11 minute read
Autocross Update: October 2023
Chesapeake Region
Autocross Update
By: Greg Hartke; Photos: Jim McKee
I can’t begin to tell you how lucky we’ve been so far this year. Chesapeake PCA Autocross #6 was held on Saturday, September 2nd at Prince George’s Stadium in Bowie and again we were blessed with great weather. It was a bit cool in the morning when we arrived in the wee small hours to get set up, but it was very pleasant later when the Sun finally came up with a brilliant blue sky all day. It was a perfect day for racing! I’ve been telling everyone that we’ve gotten great weather because I’ve been making the proper sacrifices to the weather gods, unlike the team running the Potomac PCA AX. Several of us from Chesapeake raced with them on September 17th and it was certainly a wet one – Summit Point (where the race was held) received an inch+ of rain that day. That was at least the third rainy event this year for POT, whereas CHS has had rain only during the afternoon of the AX School but has otherwise been completely dry.
Great attendance at AX#6 –in the end, we had 68 drivers for this race. Surprisingly, we had only 30 Porsches along with 38 non-Porsches for this one. It’s rather rare for non-Porsches to outnumber the Porsches, but it does happen on occasion. It’s OK, though. We’re happy to have everyone come race with us no matter what they’re driving. Certainly, Porsches dominated the top of the leaderboard, which is not necessarily a given with the quality of drivers out there driving fast cars nonPorsches that can be modified with impunity. What that means is that the top Porsche drivers had a good showing. Not that I expected otherwise, of course. ;)
Set up went quite smoothly (as usual) with John Cho, Phong Nguyen, and Pinto Soin helping in their usual fabulous way to get everything ready for the race. Co-chair (and course designer) Mark Hubley got back from swapping his truck (used to bring the AX equipment trailer to PGS) for his 2015 Cayman GTS just in time to help finish the course build. This course was a long one (Mark named it “Serpentine Belt” for obvious reasons ;) ) and it took quite a while to put together.
With the course built, Mark and I were ready to do the tests runs to check the course for drivability and safety. I first ran us through the course slowly a couple of times so we could identify any potentially problematic areas that might need amendment, discussing the course as we drove along. It really wasn’t too bad. As originally built, the opening sequence was set up such that the first straight section was too fast, so we modi-
fied it to slow it down, though the long, fast run down to the lower part of the course (on the left side of the course map) remained fast, just not as fast as it was originally (which we felt wouldn’t be safe). While not obvious from the map, that section is all downhill with the end of the parking lot coming up very quickly when driven at speed. As I remarked to Mark with a smile in our testing, the braking point was going to be a question of, “How brave are you?” ;)
IIRC, we didn’t do much to the lower end of the course on the left side of the map. We did, however, soften the exit for the return up through the second channel to make the entry to the slalom flow better. We also tweaked the exit from the slalom to get a little better flow for entry to the sharp right corner around the light post above station 2 on the map. The biggest change we made to the whole course was in the finish sequence. As built, it was a big sweeper and was just too fast for the sharp right into the stop box. Experience told us that as originally built, it was too likely someone would get overzealous and wipe out the timing gear on the left side of the stop box entry. To fix that little problem, we flattened out the arc at the lower right of the course, which forced a sharper corner up towards the finish, hence a slower approach to the turn into the stop box. With some subtle adjustments to the cones in the section before the turn into the stop box, we felt we had fixed the problem.
Mark’s course was an interesting mix of fast and somewhat technical sections and turned out to be an absolute blast to drive. The opening sequence was deceptive because it turned out it was much faster to drive in 1st gear rather than shifting up to 2nd gear. I had thought about trying it, but only did so when I saw another good driver taking that first turn at a good speed without tapping the brakes. I knew immediately that they had to stay in first for the opening chicane, so I tried it and it was an amazing improvement. Once getting through that opening chicane, I rolled on full throttle, upshifted close to redline, and held it there all the way down to the braking zone for the first skidpad. That was a fast section where I must have been getting close to 70 mph and close to bumping up against the 2nd gear rev limit as I favored the right side, then angled left to get a good entry to the skidpad.
I like to enter the skidpad angling in from slightly wide to carry more speed and did so here, quickly
setting a very tight line. When I exited the skidpad, I favored the left side (jogging slightly left) and quickly rolled on the throttle to put me in a position to make a late apex for the tight right-hander. On exit, I stayed to the right, which then put me in the proper position to angle through the four-cone crossover to set me up for the hard right that took me down to the lower left corner. That was a nuanced element. If the driver didn’t angle properly through the four-cone crossover, too much speed would be lost in getting to the next right around worker station 4. The corner that turns you back up through the channel was tough because it was off-camber and with a downhill entry that made it easy to enter too fast and push out with understeer, which I really wanted to avoid because it would kill my time. I took a late apex there to facilitate the exit so I could get onto the throttle again as quickly as possible.
Exiting that corner, I could again roll into full throttle and while it’s not obvious from the map, this was also a very fast segment heading up the hill. I was full throttle and probably right around 60 mph when I stabbed the brakes for the jog at the second cone of the slalom, then back on and slithering through before braking hard for the sharp left. After the turn, I made sure I favored the left side to make the proper entry to the hard right around the light pole, hitting a late apex so I could roll back into full throttle on exit. The final sequence on the lower right of the course was tricky. I was full throttle down the right side, angling to backside the cone at the entry, then tight across the bottom again at full throttle, taking a line that allowed me to use trail braking to help rotate the car and back-side the exit cone to turn up towards the finish. By favoring the left side here and even juking left, I was able to go a lot faster and roll on a lot more throttle to swing the car into the stop box, barely managing to avoid the cones on the left side of the stop box next to the timing
equipment.
I finally installed a GoPro in my car for these races and if interested, you can see my fastest run here: https://youtu.be/wAetNBlyJsY. Keep in mind that the actual course is a bit different than what’s shown on the course map – it’s normal for the course to get tweaked for flow when it’s built and there are always changes that Mark and I make after the safety runs. The run depicted in the video was my last and best, netting me 2nd place in Class S4, 0.11 seconds behind Mark. Well, that was OK. We were racing on Mark’s birthday, after all, and it would have been absolutely gauche for me to beat him on his birthday. Congratulations, Mark! Interestingly, our September race this year was on Mark’s birthday and last year it was on my birthday. Go figure. ;)
I could consider doing more than 6 runs for this race because the weather was gorgeous, which means it wouldn’t be too tough on the course workers to stay out there shagging cones. We settled into a pace of about 15 or 16 minutes per run in the first heat, so I took a chance (it was a tough choice) and opted for 7 runs for this race. To my relief, that worked out OK. We got started slightly late with the first car off at 9:43 (because the course took a while to build and Mark and I spent a fair amount of time tweaking the course) and the first heat ended at 12:03. We got things organized for the second heat pretty quickly and the first car for heat two was off at 12:20. Unfortunately, the last run completed at 2:54, which was certainly slower than I would have liked to see (there were some timing snafus), but within acceptable limits (barely) on a nice day.
As we normally see at our races, Classes S4 and S5 were highly competitive and tightly contested, thus crowding the top of the leaderboard. The top 10 placing Porsches were:
1st overall, 1st in Class S5, 52.459 sec: Dave Critcher, 2016 GT3
2nd overall, 2nd in Class S5, 52.922 sec: Scott Borden, 2018 GT3 Touring
4th overall, 3rd in Class S5, 53.879 sec: Howard Leikin, 2021 718 GTS
5th overall, 1st in Class S4, 54.449 sec: Birthday Boy Mark Hubley, 2015 Cayman GTS
6th overall, 2nd in Class S4, 54.559 sec: Greg Hartke, 2014 Cayman S
7th overall, 1st in Class P3, 55.000 sec: Craig Schnelli, 2002 911
8th overall, 4th in Class S5, 55.163 sec: Bill Schwinn, 2018 911
9th overall, 2nd in Class P3, 55.571 sec: Phong Nguyen, 2005 Boxster S
15th overall, 5th in Class S5, 56.859 sec: Amanda Addington, 2017 718 Cayman S
16th overall, 1st in Class P5, 56.871 sec: Pinto Soin, 911 Carrera S
Additionally, John Cho was 1st in Class I, Darrell Pope was 1st in Class P1, Greg Whitehead was 1st in Class P4, and Michael Ignatysh was 1st in Class S3. Notice the time difference between Amanda and Pinto: 0.012 sec. Hmm. That’s about 1/80th of a sec, so let’s think about that for a moment. I always think of 60 mph as about 88 ft/sec, so if the average speed for the course was (say) 40 mph, that equates to approx. 60 ft/sec and 1/80th of a sec at 60 ft/sec yields an estimated separation between Amanda and Pinto of approx. ¾ ft, or about 9 inches. I’d call that a close finish. This little computation is always a fun game to play. Let’s see… Mark beat me by 0.11 sec, which is about 1/9th of a sec. At 40 ft/sec, that’s something like 4 or 5 ft. Grrr. ;)
It was a long day, but pleasant weather, so not too tough on us. It amazes me that the weather was really hot for only one AX this year and that was AX#5 in August. Most fortuitous! Again, those of us working in the trailer had the opportunity to enjoy Lisa
Gritti’s homemade chocolate chip cookies while we worked, which certainly made the work more enjoyable. Thanks, Lisa!
Hard to believe the end of the racing season is nigh, but that is indeed the case. AX#7 (Saturday October 7th) will be coming up just about the time this edition of the Patter is published. If you’re not racing and have a chance, stop by to say hello at what will be our last race of the year. I’m sure you’ll find the action interesting and you should certainly feel free to corner one (or several) of us to answer any questions you might have. Taste of Autocross is also available to see what a hot lap is like for the adventurous among you.
Hope to see you soon at the races!
