The Pro Finale
Despite my terrible performance at the Detroit Region autocross in Oscoda, I was in good spirits for the Pro Finale. It didn’t take much to take those good spirits and chuck them out the window.
I pulled up to the staging lights to begin my first run. Right after the start line is a nice easy sweeping turn that then arcs back, sort of a big lazy lane change, before continuing on into a little slalom. I give it the beans, launch out of the start, and proceed to begin sliding as the car rounds the first arc. Fuck, I wasn’t expecting that! I attempted to catch the drift as I changed direction towards the slalom, but I sucked and couldn’t hold the car straight. Fantastic. In the first 15 seconds of competition at Lincoln, I’ve spun the car. The car was loose all over the place, and I sucked terribly for the Day 1 morning runs.
This was giving me flashbacks to the Pro Finale in 2014, wherein I was codriving with Chris Lin, and his first words to me when he rolled back to the staging lanes after his first run were “this car is really loose.” I asked him “where is it loose,” and his reply was simply “everywhere.” Dammit, I was supposed to have had the car ready this time around. Lesson learned, again: dialing in a setup at Oscoda simply doesn’t translate to a good setup at Lincoln. (Now, how many times do I have to keep “relearning this lesson?”)
Unlike last year, this time I remembered to bring some stuff with me in case I wanted to make setup changes. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring enough. All I had on hand were three sets of springs. I figured, the car setup should be pretty much there, so if I have to make any changes, they’re be relatively small ones. As it turned out, that was the wrong line of thinking. What I had packed into my tire trailer were all of the relatively stiff springs and had neglected to pack my softer springs or any sway bars.
What I desperately wanted to do was soften the rear by a whole bunch. The most I could do with what I had was drop the rear spring rate to 400 lbs/in.
So in between the morning and the afternoon runs, I set about to work. I measured the rear ride height of each corner of the car and made a note of them on some painters tape on the trunk lid, just in case I wanted to return to the original, corner-weighted, and correctly aligned setup. Then I tore off the rear shocks and swapped the springs, putting everything back together within 30 minutes or so.
For the afternoon runs, the car was easier to drive, but I didn’t produce any faster course times. The car was now controllable, but the car still didn’t feel all that good. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why at the time, though with the power of a few months’ hindsight, I know what was going on now.
Thus, another setup change. After I finished my afternoon runs, I pulled the car back into the paddock and made a quick ride height adjustment change. After my slapdash wrenching session earlier in the day, I had left the car with a slight forward rake. I dropped the rear ride height and took all of the rake out of the car. I eyeballed the rear suspension, and the alignment looked “good enough” that I decided that fucking around with the rear alignment was not a thing that I should do.
Meanwhile that day, the S2000 that fellow competitors Jon Caserta and Tory Benya was driving lunched its engine. After some scrambling about, they both managed to find rides to finish out the Pro Finale, with Tory ending up in my car somehow despite my making it perfectly clear that the car handled like shit and I wasn’t happy with it. Tory took it up as challenge to help me make the car drive less shit.
To her credit, Tory did do quite a bit to make the car easier to drive, primarily through some tire pressure and rebound adjustments, the only things that we could really do while the car was in the staging lanes or in the 2nd driver grid. Ultimately, though, I still didn’t improve all that much, even as the car got easier to drive, finishing towards the bottom of STR.
I was moping in impound with a bunch of other STR drivers when Tory and I began talking about what could be changed on the setup to make it better for Nationals. As I rattled off what the car had on it, she stopped me when I mentioned that the car had an OS Giken rear diff. She was absolutely convinced that the diff was one of the primary drivers behind how my car drove, specifically how the car always wanted to slide when using the throttle. She noted that her and Jon’s S2000 was running a stock diff; I polled the folks around me to see what they were running, and in the small group I had on hand, not a single one was running an OS Giken.
Tory also suggested that I set the car back up with an adjustable rear sway and abandon the idea of running without one in the back, in addition to softening the entire car up. Her take was that the car’s suspension was “bound up” resulting in the weirdness in handling when the car was in transition. Really, though? Bound up with spring rates that one would typically find on championship-winning STS NA Miatas? Of course, I didn’t have any sway bars on me, nor did I have my softer spring rates on hand…
So, what to do now? The car still sucked to drive, but one could drive around some of the issues now. I concluded that it was time to stop worrying about the setup and relax until STR ran during Nationals. With our class running on Thursday and Friday, and with it being Sunday evening when the Pro Finale finished, there was going to be quite a lot of sitting around and chilling about.
Autocross philosophy
It was during this period of sitting around and chilling about that I got into a short conversation with Ryan Davies about our frustrations in autocrossing. Like me, Ryan hadn’t had a very good autocross season, and he was thinking about devoting less time and effort towards next year’s season — making an effort to be less “serious business,” as the phrase goes in autocross circles.
I was talking about how all my efforts in STR this year basically went seemingly for naught, when he dug into his memory banks and recalled a conversation he had with Danny Kao some time back, where they had talked about the last time that they genuinely had fun at an autocross. Ryan then turned the same question on me. When was the last time that I had fun at an autocross?
Hmm, I thought, pausing for a minute. Then it became clear: the most fun I’ve had at autocrossing in recent times came when I was at the wheel of the 1966 Ford Mustang, a V8 slug of a car that would get its ass handed to it by a stock Toyota Corolla around an autocross course.
Exactly, continued Ryan. It was fun because you didn’t have any expectations.
Cue an instant flashback back to the last local autocross event before Nationals, the Detroit Region autocross at Oscoda following the test and tune. I had squeaked by with a win in STR, and by all means, should have been happy about it. Instead, I was thinking “if I had this much trouble dispatching the local STR competition, how do I stand a chance in hell in competition at Lincoln?” and being down on myself. I was definitely not having fun, so much so that even Kenneth remarked, “Gee, you’re even worse at having fun than I am.”
Alright then, I thought to myself. I’m not going to let my shitty situation get me down for the rest of the week. I’m going to drop the expectations and just have some fun. Who knew that Ryan fuckin’ Davies would play the part as my own personal shrink?