Ran my second autocross @ Homestead yesterday. This time we had four cars in D-Stock and I placed third. My best raw time was about 1.5 seconds behind a WRX sedan, but I did kill a cone on that run. Pictures are up, my brother resisted the urge to zoom in tight on moving cars this time but it seems that he had some focus problems. Thanks to Chris B for the loaner camera.
I was grousing all afternoon that I need better tires. Someone chided me for blaming my tools, but… This time around I feel like I held my own against experienced competition despite the disadvantage of being a fat-ass rolling in a heavier wagon. Sure, more experience should make me a better driver, but the reality is that experience comes in miniscule increments — less than 4 minutes of track time per event. I could probably find an event every weekend if I were willing to drive as far as Tampa / Orlando, but 15 minutes a month still sounds like a slow path to improvement.
Tweaking the car to better suit my skill seems like a much quicker route. Traction is limiting my performance in the 180-degree turns, putting proper performance tires on the car is a simple fix.
Next Sunday there’s a limited-participation practice / tuning event that should allow 10-15 minutes of track time, and I managed to sneak my registration past their n00b radar. I’m planning to mess around with my tire pressure, in theory less pressure = more contact patch = more traction. I’m also thinking that I can dial-in some mild oversteer by running the front tires at lower pressure than the rear. For the most part the car is neutral but just a tiny bit of understeer creeps in at the limit. Understeer has never been a friend of mine…
UPS is scheduled to deliver my Helix kit on Wednesday but I’m concerned that the tracking hasn’t updated since it left California early Thursday. I’m not going to install the whole thing just yet, I’d like to get a trophy out of D-Stock before moving into Street Touring X or E Street Prepared. The Stock rules allow the cat-back and tires on stock-sized rims. Some suspension modifications are kosher as well but the restrictions seem to limit me to stuff I’d want to replace again once I change classes…
I’m back on the fence about buying another car for the track. The 240sx runs G-Stock where the Mini Cooper S owns. Any kind of turbo build is going to put it in a Modified class, where it may just take the class by default at local events, but it seems exceptionally stupid to spend $6-10K building a car that is essentially worthless and that I would have no interest in driving outside of the track (it would be a trailer queen if the tow rating on my car weren’t so damned low). The Toyota MR2 non-turbo (MkII) and Subaru SVX run in E-Stock where the Miatas are king, neither are good candidates for modification. The old Turbo AWD Eclipse / Talon twins run in D-Stock with the WRXes, another losing proposition. I’m not sure where they end up in Street Touring / Street Prepared but the prospects are probably equally bleak. A turbo swap into Modified might be cost-effective but again I’d likely end up running alone.
An early Miata in E-Stock is competitive and dirt cheap, but… at every local event I’ll be up against another fat guy that loves running Miatas in ES because the costs are so low. He is clearly a much better driver than I ever hope to be, so if I’m going to run against him it has to be purely for fun — trophies ain’t gonna happen.
The Big Spender in me says I should hang on to the M3 and go nuts upgrading the 9-2X, or take the proceeds from selling the M3, wait for a good deal on a 2002 WRX Sedan, and go nuts on that. The logic is that Subaru’s transmissions are expensive, notoriously fragile, and warranty work is routinely denied so I should keep an acceptable backup car handy just in case a tranny failure comes at an inconvenient time for my checkbook. The argument against these ideas can be summed up in one word: depreciation. Losing a few grand per year on a car that might be driven 20 days per year offends what little sense of fiscal responsibility I possess.
Seems that I’ll eventually talk myself into the Miata, it’s just gonna take some time…
