I just came back from my second autocross in the S2000, and I’m pleased to say both driver and car performed much better. I’m still using my stock Bridgestone S-02s and for a while it looked like I’d need them. The day started off with slight drizzles and standing water puddles on the runway apron we use for autocross. My group was running after lunch, and the "fast" groups (street prepared and some modified) were running in the morning. I was doing a rain dance hoping it would force the others to abandon their race tires in favor of street rubber. Naturally, this would put me on more even footing since the rain is such an equalizer. Unfortunately, it was not to be. The track dried off before the first run of the day and my rain dance almost backfired on me. Just when we were lining up for our runs, a slight drizzle started but it stopped before it could dampen the track. Whew!

For my first run I managed a 76.054 (72.054 + 2 cones at 2 seconds per cone), I backed this up with a 71.484 on my second run. My third run was just for fun after I took out a cone early, so I experimented with more speed through a few of the sweepers and almost lost the back end, over corrected and almost lost it the other way! I ended that run with a 76.005 (74.005 + 1 cone). My final run was much smoother and I got my best time of 71.041. The fastest time of the day was the fully race prepared Datsun 510 with plexiglass windows and air intakes where there should be headlights (they trailer it to the track)! He got a 65.498! My times put me 12^th out of 61 drivers. Everyone in front of me was on racing tires and next closest one on street tires was all the way back in 38^th place. After the event my wife took two fun runs in the S2000, and got a 76 and some change. This would have put her around 45-47 for the day! If she had four runs, she could probably have moved up to the 30’s. I tell you this car makes us look good!

January 9th, 2000

Our Autocross for January was a mixed bag, on one hand I felt was getting more used to driving the Honda. I was also feeling optimistic since we had entered the weekend with quite a few changes to the suspension. We set the front suspension for negative .09 degrees of negative camber and the rears to -2. 0 degrees. The idea was to try to keep as much tire on the road during hard cornering. We were quite surprised at the amount of toe-in the factory had specified and since we know more than those guys in Japan, we decided to neutralize some of it for improved tire wear with our new camber settings. My large egos we have!

When I got to the track I saw that we had a large group of cars again, I also learned that for a change, I'd have a few cars in my class.  My friend came out with his BMW Z3, and the Red 911 came out this month.