mr.autox

well I figured I would list the autox events I plan on attending this season in case anyone wants to meet up, hang out, co-drive... I race all over va, md and pa so the more the merrier.

its a long list so here we go:
april 26th fedex field landover, md www.wdcr-scca.com
(1st place fsp 40th out of 232 pax)
may 3rd cumberland airport cumberland, md www.nationalroadautosport.com
(2nd fsp 26th out of 54 pax)
may 17th fedex field wdcr-scca-cancelled
may 24th mercedes club millbrook high school winchester, va-on
(3rd overall raw time out of 40 drivers)
may 31st fedex field wdcr-scca
(3rd fsp 66th out of 224 pax)
june 7th cumberland airport or autocrossers inc at fedex field
(driving gimp's 318ti 1st st 66th overall 39th out of 101 drivers pax)
june 21st i will be supporting the wdcr at the dc pro solo at fedex field
june 28th park city mall york, pa susquehanna scca
(1st fsp 12th out of 109 overall 9th out of 109 drivers pax)
july 12th fedex field wdcr-scca
(1st fsp 44th out of 233 on pax)
july 18th washington circuit summit point, wv capital driving club
(3rd overall, 3rd on cdc index, small bore win)
july 19th park city mall york, pa susquehanna scca
(1st fsp, 8th out of 104 raw time, 7th out of 104 pax)
july 26th cumberland airport
(37th out of 75 drivers overall, 24th out of 75 on pax)
august 2nd fedex field wdcr-scca
(2nd fsp, 75th out of 194 on pax wet runs for morning dry afternoon)
august 9th i will probably be working course at the polish mt. hillclimb in flintstone, md
august 16th wdcr-scca fedex field
(1st fsp, 56th out of 211 on pax)
august 23rd farm show harrisburg, pa susquehanna scca
(1st fsp, 23rd raw out of 84, 24th out of 84 on pax)
september 6th harry grove stadium frederick, md www.capitaldrivingclub.com
(if in competition on sat would have been a small bore win, sunday was non comp)
september 13th mercedes club winchester, va
(6th on pax out of 62 drivers)
september 20th cumberland airport
(42nd out of 85 overall, 26th out of 85 on pax)
september 27th fedex field wdcr-scca
(2nd of 8 in fsp 121 out of 213 on pax wet runs for me drying for everyone else)
october 11th fedex field wdcr-scca
(2nd of 4 in fsp, 42nd of 200 on pax, I win the class championship smile.gif )
october 25th cumberland airport pumpkin carve
november 1st mercedes club winchester, va
november 8th boeing complex philly scca(possible)
november 15th tidal sports car club norfolk, va(possible)
november 22nd harry grove stadium frederick, md cdc

mr.autox

well since I posted the schedule i'm going to continue this into a blog about my 2009 autox season. I will update it after each race with an evaluation of my performance and the car's as well as throw in some pictures and hopefully videos from the day.

1st event was at fedex field with wdcr scca. I definately have some competition this year. the cars in my class consist of an 81 scirocco, 72 mg midget and a 92 sentra ser. The scirocco was champ last year but the sentra is new in the class this year and driven by some good drivers. One driver is karen kraus who has been women's national champ quite a few times. I'm going to have some fun with fsp this year.

The morning was misty and the course was wet. I was stuck running in the 1st heat. Luckily I was the only one on street tires in my class. here is how the runs went.

pax times I ended up 129 out of 173
the results are a little out of whack since my heat was in the wet and the rest of the heats got much better conditions
next event is hershey on the new hoosiers
1st run: 70.37
just feeling out the course some, but traction is very limited and I do a lot sliding and spinning wheels

2nd run: 71.061+spin=dnf
tried to pick up my pace some and ended up spinning

3rd run: 67.49
kept it on course but it seems like i'm doing more than half the course sideways, I can go faster but its difficult enough keeping the car going straight

4th run: 67.37
I found a tenth but it didn't look pretty, rain racing is fun but tiring and spending quite a bit of your run at opposite lock in a fwd car just doesn't seem right

I ended up 2nd out of 6 drivers in class and got beat by pat griffith in the sentra who was running v710s. I'm not sure how that happened since he was on r-comps, oh well. It was only a warm up race so no points. The 2nd heat had partially wet conditions and the afternoon runs got all dry runs, those bastards.

The car was very tricky to drive and quick transitions ended up in big slides. I guess my combo of 215 xs' and 205 spts doesn't work very well in the rain.

I ended up 129 out of 173 on pax
the results are a out of whack since my heat was in the wet and the rest were in much better conditions

next up is hershey on the new hoosiers

mr.autox

Next event on the schedule was at hershey park with susquehanna scca.
this was the first time I have raced with this group and I have to say it was a good first experience. They have smaller fields and the atmosphere is a little more laid back than wdcr-scca. They still have some good competition though.

more good news is I got a chance to break in the new hoosiers. This season I stepped up to some new wheels and tires. I am racing on diamond racing steelies that are 13x9 with a 5" backspace(0 offset). Tires are hoosier A6 255/40/13 in front and 225/45/13 in the rear. I had to do some strategic hammering to the inner fender and some trimming to the back of the fender to get some extra clearance. The car is about 3-4 inches wider now because the backspace pushes the wheels outwards to clear everything on the inside.

well here is how my day went in hershey

1st run: 62.18
cold tires+new tires+my inexperience on said tires= me spinning in the 1st slalom

2nd run: DNF
almost the same as the first run but I made it another 2 turns before I spun off course.

3rd run: 54.25+1
well I made it through a run without spinning but picked up a cone somewhere on course. I'm killing my rev limiter on 2 different portions of the course, I might have to upshift to third to make up some time.

4th run: 62.06+2
went for it on my last run and would have had a nice one if I hadn't spun again right before the finish line. upshifting to third did help increase speed but I think I carried too much speed into the final turn.

Well I thought I was going to end up at the bottom of the class but as it turns out I somehow came in 2nd again. I am very lucky i guess. I'd love to blame my horrid day on the car but its not the car's fault. I need some time to get used to the new tires. Overall I ended up 62nd out of 133 and on pax I was 56th. I vow to do better as I shake off some rust.

I have tons more grip but it takes some time getting used to the ammount of oversteer I have now. If you lift too abruptly in a transition you spin, if you trail brake a little too much you spin. I have to change my driving style from last year. Last season I was able to more or less throw the car around, this year I have to be smoother, ease off the gas, and give it less brake into corners. The front end grips like no car i've driven before but if you push it too hard the tires will give up. I need to dial in my front tire pressures a little better, I think that may have been why the front gave up some. The rears I think are about right. Hot tire pressures were 28 front 25 rear.

Next race i'm back at fedex field for the first points event of the season. until then here is a pic of me at hershey, thanks to whomever took it.

187sks

Looks like fun. Does your car tripod in the corners? Or do you have it set up to keep all 4 down?

mr.autox

from what i'm told it still 3 wheels

I don't run any droop travel whatsoever so that is most likely why it does so

if I stepped up my spring rates in the front it would probably eliminate that but it rides stiff enough as is, so as long as i'm not lifting front wheels off the ground i think i'm fine. In parts of the hershey course I was hopping but from talking to others anyone with stiffer than stock spring rates was hopping as well.

yesterday I raised the left rear as it was a 1/2 inch lower than the right rear this should eliminate the rubbing I was having. I tried raising the left front but that sucker is froze solid, no amount of penetrating fluid could loosen up that bad boy. I will be stuck with the left front a little lower than the right front, oh well.

liveD83

Man that looks like a lot of fun!


Do you have ksport coilovers?

mr.autox

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(liveD83 @ Apr 20 2009, 05:10 PM) </div><div class='quotemain'>Man that looks like a lot of fun!
Do you have ksport coilovers?</div>

It is amazing and very addictive, once you start its hard to stop. I tell anyone to try it at least once. you never know how your car really reacts till you have it on an autocross course.

yes I am using old blown ksports that don't have much dampening left in them but they will have to work till I figure out what i'm going to use next.

I am planning on taking some new pictures over the weekend and i'll post a full mod list since I haven't done that yet on this site. look for some new pics towards the beginning of the week.

mr.autox

time for an update:
I was at fedex field with wdcr-scca for our first points event of the season april 26th
we had 5 drivers in fsp a base mini, scion tc, mg midget, vw scirocco and my accent. The day started off bad for me. I started getting sick the night before throwing up and not getting any sleep. I had already missed 1 event from being sick so i wasn't going to miss this one time to man up. I felt so bad that I puked during drivers meeting and didn't bother walking course. The mid to high 90s in april didn't help things at all. I didn't have very high hopes for my day. Well turns out I was very very wrong. here's how my runs went.

1st run: 57.578
i only knew the course from the map so I tried to push some to get my bearings straight, I was going good till 3/4 through the car felt like it lost a cylinder or 2. back in grid I found out why, 2 of my freshly installed plug wires had popped off the coils. the funny thing is the mg had the same problem.

2nd run: 51.844-51.873(scirocco)
time to push, the car feels great today very neutral compared to a few weeks ago. raising the tire pressures to 34f/30r must have helped. after the run I find out i'm in the lead by a few hundreths of a second over andrew in the scirocco.

3rd run: 51.519
now that i'm contesting for the win, I try harder and pick up a few tenths and feel like i'm about to throw up. whatever I did different it worked.

4th run: 52.354
I try to eek out anything I have left in me and I overdrive in a few sections and get slower. Oh well can't say I didn't try.

it feels great to start the season off with a bang. it looks like me and andrew are going to have a good battle going this season. I know I have plenty more in me but its nice to know I can still get the job done when i'm feeling like SH*T.

the car felt great, completely different from hershey. the temperature definately made a difference in grip. I was cooling my tires down between runs but the hoosiers stayed consistent through all 4 runs. I just have to watch my over-driving. I lose too much momentum through turns with the hoosiers if I increase my slip angle too much. I'm hoping I will pick up momentum as this season goes on. A very good sign of how the car and myself have gotten quicker is my pax position. 40th out of 232 drivers. being in fsp helps my pax out but even still this is the best i've ever placed on pax.

here are some pics from the event. next up i'll be in cumberland for that regions first event of the year.







my main competition for this season

187sks

Good job!

Do they PAX everyone there or do the people running in non-indexed classes have their straight time in there? I'm just wondering because here the indexed classes get their PAX adjustment but the non-indexed classes don't. So I tend to PAX pretty high but it's mostly because the only classes that are indexed here are Street Tire and PAX and every non-indexed class just has their straight time put into the PAX results.

I'm not trying to take away from your finish, no matter what indexing 40th is great, especially sick. I'm just wondering because I wish everyone's class was taken into account here for the PAX results. As it is here it seems pretty lame because only about a quarter of the competitors are indexed so it really throws things off if you're trying to figure out where you are compared to the rest of the people.

mr.autox

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(187sks @ May 4 2009, 08:09 PM) </div><div class='quotemain'>Good job!

Do they PAX everyone there or do the people running in non-indexed classes have their straight time in there? I'm just wondering because here the indexed classes get their PAX adjustment but the non-indexed classes don't. So I tend to PAX pretty high but it's mostly because the only classes that are indexed here are Street Tire and PAX and every non-indexed class just has their straight time put into the PAX results.

I'm not trying to take away from your finish, no matter what indexing 40th is great, especially sick. I'm just wondering because I wish everyone's class was taken into account here for the PAX results. As it is here it seems pretty lame because only about a quarter of the competitors are indexed so it really throws things off if you're trying to figure out where you are compared to the rest of the people.</div>

our events are run just like a national level event where everyone gets a pax index. We run a ladies only class and a non comp class but both are paxed just like anyone else. I'm sure the non comp might have a different index but very few people ever run in non comp.

the switch over to fsp has made my results look much better than they did last year
a .831 is much better than the .867 I had in street mod. I hope to climb up the ladder even more as the season goes on.