September Autocross in Review

Chesapeake Region

Autocross In Review

Words: Greg Hartke; Photos: Jim McKee

It’s been kind of a weird season this year here at AX Central. First off, we’ve had some odd equipment difficultieswith constant problems with the hotspot and (most recently) the timing board going belly up (which is an appropriate metaphor since it was killed by the rain at the AX#4 Drenchfest). Co-chair Brad Martinez has been destroyed bywork all season until just recently, causing him to miss AX#4 and 5 (congratulations to Brad for getting his life back!), then Registrar Meilyng Wigney-Burmaka was on vacation for AX#6. I’m pretty sure all these headaches have contributedto making my hair even grayer than it was at the start of the season and I certainly didn’t need that! ;)

All of the PCA events that we enjoy require an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work and AX is no exception.There’s a huge amount of prep work that must be done during the off-season (budgeting, scheduling, and coordinatingall the pieces, with the AX School especially requiring a lot of work) as well as an awful lot of work right before each race to prepare for the event. Meilyng handles the details of setting up the heats for the drivers and theworker assignments for each race, as well as sending out the communications to the entrants, all of which is a lot (really a lot!) more work than it sounds with significant work that must be done in the last couple of days before therace. Since Meilyng was on vacation for AX#6, some of that last-minute work fell to me this time. Gulp!

Fortunately, Meilyng set up as much as she could the week before, but it still left me doing the last-minute stuff.Did those of you who raced in AX#6 notice that the event emails were sent out later than usual? Now you know why. Yup, that was entirely my fault because I had to do all the final administrative work for this one and of course I’m notfamiliar with it. It’s desirable to get the event emails out on Thursday for a Saturday race and I barely beat that selfimposed deadline by sending out the emails just before midnight. Oops. ;) And think about poor Meilyng! She and Iwere IMing back and forth for hours Thursday evening (while she was on vacation!) as she coached me through theprocess. For someone who knew what they were doing, it wouldn’t have taken very long, but being clueless, it took

me forever. Be thankful you have Meilyng to do that work and don’t normally have to put up with my fumble-fingeredattempts. Well… Truthfully, it was a worthwhile learning experience, so what the heck. ;)

Besides all the administrative stuff, I had a last-minute headache with my car. When I started the car to drive to theoffice early that week, I immediately received a warning that the coolant was low and that I should watch the engine temperature. I had a perfectly good alternative close at hand, so I shut down and drove my Cooper S since there wasno reason to run any risk at all. Because of the hours I work, though, I had no opportunity to do anything about it until Friday evening, which I wouldn’t exactly call optimal with the race the next day. I bought the appropriate OEM coolantand (to make a long story short) managed to overfill the expansion tank because the coolant level indicator was stuckuntil I overfilled the tank. Yeesh! After a little research, I figured out a way to remove the extra coolant, but it took quite a while, which put me way behind in my pre-race prep work. At least I got it done, but I swear I must be jinxed. ;)

It was refreshingly chilly when I arrived at Prince George’s Stadium (PGS) in Bowie on race morning (remember, this was more than 2 hours before sunrise), which was a pleasant alternative to hot summer weather. Our stalwart AX assistants(Pinto Soin and John Cho) arrived shortly thereafter, as well as Co-chair Brad, whom I hadn’t seen it months.(And it was certainly great to see Brad again!) Mark Hubley (towing the trailer with the AX equipment) arrived soon thereafter, and we quickly got to work setting everything up. As usual, Brad and John built the course while Pinto and Itook care of everything else and with a full complement of help (which means Brad was back again, as well as having Pinto and John there), set up was done quickly and efficiently.

As it turned out, we did have another unpleasant equipment problem, though. When we opened the trailer and started pulling out our gear, we were surprised to find that some of it was wet. That was strange because everythinghad been dried out after the Drenchfest and the equipment had been stored dry after AX#5. A little investigation deter-

mined that it was from the roof vent, so Mark climbed up there the next day to discover that the clear plastic cover forthe roof vent had disintegrated (presumably due to UV exposure) and the unblocked vent had allowed rain into the trailer. Sheesh. One more headache…

Once Brad and John completed the course build, Brad and I went out to cruise the course in my car to see what navigational changes might be needed. This was an unusual step, but Brad felt it would be necessary for this courseand indeed it was. We cruised it twice, discussing what we saw and with Brad taking notes, then he and John went back to work making the tweaks we decided were necessary to make the course more readily navigable.

Interestingly, one of the questions I almost always get when I take a Taste of Autocross participant out for a hot lapon the course is how in the world I manage to navigate through the sea of cones? The answer is that there are clues on the course that an experienced driver can use to keep on track and, of course, all drivers go out to walk (hence, learn)the course before the race after we finalize the build. That said, it’s not always easy to navigate those first runs because it all comes up on you so quickly when you’re racing, so it’s important that the course designer provides the proper

navigational aids to guide the alert driver. What Brad and I were doing in this case was making sure that the requisiteaids were in place because there were some sections of this course that could be a bit confusing.

While Brad and John tweaked the course to make it more navigable, I set up the computers and was happy to findthat we finally had the hotspot working properly. We hadn’t had it working for several events (call it a configuration problem) so it was about time we got that straightened out. It was certainly a pleasant change of pace to have everythingworking properly again, making for a quick and easy set up. Well… Everything but the timing board, which is out of commission due to (presumably) rain damage from AX#4.

Once Brad and John were finished the navigation tweaks to the course, Brad and I headed out for the test runs to

make sure the course was safe and suitable for driving.

There were a few minor tweaks here and there, but we really focused on two tight areas – the first corner down byworker station 1 and the section immediately after passing through the first channel near worker station 4. In eachcase, we had to fiddle with the design to make it more drivable. Both sections were a test of patience for the driver. If you entered either section too fast or on a bad line, you’d be hammered by understeer, pushing wide, and losing time.Proper speed and backsiding the apex cone got you through without messing up your entry to the next segment. Interestingly, the rest of the course was quite fast, so overall it was a mix of fast and technical sections.

On the map, the skidpad near station 1 and that between stations 4 and 5 look similar in size, but they drove totally differently. The first skidpad had a slow entrance after the tight corner and was subtly oblong. It also paid to roll on thepower early on exit to help swing the car wide to set up the next sequence. The entrance to the second skidpad wasreally fast – we were full throttle on the diagonal (which is probably better characterized as a broad sweeper) as we exited the corner above station 5 and actually had to brake on entrance to the skidpad. It also drove as if it were muchlarger than the first skidpad and of course we were rolling on full throttle on exit to pass through the channel. The following corner up to the finish was sharper than it appears on the map and I trail-braked into that one to help bring thetail around. With my really tired tires, I had to tap the brakes to get some grip on the front going by station 3 and up tothe finish or I’d push wide (found that out the hard way…), but I’ll bet those with good tires were able to maintain full

throttle through that finish sequence.

The course was relatively long (which can be fun), but we knew going in that there would be a minor problemposed by the design. If you look carefully at the map, you’ll see that the crossover occurs really close to the finish, which means a second car could not be released onto the course until the first car had driven a large portion of thecourse. In practice, we added a course martial up the hill from the start to tell the starter when to send the next car(getting them off about the time the previous car was exiting the second skidpad) because that spot on the course was not visible to the starter due to the intervening hill. Even so, the long course and unusually large time gap betweendrivers meant that we were only able to do 5 runs instead of our more normal 6. I was expecting that to be the case because 6 runs would have had the workers out on the course for too long.

We got the first car off at 9:52 AM (later than I would have liked) and finished at 2:54 PM after 5 runs over 2 heats. We were averaging something like 27 minutes per run (which is fairly slow) with almost 25 minutes for the changeover

between heats. That meant the course workers were out there shagging cones for almost two-and-a-half hours foreach heat. That’s kind of the outer edge of what I want, but OK on a day that had pleasant temperatures and was not blistering hot.

As a bit of an aside, I raced with Potomac the next day on the Washington Circuit at Summit Point Motorsport Park, which is an old kart track and is rather large. The course that day amounted to an out-and-back course with no crossoverand no point where the outbound driver was in proximity to the inbound driver. For that reason, it was quite safeto have three cars on the course at one time and even though they had more drivers than we did at our event on Saturday, they were able to do 7 runs.

It all depends on the course design and unfortunately the one we used for AX#6 didn’t allow it. You may wonderwhy we didn’t use a course design that would have allowed 6 runs and the answer is that it’s really, really hard to come up with fresh course designs for every race. Every design is new – we’ve never duplicated a course across the 4 yearsthat we’ve been racing at PGS and I’ve been the AX Co-chair. I feel as if it’s inevitable that we may do so eventually, but we haven’t gotten there yet and hopefully it won’t happen for quite a while. Still, I can already hear it… “Haven’t weused this course before???” There’s no hiding from this bunch. ;)

We filled the registration for AX#6 (capped at 65) and had a waitlist, but with last-minute cancellations and noshows,we wound up with 57 drivers present and competing, with 29 P-cars and 28 Guests. I’d call that a smaller numberof P-cars than usual, but we were missing several our usual Potomac friends who were helping out at a Tire Rack Street Survival event in Waldorf.

David C. was FTD with an amazing 58.830 sec (the only sub-60 sec time), which put Dave on top of Class P5. Thirdplace overall, 2 nd among the P-cars, and 1 st in S5 was Howard L. with 60.691 sec. Fifth place overall, 3 rd among the P-cars, and 1 st in P4 was Craig S. with 61.527 sec. Sixth overall, 4 th among the P-cars, and 1 st in S4 was Mark H. Ninth place overall, 5 th among the P-cars, and 2 nd in S4 was Eric C. with 62.387 sec. These are all great times on a rather demandingcourse, but everyone was marveling at Dave’s time which was so much faster than the next nearest competitor. Keep in mind that he had three sub-60 sec runs (no one else had any) and the time cited was his fastest, of course, so he reallyhad it going that day.

As usual, the CHS AX participants were superb in helping with the tear-down. When we were done racing, everyonepitched in to collect the cones and gear so we could store it in the trailer as quickly as possible. With everyone’shelp, we were packed and ready to go in seemingly the blink of an eye. Believe me, we really appreciate all that help

after a long day running the event!

AX#6 went quite smoothly compared to other recent racesand certainly provided a fun day of racing. We’re winding itdown with only one more racing event remaining for theseason on October 22 nd atPGS. I’m already thinking about how much I’ll miss seeingeveryone, as well as missing racing during the offseason.There’s nothing quitelike getting out there and racing your car. Lots to do alreadyto prepare for the new season, though – the minor leaguebaseball schedules just came out, so I’m planning to workon the 2023 schedule tomorrow.I’m also thinking about how much more I’ll enjoy nextseason with tires that weren’t trashed right from the beginningof the season. I won’t make that mistake again. Afterall, as I’ve said before, even arat learns. Supposedly. ;)

I’ll be looking forward to seeingyou soon at the races!

Greg HartkeCHS AX Co-chair