1999 SCCA Solo 2 (autocross) Round 1

Who cares about the SuperBowl? Yawn. This is a much better activity for today. Round 1 of the 1999 season of SCCA Solo 2 (autocross). I'd never done an autocross before, so I didn't really know what to expect.

Here are the results of the day--be patient, it's like 100K of results on a single page: www.sfrscca.com/solo2/Results/1999/Championship/round1.html

I checked the SFR-SCCA web site to find out the classifications. The Boxster is in A-Stock class. And since I've never autocrossed before, that puts me in A-Stock Rookie, which really puts me in Rookie Stock 1 (along with rookies of Super-Stock and B-Stock). They break the day into 4 morning groups and 4 afternoon groups. You have to "work" in one group and drive in another. A-Stock was in run group 7 (third in the afternoon) and work group 5 (first in the afternoon). So I didn't have to be there until 11:00 or 11:30AM.

I drove down to the Oakland Coliseum, immediately found the parking lot with one area containing parked cars and another larger area containing cones and a moving car or two. I parked and registered. They gave me a sheet of paper with a printed number, which I taped to my driver's side door using some special white masking tape I picked up at a hardware store (Scotch/3M Safe-Release Masking Tape #2070) which sticks well enough to not fall off, but gently enough that I could tell it was not harming the paint and peeled off almost willingly. I would hate to see what normal masking tape would do!

I saw Dennis and Peggy Hale (instructors from my recent Thunderhill Street School) with their lowered pink Datsun 510, definitely tricked out for autocrossing! It reminded me of when I was in high school and my best friend Barry had a yellow 510 with all sorts modifications, his dad had an even spiffier red 510, and I had my aging 2002.

While waiting for run group 4 to finish I got my car ready and watched quite a few cars run the course. It sounded like the first run group had run on a rather wet course, and that it had dried out soon after.

After run group 4 finished, we got to walk the course. One instructor took the rookies with front wheel drive, and Dennis took the rookies with rear wheel drive--the lines are slightly different in some places depending this aspect of the car. It wasn't much of a chance to get a feel for the course, because we immediately had to get out to our work positions. I was out on a corner to watch for and set up knocked-over cones. Each station had a walkie-talkie to radio into the timekeeper for DNFs and hit cone point deductions, and a red flag in case a car were to have a problem requiring the following car to slow down. If red-flagged, you slow down, watch out for the stalled car, finish the lap slowly, and then you get to re-run the course.

Run group 5 hit the course, and took forever! I was amazed at how many cars and runs there were. I think they took about 2 hours. As run group 6 got ready to go, it was announced that because the day was getting a bit late, and because we had to finish before the sun went down, all remaining run groups would only get 2 runs per driver. At this point I'd been out there for several hours and I grumbled silently to myself about only getting 2 minutes of drive time for the better part of a day out there plus $35. But, I quickly shrugged it off, still looking forward to giving my first try at autocrossing. Watching run group 5 from a position on the course was in fact a good thing, as I could see that a lot of drivers were missing one of the early gates, a visually confusing jog left without a the edges lined like the rest of the course, resulting in DNF (did not finish) and a wasted run. I was sure going to pay attention to that gate!

So as run group 6 was on course, we gridded and got inspected. They had decided to do tech inspections on grid rather than ahead of time, in order to simplify things. The guy who tech'ed my car joked about the fact that he couldn't see the engine, so he had to just check off the engine-related items.

Finally we got ready to go. First out were David and Judy Colman in the only other Boxster, arctic silver with hard top, running in A-Stock and A-Stock Ladies. I hit the course having no clue in the world what I was doing. I tried to go easy, thinking that I was surely going to hit some cones if I drove aggressively. I got into second gear almost as I crossed the timer start line, and never left it. I got the revs up a bit down the one pseudo-straight, but that was about it. The track seemed very slippery, but that was probably just because of the tight turns compared to Thunderhill's relatively huge FIA spec race track size. This was more like Malibu Grand Prix! The sun was getting low, making it really difficult to see on some of the corners coming back toward the trailer. But I made it through without hitting any cones and got a time of 54.623 seconds. I had no idea whether this was a good time. It turned out that it would have been fast enough to take Rookie Stock 1.

It took about 5 to 10 mintes of waiting back on the grid for the run group to cycle through and bring me up to the front again. Having done the course once, and knowing that I would not get any further runs, I decided to get more agressive this time. I got on the throttle more on anything resembling a straight section. Again, the whole run was in 2nd gear once I got out of the start. On one of the back side 180 degree turns I got pretty squirrelly and had to steer out of it, feeling either the ABS or traction control kick in (it happened too fast for me to remember which; you can hear the low-frequency rumble on the video). I tend to think it was traction control only because I think I tended to just let off the throttle in corners more than I braked, in order to keep it smoother if a bit slower--which may be the wrong technique, I don't know. Hey, I'm a rookie, man. Anyway, my time improved significantly to 53.158 seconds. (My first run would have been 86th best.)

There's a thing called PAX Index (professional autocross index). This is a way of adjusting times based on a car's capabilities. The best possible car--one in the A-Modified class--gets an index of 1.000. Other classes get indexes less than 1, with the least-capable classes getting the lowest indexes. The actual time you get is multiplied by the PAX index for your class to get your "indexed time". Combined classes--those with multiple classes combined into one competitive ranking--rank by indexed time; the normal classes don't since all cars are of the same class and thus have the same index anyway. Indexed classes include the rookie classes (Rookie Stock 1 includes rookies of Super-Stock, A-Stock, and B-Stock; Rookie Stock 2 includes B-, C-, D-, E-, G-, and H-Stock), Rookie Street Prepared (rookies of the various Prepared classes), Street Tire (any class, with tire restrictions), and PAX (any class). Street Tire and PAX are sort of open classes where any class of car is OK and so you use indexed time.

Here are a few select results for top finishers, Boxsters, and acquaintences. There were 281 drivers. All three Boxster drivers took their class, and David Colman took the best indexed time of all, beaten only in overall time by a prepared VW Bug and its two drivers.

I'm not sure what to make of the Street Tire and PAX classes. The best Street Tire time was 57.408, 145th overall, 115th indexed, would have been 6th in Rookie Stock 1. The best PAX class time was 54.596, 84th overall, 64th indexed, would have been 2nd in Rookie Stock 1. So my time beat these. The Street Tire class simply requires tires with a DOT tread wear rating of 120 or higher. I don't know if my Pirelli P-Zeroes qualify. Anyway, Rookie Stock 1 seems like the right class to be in because all of the times were very close to mine (top 7 finishers within 5 seconds).

[PS - after round three of the season they rearranged the rookie groups, with some competitors being retroactively re-classed from RS2 to RS1. So I didn't get first place points after all was said and done.]

It was fun. I plan be there for Round 2 on February 20.