124Spider

That was a fun day--beautiful weather, and six runs in both am and pm.

S2000s owned A Stock, taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd (ok, so there were only three entries; picky, picky. But it was competitive, with 1/4 second separating first from last).

Liggy played Harlam Globetrotters to his friend's New York Generals in Improved A.

Liggy and I traded cars for a run; Jeff took one look at me in his car and started laughing, since I would fail the "broomstick" test by about six inches. And I laughed when I saw him in a dirty car (mine).

I'm pondering whether to autocross this weekend at Packwood, or take the All-Trac down to Portland for a rallycross school (of course, I'm not at all sure that the All-Trac would survive the round trip to Portland and a weekend of rallycross).

Optikal

Mark, a rallycross is whole lot of fun...but you better make sure the car can take the punishment or you are going to be stuck again. P)

lig

It was funny seeing your helmet towering over the windshield and roll hoops.

I thought it was pretty fun switching cars - the AP2 definitely has more torque down low.

Maybe the best of both worlds would be AP2 block w/ AP1 ECU. My car felt a bit more predisposed towards oversteer but the difference wasn't nearly as dramatic as I thought.

Excellent seeing all of the S2000 pilots out there. A good time was had by all.

Optikal

I had a really good time at the auto-x! And even with my sucky Kuhmo's I was 2 seconds behind David's best time... Yeah! I would love to get some good tires some day and see what all the fuss is about.

The course was nice and tight. Some of the corners were so tight I had to turn as much as I can and hope that I made it into the gate. It was equivalent to a leap of faith!

Weird thing was my best times were during runs I thought I did really bad in. I mean my ars was sliding all over the place and yet it was faster I guess that means smoother is not always faster.


Anyway, after all this I have to replace my chain tensioner... and after some research it looks like the job won't take more than 10 minutes. Thank goodness.

Lig, I called Cheney Stadium and the main contact is out of the office until Sept 28th. Hopefully, someone will call me back sooner.

mikegarrison

Glad to hear you guys had fun. I was even considering showing up, but I ended up going hiking up by the Mt. Baker ski area. There was a line of cones along the way that I thought would make a good slolom, but I wasn't driving....

mikegarrison

Smoother is faster. But smooth and "sliding all over the place" are not mutually exclusive. A nice quote from Speed Secrets: "If the car is handling like it is on rails, you could be going faster."

Optikal

Glad to hear I was doing the right thing!! Maybe I should enter the Monroe drifting event next weekend... I may have a chance, heh heh.

mikegarrison

If you think about it, it all depends on why you are sliding. Obviously, that means you have exceeded the static coefficient of friction of the tires. But the CoF of the tires actually increases for small slip angles, then falls off for high slip angles. So some slip is necessary to max out your tire performance.

You can get this slip by being slow and unsmooth (jerking the car into exceeding the static CoF), or you can get this slip by being fast and smooth. But if you try to be fast and are not smooth (or you just plain try to be too fast, smooth or not), you get into the "too much slip" region and the CoF falls off. In that case you just lose grip and time (and maybe go for an exciting thrill ride as a passenger in your own car).

Optikal

I did an autocross school once and had a guy nicknamed "Fast Mike" as an instructor. After riding with me a few times we switched and he decimated my best time by 4 seconds. However, I noticed that we slid through each corner and was not smooth at all. His steering inputs were very erratic and he was constantly giving a little flick of the steering wheel to gather in the back end in each turn.

Actually it more like we began a drift, Fast Mike would get the back end back in line with the turn so the drift didn't become an excersize of losing speed and momentum. So apparently, Fast Mike was able to push the tires to their limit, induce a drift, but had enough skill to not let the drift get out-of-hand, and still use the tires to their max.

Ultimately, I thought his driving style seemed to defy everything I have learned in my limited span of racing.

WRS2K

Autox dudes... visualize this...

i'm heading N on 405 and taking the exit to get to 520W. there's a sweeping left and then it sweeps back to the right and then left again...

that first sweeping left is a fun turn because you're going hwy speeds and unless there's a traffic jam up front, you're pretty safe from other cars, cops etc.

so i tend to take that a bit faster (rare, but i have done it) because it goes under the hwy and it just is a good road.

now the thing is, i'm very green when it comes to knowing the limits of traction on my car. i have wide 285 series tires in the rear, but i swear i can feel the car slide a bit when taking that turn at 65mph or so... but i feel like i should be able to go quite bit faster if i had greater awareness/seat time going thru curves.

if i have throttle applied thruout the turn... is that perhaps a way to carry the greatest speed or is it setting up for speed before the turn, then fully off gas, and then reapplying it as early as possible the "better" racer way to do it?

i won't ever test the limits on that turn just because it is a public road, but would be curious to see how much faster someone with more skills/seat time could take that turn than me