Yet another Equipe
Rapide Autocross, and the last of the 2001 season. This time
out at Mineral Wells Air park, which is WAY out west of Ft. Worth
Texas. This time an old un-used heli-pad was the target surface.
The turn out was rather good considering
the early morning rain ad general gloominess of the skies. When
I arrived I found plenty of people running in the TGS group including
some 6 cylinder Camaros and the ever potent Subaru WRXs. I am
in trouble as far as being competitive goes. Oh well guess I better
concentrate on just having fun and getting faster throughout the
day.
Initial walking of the track this
time takes a LONG time as we figure out this is not going to take
a mere thirty seconds as most previous ER events have been runnning.
There are alot of straights and two slaloms, that seem like you
can carry a very healthy amount of speed through. This course
will definitely favor the high power cars that can squirt from
one place to the other very quickly. In other words the Passat
holds a very slight chance of putting me at least mid pack, unless
I can just hustle that car through the turns flawlesslsy and get
onto those straights as fast as I can. Brake as late as possible
and get on to the next turn. That's my only change for some respectable
times today, as this car's weight will just not do me any favors.
During my runs I experience a huge
variance of tire traction throughout the day. Maybe due to a few
factors: 1. They are wearing fast on this crazy surface 2. the
temperature has changed 10-15 degerees since the morning 3. I
am just throwing too much weight into the corners and my lines
are bad. It's more likely a combination of all three, as I can
only blame myself and my driving line for my times, however consistant.
It seemed as where I would make a mistake in one run, the next
run I would do that one right, but botch it up somewhere else
on the course. I never had a really clean run, even though my
time eventually dipped into WRX ranges. the runs are taking between
95-97 seconds for me and there are some of the fastest cars pulling
in 70+ second times with the majority of high powered cars doing
80's and a small group of cars behind me in the 100+ second range.
I'll go ahead and balme the organization
of the event for me never really improving as much as I'd liked.
We had a heat, then would work a heat, taking at least 40 minutes
at one time then run again, then work again. So there was plenty
of down time between runs, and the feel for the course was easily
lost. That's the problem with "racing Taliban style"*
(Doug Hayashi reference), we are stuck doing a course and getting
timed runs without ever having run the course prior and then we
get flip flopped around between heats and can't stay consistant.
Some would say these are the ultimate challenges of Auto crossing,
and I agree to some extent, but it's hard to know where you are
improving and where you're just getting lucky. Sure experience
is key, but from experiencing run after run after run at the end
of the days I can drop, literally, seconds off my times after
about four fun-runs in a row. Oh well that's the downside to not
having the money to get out to a track event. You gotta do what
you can. And I think Auto crossing holds a certain difficulty
to it that must be admired, even if we are usually only hitting
40 MPH while "cone dodging"* ^_^
Anyway, by the end of the day I
ended up just about mid pack. My tires were shredded and my body
was tired...although mostly from the running around after cones
and walking. The Passat once again gave me a fun time at the local
Auto Xs, and I can't wait till the first Auto X of the 2002 season
arrives.
*= Reference to Doug Hayashi's
Pyramid of Speed. Here
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