3-way autocross battle

[aansorge]

This past Sunday (October 20th) Salah Khuhro, Chuck Bower, and I went down to a Des Moines Valley Region SCCA autocross and had a hellacious 3-way battle. We co-drove each others cars thereby getting tons of seat time and pushing each other to drive to a higher level. The results? We all had a blast, learned something about our own cars, and learned something about our personal driving styles.

Some interesting points:

We each were quickest in one of the three cars. Salah won in his Type R, Chuck smoked us in my CRX, and I won in the S-er Sentra by a very slim margin.

The Sentra. This car seems to do exactly what you want it to do, has no glaring faults, and seems like a puppy that is eager to please. We all consistently put down good lap times and the spread between drivers was very small. Only thousands of a second seperated all three of us.

My CRX was the most difficult. It doesn't want to put the power down unless the car is in a straight line AND in second gear. It also has very quick reflexes and will snap oversteer in a heartbeat so you have to be ready (If you are reading this Pat Washburn, you may disagree, but all that understeer is now gone due to a new set of tires up front). Its brakes are also sort of sensitive and prone to lock-up. Despite all these flaws everyone agreed that the car is very fun to drive. One comment Salah made was that he felt very tense driving this car but always came back from the track with a smile on his face. Despite the fun factor, it was the slowest.

The type R was sort of in-between the two in terms of difficulty but is definitly the most capable. It does everything that Chuck's car does, but does it with more precision and has more power. Two things Chuck and I had get used to were corners approaching more rapidly than usual and poor braking due to the street tires we were running on. It is more difficult than the Sentra simply because it has a larger performance envelope, not because of any faults. Cornering grip with the Azenis was probably on par with our two cars on race rubber. Salah and I turned our fastest times in this car.

Salah had the best combined times by a slight margin, myself second, and Chuck a very close third. By the way, I was the slowest in my own car!!

Adam Ansorge

[StevenMosley]

Great post. Damn I wish I would have know about that event. I wanted to give the Beetle one more beating before winter.

[washburn]

Cool story Adam! I always learn a lot when I drive another car. It is hard to think of your car oversteering, but not hard to think of it locking up the front brakes!

Pat

[SalahK]

Other than the 2002 Nationals, this was my favorite event of the year.

The course design was by Brian Goodner who won F-stock at the 1996 Nationals. There were only 50 participants so Brian was able to design an overlapping course that allowed only one driver at a time. The course was all second gear for most cars and the speed ranged from 25mph to 55mph, the highest speed being achieved on an off-camber right hand sweeper! The best lap times for all three of our car ranged in the 40-42 second bracket. Although the Parking lot was only about 60-80% bigger than Midway, the course drove like a slightly scaled down version of the Nationals.

The first car went out at about 11:30 and we were still able to get 4 runs in each car by the end of the day. Instead of run groups, the cars ran in numerical order. Because the course used very few cones, we only needed 6 cone-pickers on the course.

The competition between Chuck, Adam and myself was incredibly fierce. This is one event I will never forget!

[chuck b]

Steve m. and all others, there is another event at the same site on Nov. 3rd. Check out Des Moines Valley Region SCCA website for details. the site surface is slippery asphalt, which is great for tire longevity. it's a haul to get down there, but Salah knows some timesaving strategies (i.e. blatant disregard for certain vector functions). steve, what mods have you done to put the arch-mobile into STS?
regarding the 3-way battle- it rocked! thankfully we had a fourth run or I would have come away a distant third, but my fourth run in every car was solid and consistent (all 3 cars were withing 0.3 seconds). I noticed that Adam and Salah are fast right away, while it took me awhile to figure out the higher speed than MOWOG situation. I bounced off the rev limiter right away on my first run when I realized that yes, autocross can involve shifting and that second gear can be a blast.
They both realize that had i had a fifth run i would've smoked them (talk is cheap!).
While i had the fastest time in CRX of us 3, i also took slow time of day in the previous run as i experienced the snap oversteer that Adam mentioned. This occured on a fast sweeping section of the course where there were two walls of cones- I nailed them both. After I re-started the car, I sat and waited a couple minutes before continuing on at speed since the course ran back towards that same part later on. The announcer mentioned a run of 2 minutes 50 seconds with 12 cones- yikes!
the type R is awesome! it would take me a few more events to figure out it's braking, as I've never experienced ABS. it's limited slip claws for grip much more powerfully than mine. it was amazingly fast on street tires- especially in salah's capable hands.

[Jerry Schro]

I only wish I had been there to see it.

We are not worthy. We are not worthy. We are not worthy.

Jerry:) :) :) :)

[Dennis G.]

It sounds like you had fun....but..."fierce competition"....and beating your competitors.....and trimming lap times...sounds like you were RACING to me!!!

[StevenMosley]

Chuck,

The Beetle has the VW Sport springs. They are about a half inch drop and are standard on the sport models. The car pushes like crazy and feels as tall as a bus when autocrossing it. On the plus side it is nice running a car that has torque.

I'll have to think about going down on the 3rd. How long of a drive is it? Guessing from the last time I was down there I would say about 3 hours. Am I close?

Anyways if anyone is in Saint Paul and wants to check out a site that might be an option next year. Check out my link below. The lot is over a quarter mile long and between 30-100 yards wide.

All Right Parking- Lot is raised off street level next to rail road tracks (http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?Pyt=Tmap&addr=&city=Minneapolis&am p;state=MN&csz=Minneapolis,+MN&slt=44.9801 18&sln=-93.263924&zip=&country=us&BFKey=&B FCat=&BFClient=&cs=7&name=&desc=&a mp;poititle=&poi=&ds=n&mag=9&mlt=4 4.942279&mln=-93.075470&off=nw)

[DCM]

let's get this information to Drew Baumbach, our sites/event coodinator.
He can make the contacts, and maybe, just maybe.

Otherwise there is 'MY DREAM'

DCM

[StevenMosley]

Already done.

I have talked to the company and they are open to letting use it, but I told them Drew would get in touch with them. What Drew would like to do before calling them is to take a look at the site. I would like to get others opinions as well since it look like it would be a great site.

[SalahK]

The three-way battle results are out on the DMVR website.

http://www.dmvrscca.org/s2_1020r.htm

[chuck b]

Neat- it looks like they've got the correct times, rather than what was posted at the site.

Notice that in G stock, there's a couple more great drivers in a Probe GT and a Neon RT (not even an ACR!). And that doesn't even include the Nationals trophy guy that usually runs in his Celica GT. They were just a few ticks behind, without the benefit of a gajillion runs that we got. Since it took my last run with three cars to turn good times, they both could both have beat me if I ran just my car.

Overall, less than 0.9 seconds PAX time between the Adam's fastest and my slowest for all 9 results!

Adam had the fastest PAX time overall with the Sentra SE-R because the car simply ROCKS!

[chuck b]

oh that's right, the Type R was on street tires and was basically as fast, so I change my answer to ---the Type R rocks!