I've been reading a lot of autox guides and it seems like there's conflicting messages- "achieve the highest possible speed through the timing beam" but "don't spin the tires", and then a lot of courses have a 90 degree turn right after the timing beam to prevent fast starts.

Anyway, my usual start if I'm going for all-out speed from a stop is to go WOT and sit on my 5000 launch limiter so I can launch with 10 psi boost, usually a clean launch but sometimes a smidge of front wheel spin. Would this be frowned on in Autox? Is it against the rules? If the tires spin, is that some sort of penalty?

 

i'm not sure what class a "launch limiter" would put you in but wheel spin is definately allowed & for a good launch you usually gotta get some spinage.

 

OK, good, the PCA faq specifically said not to spin the wheels, and I've read comments elsewhere that made it seem like people frowned on it for some reason- site damage, some other reason, I don't know. I would worry about coming out of the hole hard if I wasn't allowed to spin the tires at least a little bit. The only auto-x I've gone to see was a scooby day at the fairgrounds and they didn't spin much off the line .

The car will class way faster than it actually is just because of all the weird little mods I've done. I think I've got 45-50 points in NASA right now depending on how you interpret things- the lowest I could class myself was 44, the highest was in the high 50's depending on how lenient they are. I'm probably in B for now, but the next round of mods this fall and I'll pretty much be stuck in A. In SCCA I think I've broken one or two of the SM rules and they'd put me in some ridiculous prepared class if they were strictly following the rules. All this for a 280 whp street tire car with near stock brakes and suspension . I'll just focus on improving my own times and not on how badly I'm losing to everybody else.

 

yea i would say they say no spinning so u dont do like 6k drops and roast it, which can lead to loss of control. minimal wheel spin will give u the best launch in most cases.

 

There's a difference between a little "chirp" on launch and "spinning the tires". They just don't want Bubba (apologies to any Bubba's or anyone who knows a Bubba) to show up in his bad-ass Camaro thinking he's cool doing burnouts from the starting line.

Do what you need to do to get the launch that makes you happy. If an event official doesn't like it, they will tell you.

Same thing applies to "drifting". A proper 4-wheel-drift is a perfectly acceptable autocross technique in certain situations. Hanging the tail out wildly on every turn is not.

 

I set the limiter to where the spin is minimal to none, so it sounds like I'm in the clear. I don't think I'm going to be doing any 4 wheel drifts or drifting in general- the only oversteer I've ever induced in this car was lift throttle at the limit. I'm going to take it easy and just try to finish the course my first time out, because to be honest a lot of these course layouts I see online are confusing to me. I'm aiming for September when it cools down to hit the first event, so I figure I have plenty of time to watch in-car vids and try to get a basic understanding of the sea of cones .

 

Speaking as a person that is working near the launch area, I would prefer little to no wheel spinning. Due to the amount of noise. If I wear ear plugs to compensate for this, it is then impossible to talk to the timing / radio guy.



We usually give you a 20 feet area to get rolling before you even trigger the start. So you really dont need to burn out off the line.



Another thing to note is we tend to do an offset slalom at the beginning any way. This is one of the slowest parts of the course so you dont want allot of speed.


Plus with Broosksville there is the problem with the seams breaking up and damaging the surface.


B