1999 SCCA Solo 2 (autocross) Round 18
Rookie Stock 1 Championship Points for 1999
Today was the final round of the 1999 season, and going in Damien and I were basically in a dead heat in the Rookie Stock 1 points lead. Winner takes all! Boxster Boarder Doug DeVetter was there, too, running in A-Stock class.
Again we were at Mather, essentially running yesterday's course backwards, with minor start/finish changes for safety (for example, yesterday's start led directly away from the timing trailer after a quick turn, so today's finish line was moved so that people wouldn't come screaming straight towards the trailer as they headed towards the finish). Fortunately, the temperature had cooled off by about 10 degrees, and the 80+ degree heat actually felt quite pleasant by comparison with yesterday.
After yesterday's surprisingly decisive win (by a whopping 4+ seconds), I had some confidence, and I started to suspect that my increasingly beaten Bridgestone S-02 street tires were actually having a positive effect, rather than my recent worries that they were hindering me. At one point yesterday, Boris Elpiner, a regular SFR competitor and very good A-Stock driver in an M3, inquired into what kind of tires I had. He seemed surprised that I was so close to the race tire equipped A-Stock times. He checked the tires out and then told me to compare the surface feel of his race tires versus mine, by putting my palm flat on the surface and pushing/shoving it across the tread. I'd never actually felt the surface of a race tire before. It turns out that it's not slick, smooth rubber, but rather it's like sandpaper, and you can really feel how that rubbery sandpaper would grab the pavement with such force. And guess what? My S-02's have taken such a beating with all the track time and autocrossing, that despite the fact that they still have a decent amount of tread left, the surface has a fair amount of that sandpaper feel to it. [ Having checked the tires out since writing this, it turns out that this condition is only temporary and is simply due to the intense beating they get on the cement autocross course. They go back to normal when you drive home! ]
I turned in a clean 56.623 on my first run. Damien ran a scratch time of 60.410 but incurred a two second penalty for hitting a cone. Doug did the same, hitting a cone, but with a scratch time of 56.308. Though my time was better than Damien's, I didn't feel that the lead was enough to give me a certain win after the times were indexed. From talking to David Colman at a recent event, I saw how it's the scratch times you really need to look at when determining what your competitor can do. You have to figure that if he just cleans up his drive a bit, he can avoid the cone penalty. So when deciding how far you have to push it, you should be aiming to beat your competitors based on their scratch times.
Doug and I both knocked significant time off our second runs, me with a 54.767 and Doug with a 54.727. Damien improved only slightly to 60.335. Now I was safely ahead.
But Damien knocked over half a second on his third run, to 59.610. Closer, but not enough. Doug's time was not quite as good as his second run, getting a 54.795. I took one of the sweepers a bit too fast and ended up getting really close to a cone on my left. After I went by it and approached the next turn, somehow I was able (or stupid enough) to look in my side mirror to see if I'd knocked it over. Nope, I saw it only gently rocking back and forth. But they penalized me for it -- I suspect the course worker(s) didn't know the cone penalty rules, and thought that any contact is supposed to cost you a penalty (when in fact the cone must be knocked over or moved completely out of its box). No matter in the end, as my scratch time was 54.981, not quite as good as my second run anyway.
Doug's fourth run shaved a little more time off, down to 54.566. This pulled him awfully close to Boris and Rex in A-Stock. Damien knocked another half second off, down to 59.105, but still over four seconds behind me. I was unable to improve on my previous best, turning in a 55.264.
So after everything, I took my fourth win in a row, which was just enough to nip by Damien for the Rookie Stock 1 season points title in the final round. I think my autocross skills have improved quite a bit. I have started to get a little bit of ability to use throttle steering in certain situations, where you slightly lift the accelerator to bring the rear around a bit, and also the technique where you keep the power down ("no lift") against your better judgement in order to maintain rear wheel traction and avoid the rear sliding. Those two techniques finally lit up the lightbulb in my brain-foot coordination center in autocross Round 10 and at the advanced SCCA Street School class in April. I really felt the throttle steer starting to happen in Turn 3 at Thunderhill. Lifting the throttle gently, slightly, for the smallest split second, causes the rear end to lighten and rotate, which points the car towards the apex; lifting a little more or doing it more abruptly than that, in that off-camber situation, could invoke a spin! Adding the bare beginnings of these skills is a good feeling!
