Autocross Update April 2023

By:GregHartke

Spring is in the air and, as always, the autocross season will soon be underway. ‘Bout time! As I write this, the first Chesapeake event (Test & Tune on Sunday April 2nd) is days away and will be in the books by the time you read this. The weather forecast is good, if a little chilly, and I’d like to think we’re well prepared, though I always have nightmares about unexpected problems.

Prep work has continued this past month, but I think we’re just about there. CHS PCA Vice-President Steve Wood met AX Co-chair Mark Hubley and me at Mark’s farm on a recent Wednesday morning to repack the bearings on the trailer that we use to transport our equipment. The bearings hadn’t been serviced since 2017 when the trailer was first outfitted, so it was time to make sure everything was in order.

When Steve removed the first assembly, it was clear that it was in excellent shape and, in fact, it probably wasn’t even necessary to repack that bearing. Needless to say, it was done anyway because it was the right thing to do. (After 6 years, doing so was good preventive maintenance.) Three of the four axles were good, but the fourth showed a problem. It turned out that the dust cap on the right rear axle had been breached and allowed moisture into the assembly, which then degraded the grease and the inner seal. For that reason, a new dust cap and seals were needed to finish the job. We left the trailer sitting on three wheels and Steve took the parts away so that he could go to a trailer shop to make sure he got the correct parts to replace what needed replacing (and also clean all the affected grease from the bearings). Steve did an ultra-quick turn-around and he and Mark finished the job the next day.

The bottom line is that it was a good thing the job was done during this off-season. There’s no telling how long that dust cap had been degraded nor how long it might be until the bearing failed because of it, but it was caught now and after disassembly, everything looked fine on the affected axle; we just need to replace the cap and seals and repack it.

Steve raised another point. A couple of the tires on the trailer were rather badly dry-rotted and a third was noticeably dry-rotted. I was aware of this and hoped to get through this season without any trouble (and not wanting to spend more CHS PCA money at this time), but Steve suggested we replace the tires now. We talked about what needed replacing, but it was my view that if we were replacing two or three tires, we might just as well replace all four so that we know definitively the provenance of the tires on the trailer. We think the tires on the trailer are original (2017), with the exception of one tire which was loaned by Mark when we had a flat. Subsequently, that original was fixed and became the spare.

In the end we decided to replace all four tires and buy another rim, on which we would mount the best of the tires we’ll be removing from the trailer to use as a spare, then we’ll return the tire and rim Mark loaned us. All good now (it’s all on order), so we’ll be able to drive the trailer with confidence – I’m happy because I’ve been a bit worried about this, especially when we have to drive the whole shebang up to Aberdeen for AX#1 in early May.

More good news! A pervasive problem plaguing our AX events has been the loss of the connection to the network switch in the AX trailer so that we had to connect the iPads to the AX laptop through the hotspot

instead of the switch, which resulted in limited range. AX team worker Phong Nguyen and I met at the trailer recently at Mark’s farm to sort this out. I set everything up (the generator started on the first pull – I’m always worried about that!) and Phong reset the switch to the factory defaults, then reconfigured it to talk to the laptop. Phong got it all straightened out and I was then able to connect one of the new Samsung tablets to the AXTime software on the AX laptop via the switch. (I had configured the new Samsung tablets at home the previous evening.) Ta da! Success all ‘round and we should now have everything working again after a loo-o-o-ong period of kludges and work-arounds.

Now that I think about it, we’re not all the way there yet. Close, though. You may recall that I mentioned last month that the AXTime live site was down for rework, which means we would need an alternative way for participants to see timing results in real-time. That problem persists, but Phong has been working on a solution until the live site is back up and we think we have a way for everyone to see results in real-time. (I’m happy to let him take point. I have enough to do!) We’ll be testing this at the Test & Tune and hopefully everything will work out the way we want. The good news is that Test & Tune (which is a practice event for the drivers) provides us with an opportunity to test out and tweak our procedures before the racing season gets underway. ;)

As you may have noted by now, somehow the fun never ends getting and keeping all the equipment needed for AX working properly. ;)

On Saturday March 11th, I instructed at the Potomac AX School at the Washington Circuit at Summit Point. I don’t get to instruct at the CHS AX School because I’m busy managing the event, so this is my opportunity to have some fun. At our AX School, we have a 2:1 Student-to-Instructor ratio with every instructor working exclusively with two students. POT does 3:1, which means more students, but less seat time for the students. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound so great, but I’m not sure that’s the case because even so, it was a lot of time.

Interestingly, I only had two students because one of my students couldn’t make it due to a mechanical problem. I didn’t mind that at all because it meant I got a break that other instructors didn’t get. Perfect for an oldster like me. ;) I took advantage of the situation and took my students out to where we had a good vantage point to observe the other students driving their exercises during my breaks. My students really enjoyed this because I could point out (and they could see firsthand) the effects of common mistakes in the driving by other newcomers. This certainly provided “Ah ha!” moments for the students.

I tried something new for the POT School this year. In preparation for the event, I snipped out the course/ exercise design and placed it in a PowerPoint, then drew the driving line at critical points with annotations for my students about what they should be doing at those points. I did this because in the past, I’ve found it difficult to point out their mistakes on a blank course map and thought this might make it easier. In addition, I printed out copies and provided them to the students to review on their own and use as a reference when we walked the course, besides using it as a reference after a run. This worked even better than I expected, and I plan to do this whenever I teach at the School in the future.

The POT AX School was a great event with one caveat: POT schedules their AX School awfully early in the year and it was really cold and windy that morning. I was working on-site registration and it was so windy that a job that normally takes two people required four to keep all the papers and material from blowing all over the place. It was wild! One of my students was driving a late-model Miata and we had to race with the top down because my helmeted head stuck up so far. Brrr! You can see how funny that looked in the included picture. ;)

In the past, I haven’t been especially keen on the courses used for the POT AX School (IMO, they’ve typically been too complicated for beginners), but POT AX Chair Bill Conley designed a really great course for the School this year. Kudos to Bill on his first course design! POT always has their AX#1 on the day following their AX School and uses the same course, so I was really itching to drive it myself. Unfortunately, I had to cancel because the weather was forecast to be cloudy and even colder than the previous day at the AX School, with precip in the afternoon. “Precip” in this case meant snow, too. (See the accompanying pictures.) The third heat was actually driven in the snow which (as you can imagine) meant that lap times were dramatically slower.

I immediately started looking for backups, but the only other reasonable possibility for my 20” wheels were the Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3’s and unfortunately the size I need for the rear tires was out of stock. Grrr! I mentioned this to Mark Hubley and it turned out he had a used set of PS4S tires for 20” wheels that he would sell me so I would have something until the Yokos arrived. These aren’t very good, but they’re bound to be better than the all-but-dead RE-71R’s on my car now, so they’re being mounted even as I write this. We’ll see how they do this weekend. ;)

Interestingly, Mark told me that he had heard from Tire Rack this afternoon that his Yokos were also delayed. TR said that the manufacturer could not provide them with an exact ETA at this time, and they were unsure when the tires may be available because there is no production scheduled from Yokohama. Mark was also thinking about alternatives and it sounds as if he may go with RE-71RS’s. That’s exactly what I would do if I had 19” wheels (which he does), but unfortunately, mine are 20” and they don’t have that tire in the size I need for the fronts. Sheesh!

A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a skidpad event at Summit Point put on by Road Potomac (an LLC run by POT AXers and DE experts Tessa Hall and Gary Baker). That was certainly interesting! The idea is to get more car control experience by learning to drift your car around a wet skidpad. It’s recommended that you kick the rear of the car out via drop-throttle oversteer, then catch it and continue the drift. I really struggled to maintain the drift when I kicked it out this way, but I eventually found something that worked better for me.

I was alone on the skidpad at one point and getting a bit frustrated because I kept spinning the car (I got a lot of practice at that… ;) ), so I decided to do some AX practice by driving the tightest, fastest line I could. It was fun driving right on the edge (and great practice in the wet), but it occurred to me to try kicking the rear out using power oversteer and, lo and behold, for some reason I could control that entry much better and hold the drift. I continued to work on this and it was much better, though I had a tendency to go faster than others on the skidpad (there were usually two or three on the skidpad at one time), so had to pull back before going more than maybe halfway around. My expectation is that by working on getting the feel of drifting the car this way, I’ll be better able to control the drop-throttle oversteer entry in the future and go slower when I enter via power oversteer.

Mark Hubley is an instructor for the Road Potomac skidpad events and CHS AX helpers John Cho and Phong Nguyen have been going to skidpad events, too. Scott Borden and CHS Insurance Chair Eric Saletel were at this event and both did well. Scott had some previous skidpad experience and really had it going by the end of the day. I was certainly impressed!

BTW, every time I saw Tessa that day, she would give me grief because she’s well aware how clean I like to keep my car and driving on the skidpad made it an absolute mess. Imagine how embarrassed I was driving home from Summit Point. Oh, the shame! And skidpad spooge is the worst! I swear I spent more than an hour with a power washer getting the worst of it off the car the next day before washing and detailing the car per usual. I’ll do it again, of course. I’m a glutton for punishment. ;)

Tessa told me that AXer extraordinaire Danny Kao came out to a skidpad event a couple of days later and he really struggled, too, and told Tessa that he found drifting on a skidpad really hard. I’m with that! Drifting is not the fastest way around a corner, so my AX experience had me reflexively wanting to drive on the edge, but no farther. Danny (who is a superb driver) had this same reaction (keeping in mind he’s much better than

I am). Interestingly, Tessa and Gary also told me that they’ve had POT PCA members coming out to try their hand at the skidpad because AX racing was so intimidating. That really took me by surprise. Tessa, Gary, and I all agree that drifting around a skidpad is much harder than AX, but maybe it’s the competition aspect of AX that some find intimidating. Gotta think about that!

Actually, that’s the whole point of the AX School. Coming in with no experience, it’s obvious why AX would be intimidating. No one in their right mind drives on the streets like you do in an AX. (Except, maybe, for some crazies whose exploits show up as bad driving examples on the internet, but they have no idea what they’re doing.) The AX School gives you the opportunity to learn to push your car hard, to learn what it feels like to drive on the edge of grip. You approach it gradually in a controlled and safe environment and become a much better driver for it. And besides, it’s gobs of fun. ;)

The CHS PCA Intro to Autocross (aka the AX School) is scheduled for Saturday April 22nd and there are still slots left. If interested, register at Motorsportreg.com and come join the fun. Alternatively, come to an AX event and sign up for Taste of Autocross, where you’ll get the opportunity to ride during fast laps with one of our instructors. That will demonstrate what you could do with a bit of practice!

Here we go! The season is almost upon us and I’ll be looking forward to seeing everyone soon at the races!

Greg Hartke