Welcome to the big stage — for me at least. I took Friday off so that I could travel to Peru (a town in Indiana, not the country) for a weekend of head-to-head autocross competition against some of the best drivers in the nation. Emanuel and I pulled into town late on Thursday night, with today being dominated by learning how much I suck at driving as well as how much the car setup sucked.
There is quite a large group of people from central Illinois attending this event. There’s Clark and Dave, both from Peoria, with Emanuel, Rob, his mother Cathy, Nick, and I from Champaign.
After getting a good nights rest in a hotel suite that was bigger and more lavishly equipped than most on-campus apartments, Emanuel and I met up with Clark, Dave, and Nick at Grissom Air Force Base early in the morning. All of us save for Emanuel were going to do the Evolution School.
For $65, entry into the Evo School got you some instruction from a high-caliber autocross driver and what felt like a zillion autocross runs on the test and tune course. My instructor was a fellow named Sam Strano, a fast guy with a fast F-Stock Ford Mustang.
In the short time that he was with me in the car, he quickly pointed out my biggest weakness: while I did my best to try to look far ahead, my eyes and consequently my head were too darty, which translated to darty hands and feet. I had to make a conscious effort to “move my head smoothly” — an unusual thing to practice doing — but it worked, lopping off two seconds on a 32ish second course!
After my massive improvement in time, I got many runs one the test and tune course by myself, and I simply couldn’t improve on my best time. Once the school was over, Emanuel and I bought tickets so that we could continue testing the car. No matter what, we simply couldn’t adapt our driving styles to hustle the car quick enough through the course.
Consider that my best time on the test and tune course was 33.4 seconds, and that was on street tires. With race tires, I improved my time only a fraction to 32.9 seconds. Whereas I could approach the limit of the street tires and maneuver the car by balancing on the limit, I simply couldn’t get to the limit of the race tires. It was always a case of too much grip in the back, not enough in the front, resulting in frustrating understeer.
There was an unhappy surprise waiting for me when we changed tires later that afternoon: one tire had started chunking on the outer edge. I just bought these tires two months ago!
We took a break for lunch, where we discussed motorcycle accidents and stupid people in Youtube videos. We returned to Grissom where we simply hung out in the paddock and chatted with each other and met other autocrossers.
Emanuel started chatting up with some other C-Stock Miata drivers in our class and asked for advice. First bit of advice for us “you have the wrong car” and get a 2007 Mazda Miata MS-R car. Fair enough, but what about setup? Apparently, they recommended a very heavy dose of toe-out in the rear.
With that recommendation in mind, we borrowed a set of toe plates from Steve, the friendly Corvette driver sitting next to us in the paddock. Emanuel wrenched on the car and we put a 1/4″ toe out on both rear wheels. He took a quick test drive and reported that he was much happier with the car, as it was much more willing to break the rear end loose. We’ll see tomorrow if mucking with the suspension before the event (and without serious testing) was a good idea or not.
Car setup finished, we headed over to the course. Several course walks and registration followed. Emanuel, Dave, and Nick spent a lot time debating the best line through the course. I’m a simpleton and quite stupid, so I resorted to my usual method of memorizing key cones to “get behind” and deciding where I would anchor my viewpoints. At one point during a course walk when all four of us where together, I simply kept walking on, not realizing that they had stopped to debate the final section of the course; I then walked back to the start of the course, started another course walk, and found the others 10 minutes later at the end of the course, having not moved an inch from where I had left them behind. Damn.
We chilled underneath a tent chowing down on hot dogs when Clark joined us. With nothing else to do, we went off to a microbrewery for some drinks and appetizers, and then off to Wally World to buy a ton of waters for tomorrow. So yeah, it wasn’t much of an end to the day, but at least we weren’t stressing ourselves out.
I’m a bit surprised that we didn’t see much of Rob and Cathy that day. They arrived on site in the afternoon while the test and tune was still going on, but I didn’t get much of a chance to chat with them. Then there was a brief sighting during the course walk. I suppose since those two are together along with family, they probably chilled as a family rather than join us lot and partake in what was crude and impolite conversation.
I took a small selection of pictures today. I’m still kicking myself for forgetting my point and shoot Canon S90 — all I’ve got is my DSLR and its 55-200mm zoom lens, which is great for action shots of cars on course but little else.
So I’ll leave you with this picture of four cars decorated for the big day tomorrow. My car is easy to spot: not only is it red, but it has a distinct lack of go-fast stickers. Which reminds me, I need to put my decals on magnets for tomorrow…
