I took Eva to the autox on Saturday. I confess I was quite nervous - worrying about hitting cones and if they would take a toll on her bodywork.
Fortunately, I didn't hit any cones in my four runs. I had to borrow a helmet (note to self - buy one this week) because my old bike helmets are too old. Pity.. they had nice paint jobs. Back to the standard white for now I guess. In any event, the course took a bit less than a minute to run - I would imagine the average speed was about 35-40mph. I was told it was very technical for how fast it was..
We had 114 cars in three run groups. Started at 9am and finished about 4:30. I had a whale of a time and will be going back for the remaining two autocrosses of the year. My class winner (S3, which is basically an unmodified Boxster S with road-legal race tires) ran it in 53-54 seconds I believe. My two best times were 62 seconds.. so a long way back. I think I will fairly easily pick up 3-4 seconds with just experience of how the car handles and brakes. I was told that since I never activated my ABS I wasn't breaking hard enough - thus not driving fast enough.
I would be quite happy if I could get to 57-58 seconds on the next autocross and maybe down to 55 by the final one of the year. That would be terrific progress. I hate not being competitive.
Oddly enough, my tires really didn't heat up until the final run. I did notice that I was using them all the way to the edges though, so I'm fairly sure that my cornering speeds were good. I think I just have to work on obtaining a higher top speed and braking more quickly.
I did notice that the winner on the day (all times) was a modified 914 driven by Greg Fordahl, who apparently is a former SCCA national champ. I got him to sit passenger for me and give me advice as I did a run - very useful.
All in all, a great day. I think I'll wait until I'm within a second of the class winner before getting any race tires though.
Posted by artandscience at September 2, 2007 03:14 PM