Gabe (gdmaxse) and me rolled up to the 200-car Philly SCCA event this weekend to represent the land-boats. Perfect weather, nice day to drive and watch. We bumped out of DSP this week to avoid the diabolical teal civic that dominates that class every event, and went to EP (my soon-to-be "real" class) where a VW Scirocco has dominated, winning 6 out of 7 events.

Gee, always fun to be sandwiched in between a Z06 Vette on slicks and a Lotus Elise. Makes me look even slower.



Our run group....as you can see, it was a pretty fast field that included 2 Z06's, 3 Lotus Elises, a 350z, 2 S2000's, 3 Evos, a handfull of STIs/WRXs, and 2 supposed national contenders (a 2.5RS and an STi).



The king of the hill in E-Prepared...gutted interior, full cage, etc etc



The challengers in E-Prepared



The course: it was a good course for the big cars. Not tight at all, very fast and flowing. Overall it was a pretty easy course, and a bit short for a lot as big as this one. I thought it was fun, but heard several Miata and Mini drivers complaining that it "sucked" (like I said, it gave the high-power cars a decided advantage over the low-power roadsters). In any case....we hung in there, and were both in the chase, though never closer than 1.2 seconds from the leader after any of the runs (the leader kept getting faster)

The results: Times aren't posted yet, but if memory serves me the Scirocco (which won the class again) put up a FTD of 37.8. My FTD on my 4th run was 39.2 I believe (good for 2nd), and Gabe was in the high 39's.

the Scirocco driver commented to us that it was "nice to finally have some competition, since the Scirocco had been 5+ seconds ahead of the rest of the EP field at previous events." Gabe supposed that with R-comps he could probably come close to the Scirocco and it's probably true. Then again, the Scirocco apparently has alot of work yet to be done on it as the season progresses. Doh!

Here's a couple of vids of my runs from in/on car. No music this time, tried to capture the sounds of the course/car/etc. Need a better external mic still!

Click here to see Video

More pics are located at:

http://s78.photobucket.com/albums/j8...ss%20Aug%2012/

Nice day guys, good stuff. The miata will be out there next year once the transplant is completed ...

next YEAR?? Hell, I'm going to be running events through October...

Irish, how much did it cost you for the day?

I would like to start going to events, but I wanna know how much money I am going to be spending, and also I think I will only really be able to drive tight courses so I can keep the auto in 1st. 1st goes up to around 42mph. How fast were you going in this course as this seemed like a pretty fast course.

most autocrosses cost $25-35 depending on if you're an SCCA member or member of the club hosting it or not.

the only cars that really ever run courses in 1st are Honda S2000s (9k rpm redline) and a few heavily-modded or FI cars otherwise. Running courses in 1st, even small courses, you will always lose time because it makes it alot harder to modulate throttle at those high rpms, especially in a maxima. You can see I redlined 1st at the first corner. The course I probably didn't get over 50mph or so, but I've been on faster courses. Even the small tight courses I much prefer 2nd to 1st gear. You'll have traction problems in 1st coming out of 40mph turns trying to punch it and then hitting the limiter. In the vid you can see I'm running mid-range rpms (4500 or so) for most of the course, and the maxima has PLENTY of power at that range to pull out of most corners, even slower turns.

At the previous event, a fairly tight course (with top speeds around 40mph) I did one of my 6 runs completely in 1st and it was a full 2 seconds slower than the other 5 runs.

the official results are up

http://www.phillyscca.com/solo2/resu...6/SO081206.TXT

vw scirroco 38.086
josh 39.345
gabe 39.986

and my pisc are

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/gdunn/AutoCross/08-12-06/

heres a couple highlights:

yeah i mean if i was within 2 seconds off that vw with kuhmo 711s on 6.5 inch wheels, i should be faster with some r comps on 8 inch wheels

arent r comps usually good for at least 3 seconds

Just put it in '2' or whatever Nissan calls second and have at it. When the course lets you be going straight enough to fully 'mat' the go-pedal, the tranny should make the appropriate decision.

Much of the time, you'll be cornering hard enough that you won't be able to use 100% throttle in 2nd either - out of 40 seconds last Saturday I'd guess that a total of no more than fifteen seconds of that could be called close enough to straight for WOT in either gear. Split that up over several different places; three or four seconds here, a couple more over there, etc., and even an eighth-mile dragstrip starts looking like an eternity to be at WOT.


Norm

Man i'm mad i missed it.

next time you should go to maxima stock class GS

it will SO help your index times.......I'm still surprised it just wasn't ALL Mini's...Josh I just realized you actually beat one of them...good job

Loser........in a Miata=Gay loser

Hey I got a PhillySCCA Pint Glass for 2nd place. Who gives a damn about index? not me.....

pics of said trophy???????

Or is that on Cardomain already?

Is this the Scirocco you guys are talking about? I took this pic last week at the PA States.

yep, that's the one.....she seems pretty hardcore autocrosser. She was telling us that her husband won't let her get another set of wheels until she sells some of the 12 SETS of wheels/tires in her basement...Apparently she built that car from a rolling junkyard chassis and also has a non-track Scirocco as a daily driver

Also said she has been doing some hillclimb competitions in the Scirocco too

That voice over the PA, haven't heard it in a while, unfortuneatley you didn't catch any of his usual sarcastic comments.

He had some sarcastic ones for Gabe:

"Gabe Dunn in the Nissan Maxima. I'll tell you, my mom has never driven HER maxima that fast!"

also he ragged repeatedly on teh VW GTI running in STOCK class with a carbon-fiber hood

haha i didnt hear that one, thats pretty funny

Darn, they gave a prize for 2nd place? I got 2nd in STS2 and didn't think I'd get anything. Oh well, it still was a blast.

He was also really ragging on the guy in the Sentra with the 007 number. All kinds of James Bond jokes. Kind of funny.

ensignb, are you going to the AI autocross at ripken this weekend

STS2? man...not another Miata driver on here

Gabe, I'm taking this weekend off but will be at the next event up there, whenver it is (need to check SCCA/AI schedules).

do you want to try to get in that bmw event on sept 23 at ripken... ill prolly go to that one then the one on the 24th in lancaster