The official Auto-X thread

Started by MX793, August 21, 2016, 06:31:45 PM

MX793

Just got back from helping with course setup at our new venue.  I'm guessing times will be between 65 and 80 seconds per run, depending on car and driver, with no sections of the course repeated.  Average speeds should be pretty high, too.
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Rich

2003 Mazda Miata 5MT; 2005 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport 4AT

MexicoCityM3

Quote from: MX793 on May 20, 2017, 03:33:21 PM
Just got back from helping with course setup at our new venue.  I'm guessing times will be between 65 and 80 seconds per run, depending on car and driver, with no sections of the course repeated.  Average speeds should be pretty high, too.

Nice. That's a very good length for autocross.
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MX793

#63
Quote from: Rich on May 20, 2017, 11:28:37 PM
Map?

State Police EVOC facility in Fulton.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/151+Flood+Dr,+Fulton,+NY+13069/@43.3458244,-76.3891451,845m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89d9dec1b1ed2721:0x3bfb1e28715c9402!8m2!3d43.3458244!4d-76.3869564

Didn't do as well as I'd hoped.  My tires just didn't have the grip and the weather worked against me.  I was in the first run group, so the AM runs were on a track that was a little dusty/loose with no rubber down.  Also somewhat cool.  Temperatures were only in the low 60s in the AM and fairly overcast, so the track surface wasn't much warmer than the air.  My tires seem to work best when it's hotter out.  Then, as we took a break for lunch, it started to pour and continued raining, more fairly lightly, through the first half of my afternoon runs.  It let up about halfway through, but by that point the track was thoroughly wet.  We kindly dried it out to mildly damp in time for run group 2 to get a course nearly as good as the AM for their runs by their last runs of the day. 

The lack of grip in the AM seemed to work against all the high-powered, RWD guys in general.  There was a C7 Z51 that clearly was struggling to put power down.  I think I ended up beating him in raw time, although he is a bit less experienced at cone courses than I am (he can beat my in raw time at the shifter kart track we run on).  There was another guy in an E92 M3 that was also wagging the tail every time he tried to get on the power hard.  He ended up clipping my time by about 1/8th of a second (our cars run in the same class).  Said M3 pilot was a former professional/factory rally racer (apparently a former Greek national rally champion) who now instructs at a high performance driving school, so no shame in getting edged out by him.

Based on the GPS in my camera, the course length worked out to be just over .8 miles.  My best time was a 71.16, which about where I figured I'd run.  78.x-80.x in the wet...

Compiling videos now.  Will link when complete.
Needs more Jiggawatts

2016 Ford Mustang GTPP / 2011 Toyota Rav4 Base AWD / 2014 Kawasaki Ninja 1000 ABS
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MX793

#64
Best run of the day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fXSJtesM9E

Best run in the wet (this was the driest I saw the track in the afternoon)
http://youtu.be/zK735GyIAhE

I will say that the major downside(s) of a course that long is that it takes a while to walk (~15-20 minutes per walk-through if you take the time to eye up the lines and commit it to memory) and there's a lot to remember.  Any time we've run a course over ~40 seconds, it usually entails a course that has multiple laps or otherwise has sections repeated, so you have less to remember.  Also quicker to walk.  Normal length courses only take like 6-7 minutes to walk through.  I'll usually walk them 3-5 times in the AM before Driver's Meeting.  With no repeated segments, there was a lot to try to remember.  Also, since I run registration, I didn't have time to walk the course at all this morning (and I usually find time to get at least one walk in between closing registration and driver's meeting).  I walked it like twice yesterday evening, but it wasn't the freshest in my memory ~16 hours later.
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Rich

Oh man that thing is long !  I know that's all you guys have but I'm not a fan of that venue.
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Cookie Monster

I'm not a fan of all the slaloms.
RWD > FWD
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Quote from: 68_427 on November 27, 2016, 07:43:14 AM
Or order from fortune auto and when lyft rider asks why your car feels bumpy you can show them the dyno curve
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68_427

You were in Fulton and didn't use the dirt track instead??  Shame

:lol:
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r0tor

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MX793

Quote from: 68_427 on May 21, 2017, 10:21:24 PM
You were in Fulton and didn't use the dirt track instead??  Shame

:lol:

There's a dirt track in like every town with more than 5,000 people in upstate.
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CaminoRacer

Quote from: Cookie Monster on May 21, 2017, 08:35:32 PM
I'm not a fan of all the slaloms.

Utah SCCA loves slaloms too. A 3-4 cone slalom in a long course is cool but more than that gets boring.
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r0tor

Quote from: CaminoRacer on May 22, 2017, 09:38:27 AM
Utah SCCA loves slaloms too. A 3-4 cone slalom in a long course is cool but more than that gets boring.

Yea, to me the slalom is probably the most boring possible thing in an auto x
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68_427

Quote from: MX793 on May 22, 2017, 09:02:27 AM
There's a dirt track in like every town with more than 5,000 people in upstate.

Fulton has roomy bleachers though for chillin
Quotewhere were you when automotive dream died
i was sat at home drinking brake fluid when wife ring
'racecar is die'
no


MX793

New tires worked splendidly (though pushed the driver's front hard and it got pretty scuffed).  Same venue as before; still very slalom-heavy.  Pulled a real rabbit out of the hat in my final run, knocking about 1.5 seconds off my previous best.  I was surprised that it was not only my best run of the day, but so much better than my next best run.  The first half of the run felt really sloppy.  Felt like I was off line because I was pushing too hard and then having to slow down to correct.  I'll need to watch a side-by-side of my in car footage to see where I made up the time.  The last third of the run felt pretty well dialed and one of the guys working course (who was a damned good driver himself) gave me kudos after the event on how well I nailed the last stretch in my final run, but I don't think I shaved a full second off there.

My final run
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DQ0XJPAEe8

Better results than before, but that can in large part be attributed to several of the people who beat me previously not attending.  Did manage to beat one person who beat me pretty handily last event (like .6 seconds in PAX).  I believe I got him by about a quarter second this go around.  He and I started racing the same time and have run pretty closely for years, so we have a friendly rivalry going.  At one point, we were both running 1st gen Mazda3ses. 

Also found out one of the people in my class from last event was mis-classed due to a misunderstanding in the rules.  They were running AP2 S2K wheels on an AP1 in the Stock/Street class :nono:.  They thought that because it was a factory S2K wheel, they were OK running it on the older generation car.  They didn't realize the standard factory equipment rule for the stock class was model year (and trim) specific.  If they get retro-actively re-classed, that would move me up a spot in the last event, though wouldn't really change my points situation since we score points based on how much slower your time was from the winner (sort of a percentage basis), not what position you placed.  It's a new scoring system for this season.  I have mixed feelings.  Makes the mental math of figuring out your points situation at the end of the event a lot harder than position-based scoring where you know that finishing in a certain position always awards the same points.
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Laconian

That "Braking" indicator - are you actually pressing the brakes, or is that just an accelerometer sensing deceleration? I would think that you would want to *not* brake through slaloms so that you have more traction for turning?

<-- autoX virgin
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MX793

The braking indicator is a decel meter, so engine braking will show up as "braking".  Engine braking is ~.2G, so anything more than that on the decel meter is actual brake application.

If a slalom has decreasing spacing or transitions from a shallower offset to a deeper one, you need to decrease speed as you progress through, so I'll occasionally tap the brakes a bit in the slalom to adjust speed accordingly.  Or to help settle the car if it's getting a little out of shape.
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CaminoRacer

I'll tap the brakes a tad if the front end needs more weight on it after a couple cones. Otherwise I try to keep the throttle steady
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CaminoRacer

Running at Goodguys Columbus this weekend. My dad got top 5 in his Camaro, with a 63.9 lap. Faster than the GT350 running today, which is still in the 64s

I just got a 75.0 in the VW. Could chop a couple tenths off still.
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CaminoRacer

I did one lap in the Camaro - 67.something. I haven't driven it with the sticky tires before, so I got to explore the new limits. Damn it's fast. The 383 pulls like a freight train and the tires stick like glue.
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MX793

Quote from: CaminoRacer on July 09, 2017, 08:30:33 AM
Running at Goodguys Columbus this weekend. My dad got top 5 in his Camaro, with a 63.9 lap. Faster than the GT350 running today, which is still in the 64s

I just got a 75.0 in the VW. Could chop a couple tenths off still.

Assuming it's a new GT350 and not a 1960s one, that's not surprising.  Goodguys courses are super tight and slow.
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CaminoRacer

This course was actually pretty fast for Goodguys. More transitional than technical. Very fun
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MX793

#81
Quote from: CaminoRacer on July 10, 2017, 09:43:29 AM
This course was actually pretty fast for Goodguys. More transitional than technical. Very fun

I think a GT350 would struggle on any Auto-x course, but Good guys, from what I've seen are especially tight.  Saw some onboard footage from a GT350 at one of their events either from earlier this year or late last and he didn't even get out of first gear from what I recall.
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FoMoJo

Quote from: MX793 on July 10, 2017, 10:20:05 AM
I think a GT350 would struggle on any Auto-x course, bu Good guys, from what I've seen are especially.  Saw some onboard footage from a GT350 at one of their events either from earlier this year or late last and he didn't even get out of first gear from what I recall.
It takes a quarter horse for those events, not a Thoroughbred.
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giant_mtb

How tall is first on a GT350, like 40mph? :lol:

CaminoRacer

Quote from: FoMoJo on July 10, 2017, 10:47:57 AM
It takes a quarter horse for those events, not a Thoroughbred.

The fast cars at the events are pure racecars. More power and more suspension than a stock Mustang, even a GT350R
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MX793

Quote from: CaminoRacer on July 10, 2017, 02:17:38 PM
The fast cars at the events are pure racecars. More power and more suspension than a stock Mustang, even a GT350R

But they're race cars built for Auto-x, which means a unique setup compared to a car built for full size road courses.
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MX793

#86
Quote from: giant_mtb on July 10, 2017, 01:58:12 PM
How tall is first on a GT350, like 40mph? :lol:

Yeah, somewhere around there.  42 maybe?

EDIT:  Looks like they'll do about 55 in 1st.  They're geared a little taller in terms of mph/1000 RPM than the regular Mustang GT with 3.73 gears and they have an additional 1250 RPM to play with.
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giant_mtb

Anyone remember when a GM with a 4 speed auto would do like 70mph in second? :lol:

MX793

Quote from: giant_mtb on July 10, 2017, 03:18:42 PM
Anyone remember when a GM with a 4 speed auto would do like 70mph in second? :lol:

I think the ZR1 does over 60 in 1st.  Pretty sure the regular Vette, and Camaro SS, with the MT will do 70, or near to it, in 2nd.
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CaminoRacer

Quote from: MX793 on July 10, 2017, 03:15:44 PM
But they're race cars built for Auto-x, which means a unique setup compared to a car built for full size road courses.

The set up can be changed for road course. Just need to change the shock settings, maybe the sway bar. Everything is adjustable.
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