GRM post part III

[ralexander03@snet.net (Rick Alexander)]

Part III

Before I proceed to the Autocross (used as loosly as was done by GRM), I
must comment upon part II.

I'd never done a drag and neither had Brian. We prepared things as best as
we thought we could. Brian climbed in and I snugged up the 5 point harness
for him. He (we) was so anxious to go that he gets the first spot in the
staging lanes. He's all set so I wandered over to the stands to get some
pictures. Wow, there he goes. "Rattling since day one" Flowmaster not
sounding as bad as it does inside the car. Run over, I walk all the way back
to our pit. Ok, here he comes, look at that, is that his toothy grin
sticking out both windows at once? Yep, it was and there he goes right back
to the staging lanes. I wander back to the stands. Another run and back to
the pit. He drives right by again! Back to the stands and right back to the
pit. There he goes again!!! ALL DAY LONG this went on. I was so busy running
back and forth from the pit to the stands and back that I never had time to
put on the sun block. Big mistake. Anyway, late in the day I did take three
runs. Two red lights, Brian is way better at this than I am.

Autocross... not by my book. It was more of a road race. By my definition an
autocross is a series of tight turns involving cones and the distinct
ability to get lost or suffer cone blindness. This was a test track, three
skid pads linked by asphault approximately 24' wide. A nice new surface with
no elevation changes. All of the track was cambered like a street. It was in
a highly manacured field of grass. You just could not get lost, in fact the
only cones were the two slaloms.

Start to finish it went like this. 75' of straight leading to a 250' skid
pad. Left arround the skid pad for about 180 deg. Immediately transition to
another skid pad to the right for 270 deg. This ended in a hair pin 180 deg.
left hander. This was tough as the car was heavily into the left front when
it needed to be braked hard and completely shifted to have all it's weight
on the right front. 75 yards or so later there was a four gate slalom. These
gates were lined up with each other but the distance from gate to gate was
diminishing. Interesting to do but not all that hard. Hind site tells me
that maybe I didn't push this enough. This led to another skid pad. This one
was different, it was a consistent radius for 90 deg. then had a decreasing
radius for the next 90 deg. It was full throttle throught the first part
then trailing throttle for the second part. With no straight it went into an
immediate left, right, left chicane. A 150' straight to another slalom. Four
gates in line with diminishing depth. This was hard, due to the car set up I
found I was hopping the rear around the cones. Scary since I'd seen a 6K
mile Focus go over this summer doing just this. Timing light and run off.

All thing considered it went well. We were underpowered and I had terrible
tires. On the front I had my Michelin Pilot road racing tires and in the
rear some very worn, "hard as a rock", dry rotted Continental touring tires.
Damned it was oversteering like mad. I'm used to a slight push so this was a
whole new experience for me. First run was :59.6 and I had gotten it down to
:58.116 but took out the last cone on the course. My best keeper time was
:58.446. FTD was :48.825 but after the afternoon session, Tim Sudderd's (GRM
Publisher) 10 year old son took his kart out and turned three laps at :46
and change. That kid never even came close to looping it. I was very
impressed.

After the kart demonstration, the course was opened for fun runs. Brian took
the car out and asked me to ride along. Well that toothy grin almost pushed
me out the passengers window. He went right back to the start and didn't
even let me out. I did manage to escape before his third run though.

We had a great time, I could not have asked for a better team mate. Before
we even got out of Gainesville we were doing the imagineering for the 2004
Challenge. Brian want's to run his '88 and I want to enter the Baja. Maybe
Brian could be my partner with the Beetle and I could be his with the
Scirocco. I can't wait!

Rick Alexander