Autocross

Pylon Place – August 2018

Foot Down… Eyes Up!

Temperature, driving, and fun were all scorching hot at the June 30th AutoX. 93 degrees and full sun was welcomed by some as the long awaited arrival of summer. Shade from the AutoX Tents was welcomed by others, as too much summer all at once takes a while to adjust to. At least the AutoX-University course was a great distraction from the warmth as it was designed to accentuate three important driving skills; Acceleration, Deceleration, and Vision, the latter arguably the most important driving skill of all.

With plenty of “foot down” time on the gas pedal, the resultant speed from this course necessitated good Vision skill and actually looking ahead. Usual human reality is that you think you are looking ahead but often there is a different reality under pressure. The “next corner” on this course was typically located across the whole parking lot, so not looking up would likely produce an “off course” or a slow time. As proof that everyone embraced this Vision skill, only 9 of the 250 runs taken were off course and the times fell in direct relationship.

Enhancing the Vision skill lesson, CVR now offers a Virtual Reality drive before you even arrive at the event. Now you can study the course map and “drive it” with just a couple of clicks on your computer. Big thanks go to CVR’s AutoX Safety Chair Ed Bogue for the initiative to produce this great new tool. Ed narrates us through the course at a speed that proved to be spot on to the real course times. For those that have yet to try an autocross event, watch the short video, hold your breath, and see for yourself. Add 1G forces on every turn and you can imagine why this is such an exciting form of motorsport!

Displays of great car control were common as the day progressed and people showed mastery of braking, and braking while turning, going into the many corners designed just for this. Purposely pushing the car to the point that it complained, drifted, or spun was the goal. Nannies on, nannies off, so you could feel the difference. Can you think of any better place than a big parking lot with only a few cones to hit to really learn this level of car control? As finesse grew, the number of drifts and spins fell and so did
the lap times. Acceleration skills, the corollary to deceleration, were equally used to reduce the lap times. How to best “roll on” the power coming out of turns, how to open the steering and modify the line to allow for this, how to reach maximum speed in-between turns, were of great importance on this course. The clock was always running to give you the instant feedback on whether you chose the right combination of these skills. Just watching the cars then seeing their times, you could tell as people calibrated then mastered these skills. I captured Jeff Fournier in the middle of a masterful calibration.

Although there was plenty of good driving to note, there were a couple of special drives to really applaud. First, after less than a year in his dialed in Cayman and after many years of studiously working on his driving skills through thw AutoX-U lessons, a big milestone was reached. David Carlson won one of the toughest classes, 12, on his last run of the day. David’s driving was truly impressive to watch throughout the day as he calibrated how hard he could push the car and how smooth he could get run after run. His last run pulled it all together into rolling poetry and he squeezed the electrons out of the timer to beat the talented and fast Ed Bogue and ended up third fastest for the day. Ed and the rest of us couldn’t be happier for David on this breakthrough drive, congratulations David! Second drive to note was the steadily improving Scott Sylvester in his fun M1 914. After taking Rookieof-the-Year honors in the three seasons ago, Scott has continued to steadily hone his driving skills and showed how beautifully he has been able to put them all together into an impressively fast lap, good for the class win and 5th overall fastest for the day.

CVR AutoX, Better Driving…Faster! See our AutoX web page for the latest schedule, registration link, Course Map, and now to take a Virtual Pre-Drive of the next course here.

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