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Yesterday was the monthly autocross with one of the two clubs in the area, and it finally was ridiculously HOT! The HS class ran in the morning group, so then I was working on course for a long session in the afternoon. Even with eating and drinking a LOT of fluid and using sunscreen, I'm still beat today! More importantly, the driving was fun, and unlike most events, we had a TON of HS cars! With 4 drivers in HS, and 7 HS Novices, that adds up to about 11 HS cars I guess! Congrats to the top two drivers that beat me, Jeff Yatsko from NJ and Tony Mester from here in VA. These guys drove a Kia Forte and killed me! Jeff won a big SCCA ProSolo event in NJ earlier this year I believe, so he is a very good driver!
Personally I thought I drove bad being smoked by these guys, but once I saw the PAX results overall, I didn't feel too bad. Jeff was fastest PAX OVERALL out of 69 drivers and I was 20th.
Heat wise, I think the only impact on my car was that I was seeing more wear on the right front tire than normal, down over the little triangle wear-indicator on the Bridgestones, so I kept letting the air pressure stay up in that one tire, while I reset the others to 41 front and 31 rear, and then tried 30 in the rear on a few runs. All that scientific thinking didn't help any on my fastest runs, because I managed to hit a cone, and then on the final run totally brain-locked and shifted to 2nd way too soon. The cone run was 0.4 better than my best clean run, so I've got no one to blame on that than myself.
For the season, I'm up to 12th overall for the club championship, so without going into all the details of how that might play out, I'm on track to hit my target of top 15 for the year. Lots of drivers don't compete for the entire year, but so far we've had about 173 drivers show up for at least one event, so I feel like I'm making very slow progress in my driving. The PAX system isn't perfect, but it's at least a reasonable gauge to find out how you do in general compared to everyone else.
Sorry but no video of this event, my GoPro must not have recharged like I thought. Hopefully it's not dead! Here's a few shots.
1-Driver Meeting, me on the left
2-A Factory Five 818, their kit car that you build with Subaru running gear
3-The HS and overall PAX winning Kia Forte
4-Factory Five cobra
Personally I thought I drove bad being smoked by these guys, but once I saw the PAX results overall, I didn't feel too bad. Jeff was fastest PAX OVERALL out of 69 drivers and I was 20th.
Heat wise, I think the only impact on my car was that I was seeing more wear on the right front tire than normal, down over the little triangle wear-indicator on the Bridgestones, so I kept letting the air pressure stay up in that one tire, while I reset the others to 41 front and 31 rear, and then tried 30 in the rear on a few runs. All that scientific thinking didn't help any on my fastest runs, because I managed to hit a cone, and then on the final run totally brain-locked and shifted to 2nd way too soon. The cone run was 0.4 better than my best clean run, so I've got no one to blame on that than myself.
For the season, I'm up to 12th overall for the club championship, so without going into all the details of how that might play out, I'm on track to hit my target of top 15 for the year. Lots of drivers don't compete for the entire year, but so far we've had about 173 drivers show up for at least one event, so I feel like I'm making very slow progress in my driving. The PAX system isn't perfect, but it's at least a reasonable gauge to find out how you do in general compared to everyone else.
Sorry but no video of this event, my GoPro must not have recharged like I thought. Hopefully it's not dead! Here's a few shots.
1-Driver Meeting, me on the left
2-A Factory Five 818, their kit car that you build with Subaru running gear
3-The HS and overall PAX winning Kia Forte
4-Factory Five cobra