:. Racing .:. 2005/04/23 - Autocross
Results: None
Bad Pickles!
Every year, the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the BMWCCA puts on an autocross series. This is nice, since it's a good place to get seat time (6-8 runs), and also do some back-to-back testing on a course you get to see twice.
This was the first time I would be solo'ing on R25A tires, so I went in very optimistic, and turned out to be nicely gratified - the car was much more drivable with good, sticky rubber the whole time. My parents came up from Pagosa Springs to watch and say hello, which made a great day that much nicer. Sharing a hobby with loved ones really is great.
The final slalom leading up to the finish resulted in me having more fun than I've probably ever had since my first solo runs - amazing! Mike and I were able to take the entire series nearly flat out in the Radical, and the speed was amazing! Watching the car come up over the hill absolutely FLYING was tremendous fun to watch, and to do. As before, lots of folks commented on how fun it was to watch the car, and to ask what it was etc.
Handling-wise, the car was better - a bit more front grip than before. It still has a turn-in-wash-out behavior, that I know now seems to be related to the shocks, according to Joe Stimola. Hopefully this will be fixable with some revalving. I believe the R25A's lowered the car just a bit, as the splitter was now rubbing just a bit loading/unloading, so I think the car is now about as low as it can go. One thing is for certain, the wider wheels look great! I'll compare notes with Jeff on splitter-height to see if the slight damage I'm seeing on the splitter is due to body roll/dive, or due to cone damage, and go from there.
Also in the handling department, the car is still very rough over bumps, even with everything softened up as much as possible. Again, from talking to Joe Stimola, it appears the valving in the shocks is simply way, way too stiff, so there won't be much I can do until I just get them rebuilt.
The engine ran nearly perfectly all day for a change - a good sign, or so I thought...
Driving-wise, the moved pedal positions are allowing me to heel-toe my downshifts finally, so I'm feeling comfortable in that arena. Whether or not all the shifts are necessary remains to be seen - I'm not sure if the shift time costs more than the reduced power does. We'll see...
I also noticed that there is scope for me to stay much closer to the cones slaloming - the difference in speed from just staying closer to the pylons is very, very noticable. As I get more used to the edges of this car, with luck, I'll get better with staying close (but not too close) to the cones. Currently I'm clipping things a fair amount, so I'm still not quite right on the car's size.
With the car's fairly pronounced understeer still, I'm doing fairly well at finding the limit with lateral transfer. Braking still needs work, as there is still what feels like too much front bias, and the bumps keep knocking my foot off of the brake pedal. Both of these should improve with seat time.
The day had only one real bummer, for me, anyway, in that Feldpusch (Mr. Pickles) outran me in the car, which is frustrating. On raw time, he had me by a tenth, his 3rd afternoon run versus my 2nd, although I also tapped over a cone on that 2nd run of mine. My last run, I had a screamer going, but got greedy in the slalom and lost the whole thing - my feeling is that it would have been in the 57's, but we'll never know.
No real scores for this event - ran in X class and finished 5th, I think.
NEW CHANGES:
- Front lowered another 1/8"
- R25A Tires
- Set front toe-out at 1/16 total
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