In the past 3 years of going to Lincoln I think I've been improving my (rental) trailering game, carrying more spares, getting to know better places to stop/sleep, using google maps to save favorite locations so I head to those instead of going straight to the venue. The problem is google will tell you to use hilly farm roads and into small towns, which sucks and quite stressful. they have deer and others. Tire blowouts is to be expected especially for the rental trailer. I carry 2 spares now. my SUV has 'urban' tires and nobody carries my size. AWD so all tires need to match, so now I have a working donut spare, a full spare and 2 unmounted tires just in case. going thru small towns/stopping on shoulders seem to increase the chance of tire puncture. make sure the jack/tools are not under all your cargo. tire changes are really quick and easy. make sure your jack wont sink into the ground. those freeway shoulders are soft and uneven. Consider getting AAA if you dont have it
In Lincoln, I think I spent more time getting to know that town. I'm not sure if I really need to be bringing my bulky electric scooter - I think I only really need it going to the practice lot to watch but texas scca is normally situated near there

 

Yeah, I already have some mild anxiety about getting stuck somewhere or holding up traffic or something. It's a good call, sketching stuff out. Like the Ohio rest stops are very big *** vehicle friendly. And I dunno what shape the spare on the truck is in but that's something I'll take a look at. I also probably need to take my big floor jack instead of my aluminum one. I do have AAA though, thankfully So are you using Uhaul or renting private party? Like how do you know which spare wheel to bring?

 

AAA Premium Plus RV, whatever is the max level. 100mi towing. this guy towed me 125mi closer, about 1hr from Lincoln, to a Walmart Service center. I drove my evo from there. it helps a lot if you configure your gear/cargo for when the evo goes solo, like when youre forced to use the trailer jail

 

what gives me a bit of stress is the concrete barriers(no shoulder) in a twisty, uneven pavement of a construction zone at night. The whole of oklahoma is under contruction right now. my best solution so far is to upgrade the magnets of these and stick it on the sides so I can see the fenders of the trailer
lolz

I'm still working on something I can quickly wire & clip onto the rental trailer

 

yeah I'm sticking with the uhaul autotransport. it can be rented for 6 days for around $250 if its an in-town rental (means you return somewhere else. up to uhaul management to approve) or else its about $400, with insurance/road side assistance. I tried getting them to come and replace a blown tire but that eats up too much of the travel time even in urban locations, so I just do it myself. yup ya need a good reliable jack. I'm bringing 2 small jacks so i have a backup. it did lift a loaded trailer but I may not be so lucky next time. I didnt have towing issues the first time but my evo broke before the first run. tire blow outs every time after that. I learn something to improve on every time i go lol. my last blow out was just 1hr from start around noon at 80mph. I guess this trailer is good because I didnt even feel it (knock on wood)
uhaul autotransport uses 5x4.5, 14" load D tires. I got my backups here. I havent figured where to get ones with the correct hub bore
https://www.ebay.com/itm/135315173326
lots of blown tire stories in lincoln, even from folks with expensive setups. I have no idea why humanity hasnt solved this issue

side note: always keep an empty big gulp cup.

 

Great meeting you man! Also appreciate the ride along, was super fun & learned quite a bit. Keep it up!!

 

My next event was slated to be CCR SCCA at zMax. I couldn’t do the tour, but CCR puts on good events and it’s a good lot. So even though it’s a ~6 hour drive I decided to make the drive instead of doing something local. The big thing for me is wanting to get practice walking/analyzing/driving on a national style course.

One note, my car popped a misfire code on the way down; I cleared it and kept going. The CEL is basically perfectly hidden behind the wideband so it’s easy to miss. I headed down Friday night so that I could be onsite early; it’s about a 6 hour drive from where I am.

The course was big and fast, 60 second range, and I got plenty of walks in. I noticed a bunch of mistakes on my best Bristol runs I wanted to correct, like when I entered the opening slalom on Day 2 and didn’t backside the first cone. There was a similar element on this course, about 80% of the way through. And there were plenty of opportunities for patience especially in the first 1/3 of the course.

I worked 1st, ran 2nd. It was pretty hot/humid. I think I had 2x 20oz gatorades and 3 16oz bottles of water during my work assignment and then kicked off my run group with 32oz of liquid IV. I ran into @dominictoretto and offered him a ride later since I had seen him flogging his Evo while I was out for my work assignment.

First run, similar to my first run at Zmax last November, was way too aggressive. It took me a little too long to get the hint, though. I ended up pushing way too hard in the first slalom and going off course. OK, lesson learned, dial it back for runs 2 / 3 / 4. This could happen at a big event too and I would only have 2 runs to recalibrate.


Run 2 - cleaned up but not fast. 61.076. As a point of reference, Josh F in his DST (STX) BRZ had a 58.5+1 at this point. So I was probably 3 seconds behind where I needed to be to catch up in raw time, quite a gap.

Between run 2 and 3, there was some sort of timing issue. It was 35 minutes baking in the sun. I think I sprayed the fronts like 10-11 times. The front right in particular (the one in the sun) I could not keep cool no matter what I did. I also realized that I had forgotten to drop the pressures before run 2, and that I had forgotten to put my GPS antenna on the trunk so my Solostorm data was kinda useless. Just silly mental mistakes, out of the habit I guess.

Once run 3 came around, I dropped some time but still way off the pace. 60.135. Very discouraging.

Run 4, I made good on my earlier ride offer. I think the car placement was pretty okay here, but the run was still slow, plus I hit one at the far-away showcase sweeper. 59.8+1.


In addition to the cone, these are the other things I noticed afterwards
* 0:05 bogged launch
* 0:09 probably too far off the inside cone, pushed out more than necessary and added distance / made the entry to the next gate harder
* 0:34 I think I cut over a little too soon and compromised the entry into the fast slalom
* 0:39 didn't backside the first real slalom cone enough
* 0:51 definitely did not backside this first slalom cone enough either
* 0:57 a little too much distance here, compromised the next section

I ended up 15th/19 in the Pro street tire class and 30th/147 on PAX.

If you erase the cone on my last run, I would have been:
* PAX: 25th out of 147
* Pro: 12th out of 19

If you erase the cone on my last run AND drop an entire second i.e. incredible levels of generosity/absurdity:
* PAX: 13th out of 147
* Pro: 6th out of 19

Percentile wise, this was my worst PAX finish in ~ four years. In October 2021 I ran an event in the rain with Susquehanna region on 5 year old RE71s, and finished 57th/78 in PAX and 4th/4 in STU. And I got to spend the whole offseason wondering WTF was wrong. Then at the first DC event in 2022, with fresh A052s, I was 2nd in PAX out of 51 and had FTD and realized that the 2021 event was really just that I was running 5 year old RE71s in the rain, and that me and the car were fine.

The car had two other misfire events on the drive back from zMax. I dropped it off at the shop and they confirmed that something was wrong with the plugs. I really hope it was a combination of the heat and the plugs because the car seemed fine at Bristol (which was pretty similar weather overall) and felt okay in a straight line, but I dunno. The A052s I was running were my 2024 set, but again they were the same tires that had performed pretty well at Bristol. I finished the event with 74 runs on this set of A052s and still a decent amount of tread left.

This raised a metaquestion for me. How do people know when something’s up with the car, versus they just didn’t drive well? PAX percentile (taking into account level of competition, obviously it’s different at a tour vs a local) is the main thing that should be somewhat consistent between events (given roughly equal weather, course design etc). Like there are mistakes on even my fastest raw time run - I did my best to call them out above. It doesn't feel like 2 seconds worth of mistakes, I guess. I have a new set of tires on the way for the 8-10 event and will have a total of two events before nationals (plus some T&T time on Wednesday). I'm not concerned yet but really want to see better results in August.

 

 

You have quite a few "heavy hitters" at this event even though it's just a local. A lot of good bench marks that are normally at the peaky end of things.

I've ran an event that David Marcus was at and tried using him as a bench mark at the Toledo pro, especially since he should be slightly faster than a BST car at any given event. I was within a couple tenths of him on each course and that was a super hot/humid day, in which my car felt like it was down on power due to all the heat.

Something could definitely be off so I'd just check everything over to be sure. Did anything FEEL off? Handling wise, grip wise, etc?

I would check everything over, alignment, nut and bolt, ensure that everything looks good in the engine bay, etc.

Remind me again of your wheel/tire setup?

Could just be an off day as well - we all have those from time to time. Don't let it get to your head and use it as motivation to get the bad taste out of your mouth, at the next event...

 

Yep, here is PAX from the CCR event, he was 2nd:
* https://ccrscca.prontolivetiming.com/PaxIndexDay1.html

And here's cumulative Bristol
* https://cdn.connectsites.net/user_fi...pdf?1751834376

He was 29th across 2 days with a 87.635 - I was 70th across two days with 88.829 - if I give myself the .8 I plus-oned away on day 1 run 2, I'd be at 88.16 (46th overall), so a half-pax-second down.

(yes, cones count but for purposes of figuring out how far off I am right now, I'm mostly interested in raw pace)

The biggest thing I noticed is that the car was really pushy in a way it hadn't been at Bristol. Like usually when you stand on it at corner exit you get that little bit of yaw that helps rotate the car.. that was never happening. I stiffened the rear shocks a bit, but didn't jack up the rear pressure (the rear bar is already full stiff). Maybe overdriving so badly on run 1 just got too much heat into the tires that then never came out due to the ambient temperature? I dunno. Still at a loss.

I'm on 18x10 Wedsports w/ 265-35-18s so I do have less tire to deal with the heat on a hot day. But Bristol was also hot, maybe not quite this hot but close. And Nationals can get hot as well.

Tire Rack just dropped off fresh A052s so I'll be taking a go with those this weekend. I really like the simplicity of the square 265s (including the ability to rotate F/R) partially because there's only so much wheel we can run, but I do wonder how much I'm giving up compared to trying to make something bigger work.

 

Yeah - it definitely sounded like a lot of tire noise, probably due to the surface there, but the car did look more pushy at the limit especially compared to your 1st run. I feel like on a course like that, the pushiness would make you pay as it wasn't a flowy course for the most part. Granted, I like mine quite loose, not to say a little push can't be fast.

• It's very possible you could have overloaded those fronts, especially if it was as hot and as humid as stated. I've seen guys at a National level spraying their tires before they even take their first run when super hot like that. Unsure if that is making any difference or not.
• The botched launch had to have been multiple tenths for sure. 2-4 tenths probably.
• I would check the alignment just in case something slipped, as that has happened to me more than once. Take a good look at your tire wear too if you don't want to go to that extent at the very least.
• How you are coming off the brake pedal can definitely make the push even more pronounced. Are you left foot or right foot braking?
• When in a bind and noticing push, I would go up in rear pressure quite a bit to see if it helps.
• It's REALLY easy to overdrive the A052 in hot conditions and they just feel different when hot. It's not the tire to have IMO for conditions like those, but I understand you are keeping things simple. I hate to say I have all the main 200tw tires currently ready to go depending upon what's going on with conditions, etc. A052, RE71RS, Vitour P1 and CRS v2... There is something wrong with me.

 

And it goes without saying, but PAX is far from an ideal thing. So take it with a grain of salt. There are so many variables it can't and will never account for. I'd assume looking at the results that the first Bristol event you had, was right up the lower power, smaller cars alley. I do use it to see if I'm within the noise of certain, reliable counterparts that are pretty much always on their A game. If I'm a few tenths off of someone in overall PAX, I don't care for the most part, even though it's in our competitive nature to care. If I'm multiple seconds off, then there is some serious self reflection in regards to my driving and/or a pretty serious issue with tires/car or both. But I always try to blame myself first as we're always leaving time out there.

I get it, we have to have something, but when working with flawed data and many using it as the gospel, it just doesn't make perfect sense to me. How does one account for rain vs dry runs in the same day, course design favoring cars over another, running heat order (morning vs afternoon), weather condition changes, course condition changes, classing changes, developing classes, on and on an on...

 

we had that course (an anti awd turbo it seems) yesterday and I ended up at around 25%ile. it was a Divisional level crowd but even the locals were doing better than me. I think on my off-days my head is not in the right spot, distracted (no friendly face around), overheated, not enough bandwidth to cope. I have slight issues with my ankle, wrist, back and neck that I subconsciously mind. I need to do some light stretching. I was also minding new mods i'm testing and general bothersome issues, I did not spend a lot of time thinking where to get a positive gain but I did more on clean up improvements (slip & slide, overbraking etc, no cones). I think I should stop doing this, maybe treat every run as a fresh FAFO run.
A local asked me for tips going to Lincoln for the first time, I got nothing, except on your first time there keep telling yourself a few times "I've been here, I know this lot" . That might help on the subconscious aspect. I think anxiety slows me down

 

Yep, fair, I have newer datapoints now and basically crisis averted

I am pretty sure my driving wasn't awesome (caveats noted above) but my leading theory now is the car, probably the misfiring issue. Bristol was fine, yesterday was fine, and the biggest variable

FWIW I was running the same heat as David Marcus at the CCR event - all of Pro street tire ran together, but the broader point is well taken. Just in general, it's really hard to build a dataset when you get 3-6 runs at an event and maybe in a good year do 15 events (last year was 9 for me, some of those were multi-day though)

I 100% hear you on heat and general pain. I do get mildly tilted internally when it's 90+ and then it just takes a little bit of other frustration for me to mentally go into "ugh, **** it, do I really need to take all my runs?"

My right knee has been low-key messed up since like 2014, I need to go to PT but it's hard as hell to make time for this on a regular basis with everything else going on.

Like I said to someone yesterday in grid.. I love autocross, I hate summer autocross. It just happens that the Venn diagram has a whooole lot of overlap.

So far this year, most of my getting-faster run to run has been dialing the aggression back and being patient-er, tighter, less distance-er. I guess it's a positive of sorts that I can FAFO my first run reasonably effectively.

 

The next two weekends: drive to the beach (so no Chicago Tour), drive back from the beach (so no Finger Lakes Tour).

2025-08-10: WDCR @ Summit

I bought new tires for Nationals (A052s, shaved) and wanted to get at least two events on them before Nebraska. So I waited until there were two events left to get them mounted even though I ordered them after Bristol. (I should probably get another set of 18x10s so I can have two sets mounted at once, I dunno)

I figured they would probably suck a little at the first event. DC was doing non-comp runs in the afternoon for an additional fee so this was a good chance to do some runs, have them rest for 3-4 hours and then do more runs.

In the morning, the brand new, first-time-hitting-asphalt tires kinda sucked. Braking in a straight line was particularly noticeable… the car was having a heck of a time slowing down from higher speeds. I was having a really hard time being consistent. After normal runs were over, I lost BST by a tenth and was 16th/113 in PAX. I was trying not to worry too much since the tires were new. I had a 47.9 on my 2nd run that turned into a DNF because I went through the post-finish-box chicane the wrong way. A 47.9 ended up being my fastest run, but I was .7 up on that on my 3rd run before blowing the really slow turnaround.

On my 3rd fun run in the afternoon it finally clicked where I was losing all my time. I really wasn’t connecting the middle part of the course well: I was being too aggressive, being late for the righthander and being late for the lefthander, compromising 3 consecutive elements including the entry into the fast slalom. There were other things that weren’t great, but this was the biggest chunk. I finally did an Okay job on this on my 9th total run, getting a 47.2.


As a comparison point, Marcus had run a 45.9 in AST (and he also ran a 45.9 in an AS Cayman in fun runs - yikes!). But even that 47.2 was sloppy, something something scrubbing in tires, ok, fine.

Jack - who is consistently at/near the top of PAX in DC - was also scrubbing in tires and finished 10th in PAX. So (in retrospect) that was also a reasonable caveat.

My panic level was down from 60% (CCR) to something like 30-40%. Not a great finish, but in terms of raw speed - a) scrubbing in tires excuse, b) my main issue otherwise was consistency - there was some okay raw pace sprinkled in, just not all on the same run.

Only one more event before nationals - Philly SCCA @ Ripken. There should definitely be some good reference points here from nationally competitive folks. If I continue to be way off pace, I might scrub Nats for this year and resolve to get my stuff together for 2026.