all done slowly. It was to reinforce precision driving, not timed fast driving.

There were only a couple parts of the law enforcement driving that I recall being fast. One was a decision/reaction test. It was a straight 30mph run at a signal sign. At the last moment we were given an indication (an electronic sign) to turn left or right. The other was a skid pad. 30mph into a wet area, turn hard left (90 degrees), stand on the parking brake, and recover without releasing the parking brake. Otherwise, it was simply engineered to familiarize you with driving a car in close quarters, forward and backwards without hitting anything, and keeping good hand position and vehicle control. No cones were allowed to be hit to make a successful run. Sadly enough, some people had a lot of trouble with that even at low speeds.

FDLE may have changed the course requirements in the last 16 years, or this school may train differently.

Ok, enough rambling, thanks for the fun experience. I'm sure I'll be out again.

[Loren]

FYI, the "lanes" of the LE course are all 12 feet wide as a minimum. Any gates that I placed that weren't part of that course were 15-18 feet. (Normally, when I do a course, my MINIMUM gate width anywhere on course is 20 feet.)

This course was interesting in a lot of places because there was such a narrow margin for error. You could carry speed through the tight turns, but only if you were on the right line. If you missed your turn-in point by more than a couple feet, you'd either hit the apex cone or an exit cone.

More often than not, most people were turning in a little later than they needed to (paranoia about hitting the apex cone), but turning so tightly that they missed the exit cones by a couple feet. Turning a little earlier and less (something we taught at the school the week before) would have allowed them to carry much more speed through the turn and still miss the apex and the exit cones.

The other three big mistakes that I saw a lot of people make were sawing at the wheel (not committing to the turn in the right place, but turning in-out-in-out), trying to use too much throttle where they couldn't (meaning they either lost traction on the drive wheels, or they were constantly bouncing the suspension up and down with their throttle transitions) and not taking full advantage of the places on course where they COULD accelerate. There were FIVE long straights on this course. For the right driver, it actually was a "power course". (I lost half a second just by not-so-judicious use of 1st gear to dig out of the turns in several places on my last run... just imagine if I actually had some power to accelerate with!)

Anyway, glad you enjoyed yourself, JW. You're right, SPC is slicker than snot, especially when it's cold. You should try it WET sometime, that's even more fun! You'll like the grip at Brooksville, and you'll not likely see another autocross course as tight as the LE course.

[muddy]

I am really quite surprised I finished 1st in class on Saturday. My only advantage over Howard is that cold DOT R compounds have more grip than cold slicks! I honestly thought my laissez faire attitude and cone carnage would make up for that.

Yeah, the course sucked. We all now know why we don't run the police course. I think we could do something very similar with a few wider gates and make a kick-ass course. 8)

[Loren]

I agree, loosening a few turns and eliminating some cones could make that into something a lot more fun.

Maybe in a couple years after everyone has forgotten this experience, I'll sneak that into a course design and just not tell anyone. 8)