Corvette Club Autocross - Sat, July 19th

Here is my Best Run

Here is my Spin-out

The camera was outside the back window, above the engine so the sound is overwhelming at times.

Tank slapper!

Very cool, bro! OK, we need to talk.

Next autocross that you decide to let your @ss hang out,
try to sense the car's speed and/or the car about to
regain grip AFTER you dial in your countersteer. If the
car is slowing down, it'll start to get traction at the
rear at some point real soon. The thing is, the rear
will get traction when your front wheels are *not*
pointed straight. Now the car will want to turn and
you'll have a sudden reversal, aka, "tank slapper".

So what you want to do is to dial in your original
countersteer and then when the situation has changed a
bit and the rear tires are about to grab, start to slowly
undo your countersteering towards centering the wheel.

This is a very important skill to develop and it will
take some time to do so. I had to do this at ORP when I
was going 130km/h up a hill around a curve. Not just to
stay on the track - but also because a friend was right
behind me in his $250,000 car! No pressure.

When you can do this properly, it is smooth as silk.
Rear steps out, you counter and maybe add a little
throttle, short bit of time goes by, slowly undo the
correction and you're zipping along again. Now you're a
drifting king.

Nice driving, Colby!

Patrick, I had issues putting the picture in (had an error)
I will ask Colby for some instruction.
Al, I think my bigger issue was trusting the grip. By the time I got to the
point of the spin, the tires were very hot and unruley. I had not had that
issue there before at all and was definitely ill equipped. A fellow in grid
put some water on them for me but as it turned out, it was my last run.

Brian, looking forward to seeing you out there again. The PCA event is
coming up :-)

Ok. It is going to be interesting. Hopefully you can come out to the PCA
event and show me, first hand.

I made the "mistake" of mounting the camera behind me (so Al could see how badly I was screwing up ), and it basically destroys the audio quality due to wind buffeting the camera mic. The audio "auto-gain" of the camera goes crazy when this occurs, and the end result is audio that really sucks (or blows or whatever). IMO, the sound is just as important to a video as what we see, so next autocross the camera's going back to the inside of the windshield where the camera is protected from the wind and the audio comes out fine.

Anyway, having said all that...

HERE is my second run of the afternoon. It's not my fastest run... it's one of I believe three runs that were all 53.8, whereas my fastest run ended up being 52.5 something. This video has the least screwed up sound of all the videos I shot, but it's still pretty bad.

I was very impressed with how the Corvette Club is really trying to improvise and improve the event. Yes, they were having some problems with the timing equipment yesterday, but it's obvious that they're quite eager to change how their autocross has been run in the past. I was telling Brian that even the day before when I went to the track to assist with the setup, everyone who was there was so friendly and openly expressed their appreciation that I came out to help. I think they actually enjoy having our Fieros come out to their events. We're part of the same family.

And talking about making improvements, I'm hoping Colby is going to get a chance to update this forum in the near future, hopefully before he's running back to Saskatoon. Not only will we be able to upload images easily again, but we'll also be able to embed YouTube videos right in our posts. That'll really bring our autocross threads to life.

Edited by Patrick

AllanJ wrote: Generally speaking though, you're a bit late with your turns so your speed must be lower in order to hustle the car around the cones with each hard/fast half turn of the steering wheel.

Yes, that's something that several experienced drivers have told me over the last couple of years. For whatever reason, I often have trouble getting myself to commit to turning the steering wheel sooner. So yes, I'm aware of this issue... and I'm still continuing to work on it.

AllanJ wrote: I'd love to see the video of your fastest run to compare.

I've uploaded the video of my second fastest run, which is only 3/10ths of a second slower than my fastest run. I uploaded this one because during my fastest run I had both windows open, and basically there is no audio (worthwhile hearing).

I'm just in the process of using YouTube's online editor (doesn't work too bad), and I'll post a link when I'm done. It's a 3D video (as Gary and I like them ), but it can be viewed in 2D as well if you prefer.

 

Patrick wrote: AllanJ wrote: Generally speaking though, you're a bit late with your turns so your speed must be lower in order to hustle the car around the cones with each hard/fast half turn of the steering wheel. Yes, that's something that several experienced drivers have told me over the last couple of years. For whatever reason, I often have trouble getting myself to commit to turning the steering wheel sooner.

Maybe try this: on sections of the course where you have
a set of linked turns, try thinking of altering your line
so you start your turning earlier. So your turn occurs
over a larger distance. ex: 1 degree per foot for 100
feet rather than 2 degrees per foot for 50 feet. The
reason is that you can maintain a higher speed when you
are turning less.

Patrick wrote: In other words... turn sooner, and not so sharply... in order to maintain a higher speed.

Exactly! I think that is also one of Ross Bentley's
"Speed Secrets". The less you move the wheel, the faster
you'll go.

Patrick wrote: Colby and I were saying after the autocross yesterday that we'd both be interested in having you take our cars around the course at one of these events. It would give us an idea of what our cars are actually capable of when in experienced hands, and what we need to strive for. I think it's helped Gary a lot when you've done this with the 914/6.

Thanks ...but Brian may be better at that than me.
He knows your cars much better than I do. He just needs
to drag his butt out to more than one autox every few
years.

Gary has been doing great! I've been seeing a steady
improvement in his driving. I'm proud of you, Bro!

Here's the standings. There were a whole bunch of different spreadsheets sent out to the participants, but this one is the most basic and shows us ranked according to RAW time. I wish it listed the types of cars on this page though, as it's interesting to see what (more so than who) we've beat.