Charles

Going to be tough to get outta work :bbb:

nunyo

Short answer is slow down the steering wheel inputs and start setting up for obstacles sooner.

I always knew that I was supposed to setup sooner, but those words never made the mental jump into something concrete that I could do in the car and know it was working. By making the effort to slow my wheel inputs I am forced to set up sooner because I can't just rush in and crank the wheel over.

The Miata's much stiffer front end can be thanked for teaching me this. At the champs, especially in slaloms and other quick transitions, I'd crank the wheel over and the front end would skate for about 12-18 inches then stick. When I asked Jon Roberts about it, he gave me the advice to slow down on the steering wheel.

The reasoning is that with a more stiffly suspended front end, my steering inputs get translated to the rubber more quickly. On the Subaru (and even with the Miata on stock suspension) I could crank the steering wheel around and the tire wouldn't get loaded up until the suspension caught up with what I was doing.

There was also some advice from Danny Shields during the novice walkthrough (I went back to Kindergarten this weekend) that was really valuable to me. He said that autocross is a precision driving competition, and that you know when you're pushing too hard by the fact that you aren't able to place the car exactly where you want to anymore. It's one of those things that kind of makes you say duh, but it never really surfaced in my mind as a yardstick for measuring if I'm pushing too hard. That really transformed the way that I drove the course. My focus became to hit my marks at speed rather than to just try and go as fast as possible.

Another thing I learned this weekend that will be difficult to put into practice at the events I run is that course walking is far more important than I had realized. I walked that course three times and then again with Danny in the novice walkthrough. It was nothing to close my eyes and mentally drive the course. I can't remember the last time I've been able to do that.

I made zero changes to the car and went from last weekend being 5.2 PAX seconds back from Danny to this weekend being 0.46 PAX seconds back. I am VERY happy with the results.

Loren

Good job! And good driving points. "Slow down to go faster" is a hard concept to explain and get across to people. Sounds like Danny has found a good way to explain it.

My big enlightenment of the day was proving to myself that an extra shift really DOES cost time. I was running 41.2 right out of the box and 4 of my first 6 runs were consistently right there in spite of my tweaking around with shock settings. (the car felt better, but was no faster!) On this course, there was a hardish turn after the slalom that fed into the finish straight. I had been downshifting to first at the end of that slalom to get better acceleration through the straight. On my 7th run, I decided to leave it in second. That run was .7 seconds faster! Sometimes it's the stupid, obvious little things that bite you.

I need to get some better tires so I can keep up.

Leonard

Hey Tony,


Take a look at your and Danny's pax times for the first 3 runs. You were only .1 off of Danny. I'm going to guess some of that is due to tire heat. Danny's hoosiers wouldn't have fallen off as much as your Falken's.

mofugga

falkens don't generate much heat on that slippery surface! way to pull your head outta your ass tony!

nunyo

uh, thanks, I guess.

taka86fc

It was very well organized,and we had so many runs

Cheap street tire sux. It doesn't get grip even with a plenty of tread. Good thing was I brought my old front tires for spare. Theyre mutch grippier and mutch more controlable.

I'm sorry about my last runs. I didn't expect to hit 6? cones. My suspension is too hard. I need softer springs for auto-x.

chi town brat

8 runs? :-O wow and the course looked great

Sorry I missed out but I found another CRX and had to go do the purchase thing.

glad to hear everyone had fun.

Bill

Had a great time. It's not too often you get treated to eight runs so I was smiling for most of the day. Even managed to put down some decent times with the STi though she could have gone much quicker if the driver had some more skill .

Loren - Yup, that cone barricade at the end was a bit of an eye-opener for us in the first-run-group. I knew it would come up quick but I wasn't thinking it would come up THAT quick.

nunyo

I hope my input is not unwelcome. I noticed that all of the STi drivers were scrubbing speed in the corners. (This is something that I still struggle with from time to time.) You might try backing off on the entry speed so you can be on the gas sooner. The car is only going to go around a corner so fast, if you get in too fast it'll scrub the speed by sliding the front wheels sideways. If you go in under the highest speed for that corner you can get on the gas sooner. As I understand it the STi will actually oversteer a bit under power, if you can get on it early enough you should be able to do a slight power slide out and have higher straightaway speeds.

Hope that helps.