I agree, would have been nice to see some maxq data from Hershey. I know I was severely overdriving into a few spots and sliding it around too much...but it was just too much fun! That was also one of the most fun/entertaining autocrosses I've done in a while. I couldn't stop giggling after every run.

And stop hitting cones. I had just assumed you won STU until I heard that you coned out. You've been driving with me too much, my penchant for coneage is rubbing off on you.

DC PRO review?

That Flyers game kind of sapped all my motivation.

The cliff notes version is: car is great and I need to figure out/remember how to drive on Sundays at a Pro.

F#$%ing Penguins!!!

Event #6: SCCA DC ProSolo @ Fedex,April 1 2012

Setup (new stuff in bold):
-same (yay)

When registration for the DC Prosolo opened, I immediately signed up. I was a little afraid of the clutch thing, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be doing it in my Evo or trying to bum a codrive, but the event fills up fast so I wanted to cover myself either way.

Later on, Corey R emailed me asking about co-driving at the DC Pro. He’s a great driver and definitely knows a thing or two about making an Evo go fast, so I didn’t have to think too hard about it. It would be a great opportunity to learn, both about driving and setup.

Since Josh’s KWs were still out in sunny California, he was co-driving with Jerry in Jerry’s 06 STi - not as well prepped as his, but has all the important stuff. Yury came down from NY in his ‘06 “rally edition” STU car (lots of ride height) and Vell had his ‘04 Barrett Jackson STi (17k miles) out as well.

Another bit of background - between Danny K and the internets, I had formed a fairly healthy fear of ruining the clutch. Danny has said repeatedly he replaced the clutch in his old STU car once a year. I never had a real issue in my WRX - in 120k miles, I only had to replace the clutch once, shortly after (not during!) the DC Pro in ‘07. But this is a new car, making more power, etc etc. I even emailed a local shop asking them about whether they had a night drop box...

It all seems silly now, but I didn’t know that yet

Friday

After putting the Dunlops on and going through the standard tech and stickerification, it was time for practice starts. We did 2 each - he didn’t need that many and I was worried about screwing up the clutch by doing it badly. I did my first practice start with the ebrake on, because it had been 2 years since I’d run at a Prosolo and just flat didn’t remember to take it off That scared the hell out of me because the car launched like a FWD car and caused a bunch of smoke.

When I realized what happened and that everything was fine, I did two more practice launches. Both .8s, not good, but no clutch smell and the car took off pretty well.

Saturday



Corey drove first (again, I was worried the car was going to explode and he wouldn’t get any runs after driving all the way down here). After the first set of drivers, the top 3:

Corey: 63.561
Yury: 64.801
Josh: 64.825

Then I went out with Jerry from the 2-driver grid. I ended up with a 33.3 on the longer left course and a 31.8 on the right course. On the right course, I had blown the hardest braking zone pretty badly and according to the MaxQ it had cost me about .8. On the left course, I didn’t have a good plan in general, hadn’t dropped into the fast section very well and had to wait quite a bit to get on the gas. I was sitting on a 65.130 - quite a bit behind Corey but not far off Yury and Josh.

My mistakes were pretty fixable and Corey was getting good times out of the car so I felt pretty good going into the afternoon.
For the afternoon session, Corey didn’t improve in the hotter temperatures. Yury and Josh improved quite a bit though. After heat 2:

Corey: 63.561
Josh: 63.786
Yury: 63.938



I went out with a plan and mostly executed on it. I dropped down to a 31.206 on the right, and a 33.126 on the left. So I was .394 off Yury. Breaking it down by course:

Left course:
Yury 32.464
Corey 32.535
Josh 32.606
Me 33.126 (blech)

Right course:
Corey 31.026
Josh 31.180
Me 31.206
Yury 31.474

I felt pretty good. I had done exactly what I wanted on the right (nailed the braking zone while getting everything else pretty much right) and had dropped time on the left, but not as much. I was right there on the right course and just needed to get one good run on the left course to be in the hunt - maybe not for 1st, but at least a trophy spot.

Here are my best two from Saturday:


Sunday

The first-driver heat in STU was intense. Corey, Josh and Yury all started out with no-help runs. On run 2, Corey and Josh both picked up less than a tenth, but Yury picked up 3 tenths, putting him in 2nd - .144 behind Corey and .083 ahead of Josh.

Last runs on each course! Josh dropped .202 on the right side, moving him past Yury, and Corey dropped .305 to move his lead to almost .5. Yury improved on the left but only by .037, keeping him in 3rd. Corey dropped another .162 on his last right course run, but Josh and Yury did not improve.

Here are Corey’s last 2 runs -


I was still in 4th after all this, but the margin was bigger - .744 behind Yury and .826 behind Josh. Going into my runs, I was thinking - there is an easy .5 on the left side if I could stay fast up the hill and drop into the crossover carrying speed, and on the right I just needed to run yesterday’s run but a touch faster (I was letting off a little in the uphill) and I had a reasonable shot at things.

I started off on the left, where I needed to find the most time. But I didn’t get a smooth turn up the hill, and I was late entering the slalom as a result, AND I didn’t drop into the fast section at the right angle. I came across the line to hear Junior say “no help” and see a 33.7 on the board - much slower than my previous fastest run. It hadn’t felt good but it hadn’t felt THAT bad. It turns out that was 33.1, not a 33.7, but I didn’t realize that until later. I was annoyed but at least I had a good handle on which mistakes I was making so I could fix them.

My right hand side was no good either. I got behind in the crossover going uphill, I didn’t stay on it in the sweeper, and I didn’t drop into the downhill crossover very well at all. 31.8, .6 slower than yesterday. I could feel the doubt coming in. Bad habit!

OK, last crack at the left course. I got a much better run up the hill (peaked at 59.7 instead of 56.8 mph) - I dropped into the slalom pretty well - and I dropped into the crossover better which let me get on the gas a LOT sooner. This run felt pretty good - but it was slower still, 33.304.

Right course - fully demoralized - same story, no help.

No video - I thought I had turned on the GoPro, but I hadn’t. All I have is the low rez MaxQ video.

I looked at the MaxQ afterwards and I was pretty confused. Here’s my best time - cj015.mqd - on the same plot as my last left course run - cj006.mqd.



Going by the MaxQ and aligning the runs, my Sunday run appears to be something like .5 faster but by the clock it was .15 slower. I guess I just can’t trust this thing? There is some elevation change at Fedex certainly, and the runs were different days so they have have been using different satellites, but that seems like a pretty big gap (.6). Usually it correlates fairly close to the real times, but of course it doesn’t account for the tree/reaction time/deep staging, etc... maybe this thing is just a lot less useful for Pros than it is for regular stuff. :shrug:

Anyhoo...

Corey went on to win two rounds in the challenge before losing by about .3 to Shane in the CS 370Z, who went on to the finals to lose by a hair to Mr Mr in pushoe’s SM Evo. Big congrats to both of them. I’ve seen a few Challenges but that was probably the most entertaining one I’ve ever seen - lots of close finishes and people really stepping up with killer lights.

Takeaways

Driving first... On the “needs improvement” end, I was pretty inconsistent in the looking ahead category - it’s still not automatic, I really have to force myself to do it. I also need to not psyche myself out in the middle of a run (recover - move on) and after a run (that’s okay, you still have some runs left, make em count). Corey is a good coach, but I was too far into my negative mindset to snap out of it. I also need to get better with the Pro launches, but I kind of figured I wasn’t going to nail it in my first Pro with the car.

On the upside - I was pretty good about not divebombing (after the first heat). I was sort of in the mix going into Sunday against some fast people. I had a decent plan. I mostly executed it.

As for the setup, no major complaints. Maybe some small suspension adjustments but that should be it. Or Corey is being too nice and the car sucks Oh, and I'm not afraid of the clutch thing anymore. I think I might have only smelled clutch once. I'm hoping to be able to do Toledo. It'll be nice launching without the e-brake.

What’s next

There’s a DC event at Fedex in May and then the Northeast Divisional is the next weekend.

Car wise, I’m on the hunt for some Sparcos. They’ll be more comfortable than the stock seats (seems crazy, but for whatever reason, the Sparco Evo works really well for me) as well as holding me in better. Since I bought the car I’ve noticed my left arm is often killing me after my runs and I think it’s because I’m bracing myself off the steering wheel from not being held in enough.

Unfortunately the Bride FG rails have to be shipped from Japan (I’ll just put it on my tab at The Racer’s Edge) so it might be June before seats are in the car.

We love our Sparco EVO seats ...the days of bruised knees and sore arms are long past

You might alo consider the Buddyclub down-low rails (similar design), they're readily available anyways (we got ours from THMotorsports, cheap). And Buddyclub USA was quick to replace them 6 months in after we'd bent them up

Bent them how?

That's some rare Corey video... better save that in a vault!

I have the buddy club rails in my car as well. They are getting a little wobbly after last weekend (all bolts are tight).....but I'm fat so it happens .

Just read all 14 pages! Thanks for documenting everything, it's a good read and very informative. I just bought an 05 EVO 8 that I will be DDing as well as racing in STU at the regional level.

So what this means is that your car is now 2/2 in National competition...for now. :-p

Definitely a great drive by Corey and it was very nice of him to let me feel like I had a chance...until his last two runs of course. The whole weekend was a blast though.

Jerry's car was pretty good, but he was still running the stock rev limiter and the car had a bit of understeer in it. If I could have had my car, I'm pretty sure I could have left it in 2nd gear for the entire course with the higher rev limiter and 18's, plus the handling would have been a bit better. Would I have beaten Corey? Probably not, he would have just realized he needed to go faster and would have done it, but I like to think it would have been a lot closer.

Oh well, either way I at least picked up some 2nd place Pro points. And thanks to Jon Pomrenke down in TX, John Hale is sitting on some 2nd place points himself.

Yeah, um, I think I am going to stick with the Brides based on the feedback here

Welcome to STU! Do the rear diff first, seriously!


Yep, undefeated, though it's been other drivers both times. Maybe I should retire the car now and sell high?

I was really glad the drivetrain thing didn't become an issue. It wasn't fun until I stopped worrying about it. I could definitely see the push in your videos.

Oh yeah, I guess I should find a hotel for NEDIVs...

Ah ha! You do pay attention to this game.

Watching the video (which is very rare, I don't like people to see my mistakes) you can see that there was a bunch more time in my runs. The problem is I told John I wouldn't hit any cones all weekend so I was giving them a little "extra". That and I never did figure out how to drive the 2 different styles required on the slick/off-camber turns and the grippy/on-camber ones.

I was fun being back in STU again and I thank John for giving me the opportunity. His car is definately getting close and he's put alot of time/thought into the prep. It's a few suspension tweaks away from being a REALLY stout car.

Corey Ridgick

F#$%ing Devils!!!

Event #7: WDCR-SCCA @ Fedex, May 6 2012

This was the first DC points event of the year. Still not quite a normal DC field, but closer. My regular codriver (neological) was back, and Josh and Shane were both in STU, though both in borrowed cars. No video, I forgot the GoPro

The course was really fun, other than the initial "lots of harsh painful corners" bit. It was a patience section that I dealt with by leaving the car in 1st. I had enough MPH that I could stay in 1st and use the additional power to get the car to rotate through the slow parts.



Our course design team has a good sense of humor

The start and finish both involved a LOT of steering input.

We ran 1st heat and it had rained that morning, so Ben went out first. Car owner's perogative I had softened the car up completely and dropped the pressures quite a bit (34/32) but it turned out that it was almost completely dry so we just let the pressures come up with each run and set the shocks back up to most of where they would be normally.

After first runs, the top 3 were all dirty - Josh with a 62.7+1, Shane with 63.2+1 and me with 63.8+1. There was one particularly long straight that I hadn't gotten enough braking done for that cost me a lot of time - I thought I had started braking early enough, but not enough.

On my second run, I missed the braking zone a little but not too bad, and dropped a bunch of time - 62.5. Josh got down to a 62.1, and Shane was dirty again with a 61.9. Jerry was in 4th with a 63.8, Ben had a dirty 63.9+1, and no one else was in the 63s.

I came out of the car really, really wanting a seat. Bracing myself off the car was killing me! I can't wait until the Bride brackets get here.

On my 3rd run, I got a little impatient in the opening stretch and lost a lot of time. I also blew the big braking zone, though not for lack of trying - I got on the brakes really early but they didn't do much. Time to put the HP+ back on! It wasn't a great run otherwise... slower, 62.9. No help. Josh dropped to a 61.3, Shane to a 61.1 and Jerry to a 62.8.



4th run - time to get it all together. I stayed really patient in the opening zigzags, dropped into the straight at a good clip and got onto the brakes REALLY early and it turned out about perfect. I wussed out a little on "Piccione Ripoff" and a little bit past "Oops" trying to keep it clean. I came across with a 62.0. I was pretty happy with most of the run but was shooting for a 61.5. The 62.0 landed me 3rd out of 16 in class, and 26th in PAX out of 231. A 61.5 would have slid me up to 16th. Josh finished 5th and Shane finished 14th, for reference. Again... in borrowed cars

I did a ridealong in my friend / former codriver's S2000 in the afternoon and realized I had been entering "Why is my car squealing" at a terrible angle. It had felt like I was waiting forever to get on the gas there, entering the "yellow eyeball" section, but I was too focused on other stuff and forgot to fix that. I was losing a ton of time there not spending time accelerating. Ah well.

Next event is the divisional. Josh and Shane will be back in their normal car, so it will be a good test for sure.

Okay, going to try to catch up in a hurry here, definitely trimming some detail. I am sure no one will complain

2012 Northeast Divisional

I should have written this up earlier... a lot of the details are gone.

I did 8 runs at the test and tune on the first day. New surface and all that. After playing around with shocks, I ended up landing at slightly softer than normal, about one click all around. Or so I thought.

Day 1 - my raw times got worse every single run. 61.0+1, 61.2, 61.5, 62.1. In something like 9 years of autocross I don’t think I have ever done that (barring weather). Pretty disappointing. 1.6 off Shane, 1.3 off Josh. I was pretty much driving straight at every sucker cone on the course and there were several of them. I wrote off day 1 pretty quickly and focused on day 2.

Day 2 was cancelled for reasons outside the SCCA’s control. It was a tragedy - won’t rant about it here as I have done enough of that, but more information is here:
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012...-motorcyclist/

Event 8 ½: WDCR SCCA Rallyx @ Summit

Having owned so-called rally cars for a while, I had wanted to rallycross for a while. Just not in my own car. The stars lined up for a codrive on a weekend when there were no solo events, so I decided to give it a try:



Rallycross, at least where we are, has three prep levels and three drivetrain layouts, creating nine classes:

Stock (similarish to solo stock - rally tires not allowed, just winters/all seasons) - SF, SA, SR
Prepared (similarish to ST, I think - rally tires legal) - PA, PF, PR
Modified (everything else, I guess) - MA, MF, MR

One other quirk about rallycross is that every run counts. So every mistake counts, too. It’s definitely a different strategy.

The car I was running was an SA car but since it was already being driven in SA by two people I had to run in PA against people on rally tires. I ended up next from last in PA - but in the afternoon, my best time was the 3rd best SA time, which was kind of encouraging. You get into a rhythym pitching the car back and forth. It’s definitely fun. Especially not in your own car.

Working, however, sucks. The dust, the gnats, etc etc. I would rather work a 3 hour shift at any autocross than a 1.5 hour shift there. The classing system isn’t that great - no real distinction in class between models - a stock STi and a stock 2.2 Impreza L are in the same class. The short version is, it’s fun, but it doesn’t have the infrastructure that would make me want to build a car for it.

Event 9 - WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex - 6-3-2012

I don’t remember this event somehow. I finished 2nd in STU (Shane was driving but Josh was not), 24/221 in PAX. Okay, but not great - 1.5 sec behind Shane.

Event 10 - Autocrossers Inc @ Waldorf - 6-16-2012

This was kind of two events, kind of one event. AI does this once or twice a year - they have two autocrosses, separately scored, on different courses, in one day. The results are not combined. As an AI member (I do the website) I run “pro”, despite the title and its obvious inaccuracy when it comes to my driving

Waldorf, due to its configuration (strange shape, lightpoles, etc) is usually very sweepery, not as much in the way of slaloms. The course was pretty straightforward. Unfortunately my GoPro, etc were all dead so I don’t have any video.

I was chanting to myself to look ahead and to brake early, trying to build better habits. I only got one walk on each course though, as I had to cover the gate for decent chunks of the day. In retrospect I have to wonder if that helped (forcing me to look ahead more than I might have if I had the course memorized).

Cliff’s notes:

Morning event: 2nd in Pro (out of 16), 2nd in PAX (out of 79). Another .15 and I could have had top PAX.
Afternoon event: 1st in Pro (out of 16), 2nd in PAX (out of 77). I had top PAX until the verrry end of the last heat and Jerry snagged it with a great 4th run. I can’t be mad though, I know I made fixable mistakes on that run and need to keep working on consistency.

It was a smaller event but still a nice confidence builder. The Pro class is pretty good, and while we were missing a few folks who were at Devens, there are still some very fast people in that group. I’m going to blame the course also Waldorf does force a more pointy-and-shooty type course.


Event #11: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex, 6-23-2012

This event was promising. The course was very go slow - now go fast - now go slow - again, not sure if it was to the point where the STis would have to shift to 3rd or not but it also meant having to dig out of a bunch of slow corners. After a lot of coursewalks and some discussion with Danny I figured I had a plan. There were a bunch of sweepers in the middle of the course that could either be taken in the purest point-and-shoot way or a more momentum’y way. I remembered from an earlier Fedex event when Shane rode along that I shouldn’t over-point-and-shoot and try to preserve speed more than my normal, wrong, instincts would direct me to do

After 2 runs, Josh had a dirty 61.9, Shane had a clean 62.1 and I had a dirty 62.9. That’s pretty much been the spread all year - about a second or so off both those guys. I tried to coast less in the middle of the course, and made a really conscious effort to stay ahead, in all the big connecty sweepers in the middle of the course. This made a huge difference - after 3rd runs, it was Shane 61.6, Josh 61.9, and me with a 62.1. 6 tenths off - much closer than usual - but with 4th runs to go. Shane ran another 61.6 but dirty, Josh ran a slightly faster 61.9 and I had a run that was promising but I screwed some stuff up at the 90% mark and hit a cone, running another 62.1 but dirty. I was pretty shocked - I hadn’t been that close to either Josh or Shane since the STX days. I figured it was mostly the course, which definitely limited the creativity of the drivers. There were not a lot of challenging key cones or visual tricks or sucker cones - it was pretty straightforward. Nonetheless I was psyched that on such a course I could execute well enough to keep up. I ended up PAX’ing 15/168.

Event #12: WDCR/SCCA @ Fedex, 6-24-2012

After having a pretty good event on Saturday, I wanted to put together a 3rd straight good event for Sunday. The course was the Saturday course but backwards, which made it trickier and definitely tighter.

The good news was that despite sucking in regular competition runs, I still managed to pull off 2nd. The bad news is that Shane was running in STR since he couldn’t stay for the afternoon, and I was still a ways off Josh - 53.3 for him, 54.4 for me. Shane had a blistering 52.9 in an STR NC Miata, which would have required a 52.5 in an STU car to match - yikes! The course was definitely STR friendly though compared to bigger/wider STU cars. Usually an S2000 wins STR in DC.

I was pretty disappointed, so I decided to sign up for some fun runs. I went wayyy more aggressive everywhere and tried a different strategy in the middle - less pointy and shooty - after working during the first half of fun runs and watching what people were doing and not doing.

My 3rd fun run was a 53.7. My last fun run was a 53.5! I am not 100% sure it was clean - the course was not being reset 100% since there were only 5 workers to cover the entire thing, and you can see me run over a downed cone about 75% of the way through - but whatever, I had gotten a raw time less than .3 off Josh’s best clean time and .6 off Josh’s best raw.

Heres the last fun run - a lot more aggression everywhere - and definitely some mistakes and sliding early on:


The problem is, it took me 8 runs to get there. I need to get that kind of aggression going a lot earlier.

Finally, a seat!

Driving one of these things with the stock seats kind of sucks. I had Sparco Evos in my old WRX and really loved them, even on long trips. After a lot of research I ended up going with Bride FG rails, but they had to come on a boat from Japan, which took roughly forever. As soon as they did though, I made my way over to OG Racing to get a seat.

The install was pretty easy - I did need to get some random bolts and washers from Home Depot since I didn’t have the official Sparco hardware. Re-researching this I need to verify the grade of the bolts I bought. But it fits!



Oh yeah, new camera. Takes much better garage pictures

Judging by what I have seen, I would not be surprised to see STR pax end up faster than STU, their narrow frames and weight may well make up for the last of awhp in STU. I see you are registered for the Toledo Pro, how about the Peru Tour the week after?