| February 13, 2000 Our autocross for February was
another to take advantage of the incredible amount of space available to us at our new
location. If you haven’t seen it yet, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
It’s so much cleaner and so wide open we have been able to design tracks large enough
to safely put three cars out a time. This is quite a help since turnout has been so
outstanding. The two events held this year have both had 72 cars!
Sadly, the only regular competition
in A Stock is a veteran in a Porsche 911. Although the numbers of cars in A Stock are few,
the 911 and my S2000 seem pretty evenly matched. I am still running my street tires and
although the 911 usually runs Autocross "R" tires, this weekend he was running
regular street tires just like me! Franceen was running her GS-R again and like always I
tried to set up the car to oversteer a bit more. Oversteer is not usually desirable on the
street, but on the track, we needed to get the car to turn around the tight corners. To do
this I drastically varied the tire pressures setting the fronts much higher relative to
the rears.
I made further changes to the
suspension alignment for the S2000, my negative camber settings are at the limit of the
factory range of adjustment! This equates to –1.5 degrees on the front, and –2.6
on the rears. For those of you not familiar with what all that means, it’s pretty
simple. Kneel down and look at your car from the front. On most cars the tires will be
straight up and down. This is 0 degrees camber. On my car, the suspension setting changes
we’ve made cause the tires to "lean" inward slightly at the top. Normally
this would put less rubber in contact with the road cause excessive wear on the insides of
the tires. However, with the high-performance driving we are doing, this inward
"leaning" will allow more of the tire to be in contact with the road when
cornering. ( see diagram)
|
Although the S2000 is
set up with a very stiff chassis, the demand of Autocrossing can make almost any street
car lean in the turns! |
Compared to last month’s runs, this
was a very good weekend. The changes we made really worked. I never came close to spinning
the car, and the car handled very predictably. My first run was a good 85.339 and I was
feeling confidant I could remember the course, and improve on the time. I had a good run
going in my second run, but a cone down in the last slalom caused me to change my line
going into the final turn. Even with that setback I improved on my previous time, but
since the track was not set up I was granted another try at the course. On my third run,
(second that counted) I made a big error before the first slalom, this caused me to run
wide going into the slalom and THAT caused me to come out on the wrong side. Still mad at
myself, I lost concentration and missed a gate, aborting my run. I felt the car starting
to slip a bit more and when I checked my tires, I found the reason why. The first three
trips through the course had heated my tires up to 48 pounds! I bled some air out (down to
40 lbs front and rear) and went back out. Maybe it was the distraction of working on the
car in the pits, maybe the changes really helped the car, but the next run got down to
80.222, and my final run was a quick 79.822! For the first time ever I had the fastest
time of the day. During the next three sessions, I would watch 6 people beat my time, but
by the end of the day I was rewarded with the 7th best time out of 72 cars and
first in A Stock. I never placed that high with the MR-2, and I even ran that car with
"R" compound tires as opposed to the street tires I am still running on the
S2000.
Fran won her class against a Toyota
Celica, but to be fair, he is just getting started and it was only his second or third
time out. We set her car up with much more air pressure in the fronts, about 7 psi more!
This made her car want to brake the back tires loose and helped her "rotate" the
car in the turns. The new run schedules have all the stock classes running at the same
time, and because of this, I couldn’t watch Fran run her car. The corner workers told
me she had the car up on three wheels in some of the turns. Way to go Fran!
Next month we have the regular
autocross followed by the Runoffs for those who qualify. Oh boy, a Sunday with 7 runs! I
can’t wait.
March 12, 2000
Our March Autocross
was two races in one. There was the "regular" monthly race but there was also
the season ending runoffs. This was a special race for the competitors who competed in at
lease 6 events over the previous year. Since both Fran and I qualified for the runoffs we
had the opportunity to run quite a bit more than usual. In the regular autocross I had
more people to race with the Porsche 911 (with new BFG R-1 tires), a Porsche 968, and a
BMW Z3 2.3. The problem was, my original Bridgestone S-02 tires are nearing the end or
their useful life. This meant I had less grip than I’d gotten used to. Pretty amazing
huh? In the 5 or 6 months I’ve owned this car, I spent the first few getting the feel
of the chassis, and learning what tire pressures work best for my driving style, and just
when I feel like I’m getting the hang of it, the tires start to fade.
The course was very large and there were
three long straightaways connected by two large sweeping turns. The fast sections required
that I shift out of first gear just before the braking zone for the sweeping turns. This
was a difficult choice since I’d have to go back down a gear almost immediately, it
was either that or ride the rev limiter till the corner. I chose to shift to second. My
first run of 65.158 was a solid first run, unfortunately it would be my fastest. On my
second run I literally forgot the one of the turns and ran wide and missed a gate, DNF for
the second run. The third run was a repeat of the first, only this time I ran over an
innocent cone and not a gate. To make it worse, I took out a second cone towards the end
of the run. This netted me a 69.445. My final run was clean (65.158), but a missed shift
caused me time and I just never got good traction in the fast sections of the track. The
high speed nature of this track looked like it would be tons of fun, but it proved to be a
bit of a handful because for the first time I was spending a lot of time in the meaty part
of the S2000’s powerband. This introduced a lot of new handling variables I
hadn’t had to deal with in the lower speed autocross events we’ve had before.
All in all, with over 84 cars competing, my best time got me to 19th in raw
times. A good result for street tires, but I always feel bad when my first run is the
fastest.
| Quick transitions are a must in
this short slalom, note how I'm already starting to set up for the next cone. |
|
Franceen did it right, steadily improving
her times with each run: 76.017, 74.589, 73.720 and a best of 72.815. No cones, no fuss,
no muss and a 61st out of 84 final placement. It is noteworthy that her PAX
adjusted score put her in 31st place overall and second in G Stock. Lately
she’s be contending for the "three wheel cornering" title with the VWs, and
the Neon ACR so I’m confident she’s getting a lot out of her car.
The Runoffs used the same track but ran in
reverse direction! We only got three runs at the track this time around so you had to get
familiar with the track quickly. I ran my first run, and thought I did pretty good, and
when I stopped they announced a THREE cone penalty! Three cones!? I didn’t even feel
one, much less three. Franceen later confirmed I just brushed the cones enough to knock
them over, with the penalty my first run was a horrible 72.751. I managed to clean up my
second run, but I hit the exact same cone (well one of them anyway) on my way to a 66.240.
The final run was clean and a lot smoother and would be my best for the day, 63.362. This
allowed me to get by the Porsche 911, my only competition in AS for first in the runoffs.
Fran’s times in the Runoffs were good,
but she was unable to better morning times. I found it curious how some were able to drive
the course faster in the reverse direction while others found it more challenging. |
  
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