In car autocross video thread

[Claff]

Today I was back in my familiar STS ride for the season opener of Autocrossers Inc here in southern Maryland. Drizzle/mist in the morning meant another wet day, though I opted for my nearly bald R1Rs leftover from last year. Sam Strano designed the course and it was a good one, though I didn't get a shot at it in the (mostly) dry till fun runs late in the day. My best time was good enough for 7th out of 20 in the PAXed "pro" class.



WDCR SCCA kicks off next Sunday with a non-points practice event at FedEx Field.

[Ajackz]

Could be faster but I placed very well for my first time.
Crdered a contour plus and a roll bar so I should have some better video next time.

[Claff]

Washington DC region SCCA practice event. I got 3rd out of 9 in STS, PAX'd 56 out of 196

[Roadkilled78]

2nd event in the car. Steering is HARD.

This is something of a 'what not to do' video:
-holding myself in the seat with the steering wheel
-hand position is all over the place
-not looking ahead
-pretty far off the cones

Still managed 36 of 125 in PAX. Somehow. I am tempted to throw shocks and a sway bar at the car. It's really fun muscling the thing around, and having some power to work with for once. My poor Miata is going to feel neglected.

Top video has nice sound, bottom one just has wind noise, turn it down.

[deedam3]

Just GoPro...no in-car

[Claff]

No official events held this weekend, but we took advantage of the Evolution Performance Driving school holding a Phase I school at our hometown ballpark on Saturday. Don't know why we haven't done an Evo school before this point but now that it's done I'm glad we did. I started out pretty quick and over the course of the day I only picked up about 1.5 seconds over a 35ish second course, but I doubt I would have made anything near that kind of progress trying to do it on my own. It's money well spent.

Slaloms have been kicking my butt quite a bit going back to the West course at Nationals last year, and I think I got a lot better at getting into slaloms and keeping neat and tidy in them today.



Next weekend I do my first Pro Solo. It should be interesting.

[deedam3]

New one from our 3rd event..

[Roadkilled78]

Next weekend I do my first Pro Solo. It should be interesting.

See you there. We'll be running RTR in a '97 prepped for ES (but no lsd) so you STS Miata guys are our target/benchmark

[Claff]

Forgot to say hi!

Wish it rained Sunday morning. I ended Saturday on a high note (see video) but choked Sunday.

[Roadkilled78]

I was kind of all over the place. Spun it thru the finish on the right course. Drifted the left course off camber sweeper, spun there on another run. 0.490 redlit my good Sunday right side run. Tons of fun though!

Finished 7th in class. Decided running RT at a Pro is probably futile with a 2wd vehicle. We managed 2.4 second 60ft times, comparable to the top of ES and STS yet were still down by 0.7 seconds at the 60-ft mark to the rally cars in RT. Even more by the end of the acceleration zone, and with only 30 seconds on course we couldn't make up the time in the corners.

I didn't drive all that well, was 2 pax seconds behind Marshall in the MINI. Every time I watch the video below I cringe at what I did wrong. But it's slightly reassuring that to win RoadTire in a Miata the top ES drivers would have had to throw on street tires and go back out and run the same times. Or DiSimo & Brown in STS could take all the suspension mods off their car and go back out and run the same times. Holy. Cow. I want a WRX.

[AKPAB]

First event of the Northwestern Ohio Regional SCCA autocross at the Chrysler Toledo Machining Plant. Driving a stock 2007 Mazdaspeed 3, only mods are a Corksport rear sway bar and Hawk HPS pads, and new rotors. Ran in the RTF class under D stock, finished 3rd out of 4, but not by much. This is only the start of my second season, so please enjoy, or then again, criticize!



Oh yeah, managed to finish 41 of 106 by PAX index, so not too bad IMO...

[Claff]

I instructed at another NCCBMWCCA autocross school today, and it's still fun. Instructors got to play at the end of the day and this is one of those runs.



Tomorrow is the first points-paying WDCR SCCA autocross at FedEx Field.

[Roadkilled78]

Darn thing rolls like a sailboat.

[Claff]

I'm pretty happy after Sunday. Eight drivers in STS for the Washington DC season opener. I had a .7-second lead over my primary rival ("Slava") entering last runs. He ran just before me and picked up eight tenths, but he only got to enjoy being on top for about 20 seconds as I found three tenths on my last run to retake the lead and score the class win. The wife got fourth so we're starting the local SCCA season on a good note.

I was 52nd in PAX (top 23%) on a horsepower course driving a car with none, so I'm OK with that. Hoping to be top 20% this year but we're going to need tighter courses and/or better driving for that.

[Ian F]

Darn thing rolls like a sailboat.

Still looks like a good run. I must have missed it... what is wrong with the Miata?

[Roadkilled78]

Still looks like a good run. I must have missed it... what is wrong with the Miata?

Needs front main seal. Timing pulley was glued (loctited, eopxied, whatever) to the crank by the PO after a crank nose repair. Solution: use as commuter car only until I feel like dealing with it properly.

[Ian F]

Needs front main seal. Timing pulley was glued (loctited, eopxied, whatever) to the crank by the PO after a crank nose repair. Solution: use as commuter car only until I feel like dealing with it properly.

Hmm... sounds like you need one of these:

[Claff]

Got another opportunity to drive my buddy's class-winning STR NC Miata, though this time in fantastic weather conditions so we could bolt on a set of Kuhmo 710 R-compounds. We ran with the local BMWCCA chapter at the hometown ballpark, which also had a big dog expo going on at the same time so we lost some lot space for that. This resulted in a pretty short course (FTD was very close to 31 seconds) but it was a decent day regardless. In a small race tire class I was 4th out of 5, but I was a good co-driver because I did not beat the car owner.



The wife drove our STS car and had a really good day, winding up 5th in a 16-driver non-BMW small bore class.



Next week it's back to FedEx Field for the second SCCA points event of the year.

[Stealth 993]

From yesterday. Was beaten by a Boxter, driven by 2 National Champs. But my scratch was only .2 off them.

[SpecialFX]

Here is my first place run in STX last weekend. I know you can't see the course well but I wanted to see how close to the cones I was getting on the passenger side

[Claff]

This is the missus driving, not me. She ran the WDCR SCCA Level II school on Sunday. They ran it on basically the same course used at their first points event a few weeks ago, so we can now compare her video from that to this one from Sunday and see where she found improvements.

[Claff]

And we're back at FedEx Field where I'm now two-for-two in STS to start the local SCCA season. No late-day heroics needed this time, I started out decent and improved in small bites to take the six-driver class by 2.25 seconds.

Tried something different with the second camera, mounting it inside the door window to shoot the incredibly vain driver to see how much (or how little) I'm looking ahead. Instead I'm laughing at my grimaces and flared nostrils. It's on this video after the lap shot from a more typical camera location.



This past week we registered for the SCCA Solo National Championships that'll be in Nebraska this September. We still have no business being in an event that has "championship" as part of its name but we'll try to crack the top 30 this year (we were 31st and 34th out of 39 in our first try last year).

[Jason_GLI]

First time running autocross. It was a great time.

[Claff]

Saturday's adventure was a double day put on by Autocrossers, Inc. here in Waldorf, MD. We got four runs in the morning, then took a break after that where we got a hot lunch served inside the stadium, then came back to a reversed/tweaked course and got four runs on that.

Me and the missus brought both STS cars and I started in my '90 on aging RE11s that have a metric ton of runs on them. After two runs we swapped cars and I wound up in our regular autocrosser, the '93 on fresh full-tread R1Rs. I found the magic on my last run and chopped off 1.3 seconds to wind up 7th out of 16 in the PAX'd Pro class.

During lunch I accepted an invitation to co-drove a longtime driver's C Stock MSM. I found its power delivery to not be as peaky as our MSM and that, combined with the extra stick of Hoosiers, made for a fun drive. The clock didn't reflect that, though, and I was only 13th in Pro.

This video has the best morning and afternoon runs:

[Claff]

We had a fanfreakintastic weekend at FedEx Field with WDCR SCCA. Schedule changes late in the season (the club is at the mercy of the Redskins after all) meant shuffling some dates around and part of that was rescheduling two events to this past Saturday and Sunday.

I've been on a bit of a roll this year, having won the two previous DC events in STS. I kept up the winning ways on Saturday with a 1.4 second win in a six-driver class. I had two reruns (timing glitch, then a wandering course worker) so not only did I have extra laps but I knew before I went out for my last run that I had the class won. I almost didn't even go out for that last run but figured I'd really push it and see what I could do, knowing that if I started getting out of my tree I could just shut it down and coast to the finish. It turned out that on that last banzai run I found another .7 improvement:



Sunday we ran the same course backwards. Our class was up to eight drivers and I fully expected to see my win streak end since one entrant was Mike Snyder in the CRX that Ian Baker runs at the pointy end of national events with. To my surprise I could run with Snyder after the first couple runs and squeaked ahead of him on third runs. I thought I gave away the store when I couldn't improve on my fourth run, but he also slowed down on his fourth so I left doing cartwheels knowing I beat one of the cars that I've considered my nemesis since I first got into this. This doesn't mean I think I can go out and beat Ian the next time we run together (he's moved on to CSP locally this year) but I think I'm getting closer, maybe close enough that he won't smack me down by five seconds anymore.



But the best part of Sunday was that the wife really stepped up as well. She picked up 1.1 seconds on her last run and wound up third behind me and Snyder, beating the couple in the MR2 that we've run against. She was also doing cartwheels in grid after the fact.

Next week we run the Evo Super Shootout in Dover and the way the car is running and the way we're driving, we cannot wait.

[Claff]

Hey that Evo Super Shootout was tough. I liked my chances at getting into the 64-car shootout when there was a 90-driver entry, but when it turned into a 130-driver entry with a lot of familiar names I knew my battle was an uphill one.

The course seemed to favor high HP/high grip cars and us little wheezers on street tires did not fare well. I wound up third in class competition on Saturday and far away from the cut to make the top 32 in PAX to get into the shootout. Sunday we got two more shots and I couldn't improve further, again not even close to the top 16 that would gain entry into the brackets. My last hope was the random draw and we failed there as well. That was bad and good at the same time: bad that our weekend was done, but good that we could load up and head home early after a couple of 100+ degree days in a parking lot.

Looking forward to next weekend's WDCR at FedEx Field and a return to being actually competitive.

Photo op with "Miles"


The missus


Me


Video of both Saturday's best and Sunday's best

[TurboTrucka]

Here's a couple from our last autocross, and if you follow the sccaforums, you've no doubt read the **** storm that ensued following it. Either way, I made some more progress with a still new to me ES Miata. Here's my 2nd run with a pretty good spin and my quickest, although not best driver final 4th run. Finished 6th in PAX for the day which is my highest so far. B.&H. Borowski didn't do anyone a favor with their Nationals performance last September.

[stick90]

I don't go to the sccaforums forums much but now you got me wondering lol.
What section is the apparent **** storm in?

[TurboTrucka]

The St Louis Region sub-forum. Just look for anything pertaining to event 5.

[4ceFed4]

Nothing great, not even my fastest run of the day. I did manage to document a run that was quicker by over a second with a nice single still frame though

I'll figure out that GoPro one of these days

SMF car, but wearing street tires (star specs) for this event.

[Claff]

Satuday's local BMWCCA autocross. I was third out of 14 in non-BMW small-bore



Sunday's Autocrossers Inc, same location. First me, then the missus