SCCA Kansas “Halloweenie” event. roughly a 1mile course . . . very technical, lots of twisties, a corkscrew, 2 slaloms (one low speed and short and one high speed and long, very very very tight corners and some nice short burst straits that almost get you to 3rd gear. I had a BLAST! not to toot my own horn but i was one of 3 rookies at their first event, both the other guys couldn’t pull within 2 seconds of my slowest time of 64 seconds (which was my “learn the course” run). knocked off 2 seconds from that with run 2, and shaved another 2 seconds off that for the 3rd run to finish with an event best of 60.43 or something like that (a hair over a minute):burnout: . that was good enough to beat all 4 WRXs by at least 1.5 seconds,:gunleft: all veteran drivers. i caught the eye of the leading points drivers for both dstock and dstock prepared (who also let me borrow his helmet). and finally during the fun runs at the end, i lost control during one lap and left the course for a second. the timing official told me that had i been able to hold that turn i would have probably been able to pull off a 58-59 second run. pretty damn good fro my first time out and all this with a full tank of gas (didn’t think about it when i was filling up).
i learned this much about my car:
*when autoxing . . . run with a 1/4 tank of gas
*needs more rear swaybar (probably ITR)
*needs more stickier tires (Yokohama Advan A048s)
*needs more compression (Going to look into a final CR of 10.5:1)
*needs more overall body rigidity (rear lower tie bar, cpillar bar, and some fender braces
For SCCA stock classes, you can run a DOT race tire. Try to pick up some cheap (stock sized) wheels and throw some race rubber on. It makes a pretty dramatic difference. This is what i do with my Camaro (sorry gang, my 'teg is my Winter car ).
Just pay attention to the rules so you don’t get put in a class that’ll get you dominated. If you plan on moving to another class, try to prep the car to the limits of that class. When it comes to SCCA SOLO, unless the rules specifically state you can do something, you can’t do it.
I wish we had the room for a mile long course up here. Sure, it’s big Alaska and all, but not too many large paved areas around this place. I’d love to see what my Z28 would do! I pull 104-106 traps on the drag strip. Longest auto-x course we’ve had is maybe 1/3 mile, still manage to get up to about 50mph.
Don’t worry about learning too much to prepare for your first time out. Just go out and do it! I’ve found that most of the people that do this stuff are out for a good time and are more than willing to help new people… man, i had NO clue what i was doing my first time at an auto-x. Just go have some fun, speed will come later!
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