When is the first local autocross event this year?

[mmarshall]

Thanks for the update. We may need to have a build party at Mike's to get him back out there.

That may be a possibility.

Bill congrats on running well on Sunday. This may get interesting if Ned runs the whole season.

Using the event from last year is a bit skewed for my times as I was running a set of circle track tires as an experiment. They were rock hard and very slick. I was over 2 seconds slower than when I ran on street tires. I then changed to the Hankooks with an autocross compound and gained another 1-2 seconds over my street tires. So had I driven the same and run the Hankooks I would have been in the 45 second range.

The one event mid season that I ran so well was when my sidepipe came disconnected which gave the car much more power. I could not believe how well the car accelerated out of the corners. My new setup will be about 100 lbs lighter and have 100 more horsepower so I fully expect to be very competitive with Ned.

Heading out to the garage now for more welding!

 

[Mike's Competition]

It's really hard to predict if you will drive average, above average, or below average on a given day. And harder to predict how another person will drive.
I had one good course walk after setup. I drove my best time on my first run and spent the remaining four attempts trying in vane to improve on that run. I would have sworn that my driving was worse than average until the numbers and statistics were posted. Several people commented that they thought I drove well, and at the time, I thought that they were way off.

I would have expected Ned to run up in the 96XX ICP range, fresh from driving school. We don't have enough numbers for him, his one race in our region made a big impression and this event was a little worse.

I was noticing two things while driving.
The rear end was kicking out a little more than I wanted, meaning I was backing off to avoid too much drift. I turned down the rear dampers to allow me to push the car harder before it would swing.
On corner exit, the inside front tire was off the ground and allowing the torque sensing diff to spin open until the car tilted back down to provide enough resistance for the diff to act.
The theme after fixing the suspension has been to push the car harder until it either spins the tail or lifts the inside front tire, and then reduce the associated sway bar so that I can shove it harder and up against the limit again. A little less sway bar on both ends, and I should be able to pick up a few more hundred on the ICP, as long as I can continue having good days and avoid having bad days.