Autocross In Review

Chesapeake Region

Autocross In Review

Words: Greg Hartke

I had an interesting experience at Potomac’s Autocross #2 in early May at Summit Point. That event was Saturday May 7th, which was the second day of the big rain event we had in early May. With AX, rain doesn’t matter, the show must go on, so race we did. There were a bunch of cancellations, but truth to tell, it was a lot of fun. There was heavy rain early when I first arrived at Summit Point, but it tapered off to light -to-moderate rain by the time racing started and for the rest of the day, so it wasn’t too bad. It was chilly, too, with the temperature steady at right around 50° F all day. A lot of drivers commented about how scary it was driving to the venue – they noticed even then that grip was really lacking, and their cars were not happy with the cold, wet conditions. I didn’t really have that reaction

driving out to Summit Point, though. It felt just about as I would have expected for very wet roads, but then again, it’s not as if I was pushing it very hard. POT usually has 75 to 80 drivers and runs 3 heats at their events. I was in the second heat and conditions really didn’t change much throughout the whole day, so there was no advantage or disadvantage to any particular heat. When my opportunity came up, I went out on my first run and… Wow! I was astonished at how little grip I had. For those of you who haven’t driven the Washington circuit at Summit Point where POT does their AX, the surface is a bit slick with less grip than we have at our PGS venue. This, though, was off the charts. I couldn’t roll on the power without spinning the wheels and the car was twitching and slewing all over the place. I adapted a bit on the second run, but it was still virtually impossible for me to put up a decent time. The worst part was my inability to use the throttle properly, but I received advice that improved that situation. On my second run, starter Roland P. told me that Chris N. had told him that the best way to combat the poor grip was to turn off Sport Mode so that the throttle response was less abrupt. That didn’t occur to me because I always run in Sport mode. It’s the first thing I do when I start the car at any time because I like the quicker response. The advice made a lot of sense to me, so I tried it on my third run and immediately found the car much easier to drive in the extant (rather extreme) conditions. Go figure. Of course, I immediately passed the word to some of my other racing buddies in this heat (all fast drivers). They all tried it, and all found that it was a

12

Chesapeake Region

Autocross (cont’d)

big help in controlling the car. I’ll certainly stow this little piece of advice away for the future! By my last run, I had dropped my tire pressures down to 25 psi and that helped, too. (I still have last RE-71R’s on my car form last year and they have stiff sidewalls that can support lower tire pressures.) What was really shocking about the event was the mediocre (at best) times put up by all the good drivers. Everyone who had ultra-performance summer tires got their butts kicked by drivers with good “compromise” tires. All-seasons did great. Michelin PS4’s did great. RE-71R’s, A052’s, Sport Cups, etc. were all terrible for the conditions. Tessa H. told me she had no grip at all – she’s running the Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3’s and really likes them, but not yesterday. Kevin K. runs Falken Azenis RT660’s and he had nothing. John V.’s times were terrible, as were Gary B.’s (sharing Tessa’s car). On the other hand, Bill C. (Michelin PS4’s, IIRC) blew everyone away. The winner in S5 was a 17 y.o. newby in a Turbo S with the right tires. Pretty wild, huh? By my last couple of runs, I was getting the hang of it and really wished I had a couple more runs because I know I could have been faster. Besides, I really would have appreciated the opportunity to get more practice in the low-grip conditions. It was great fun once I got onto the right track. CHS star driver Dave C. was registered for the event and was supposed to be instructing for the first heat, but didn’t show up, which was a huge surprise to me. As it turned out, Dave showed up just in time for the second heat with a wild story: he left home that morning to come to the event but blew a belt on his car shortly after leaving home. Amazingly enough, he had what he needed to fix the problem (maybe better phrased as “patch” the problem) and got to Summit Point as soon as he could. What that meant was that Dave drove without ever walking the course at all and that’s a huge challenge. Even Dave had considerable trouble with the conditions and spun a couple of times, but in the end, he threw up some very respectable times. No surprise to me, of course. ;) Scott B. told me this was probably his worst performance ever. Scott has Pilot Sport Cup 2R’s on his car and apparently, they really don’t like cold, wet conditions. He told me his drive out to Summit Point was scary, too. When he went home, it wasn’t any warmer, but he said he had way more control. The roads weren’t as wet by then (the rain was much heavier when driving out early), so that makes sense. In retrospect, Scott was thinking he should have put on his snows for this event, which is certainly an interesting idea. This day was all about the tires. It was fascinating seeing how it worked out! In contrast, CHS AX#2 at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen was held on Sunday May 29th and featured perfect weather. It was warm, but not hot, and the wind was light. The conditions meant we had a good track temperature, hence good grip, and we didn’t bake while we were out there.

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Chesapeake Region

Autocross (cont’d)

Words: Greg Hartke

Ripken Stadium is a great venue for AX, but logistically difficult. It’s a long haul from where we keep the trailer, so Mark Hubley elected to tow it up Saturday night, stay the night, then take it over to the venue in the morning, while AX Co-chair Brad Martinez drove Mark’s car up to Aberdeen Sunday morning. It all worked out just fine, though I had to wonder what might have happened if Brad had been pulled over for any reason in Mark’s car at that hour. I probably don’t want to know. ;) I arrived a little before 5:00 AM and admired the close conjunction of Jupiter and Mars in the morning sky (½ deg separation – about the width of the full Moon). Brad and John Cho were already there, with Brad wandering around checking over the lot for debris. There was more debris on the lot than we would normally see at PGS, but it wasn’t too bad. Brad made sure the entrances were all blocked off, and Mark arrived with the trailer around 5:25. We spent a little bit of time figuring out where we wanted the trailer, then Mark drove the truck around with Brad dropping the cones out of the trailer for the course. Brad and John were soon out putting the course together while Mark and Pinto Soin helped me get everything else set up. Pinto was unable to get out to race last year during our abbreviated season, so it was great to have him back in the fold again. Pinto normally helps me set up in the morning when he’s at an event and really knows what he’s doing, but with Mark helping as well, I can tell you I’ve never had such competent and efficient help getting everything ready. Wow! Thanks to these guys, we were ready so early that I could hardly believe it. That left me with no excuse not to get going on my least favorite task: getting the computers and network up and running. Here we go again. As at our last event, I was unable to get the hotspot to connect to the internet. Grrr! I tried everything, but it just wasn’t happening. Around 7:30, Meilyng showed up, so I turned that job over to her (she’s more knowledgeable in that area than I am) and I went off to take care of other things. Unfortunately, she, too, was unable to get the stupid hotspot connected, so we wound up having to use her personal phone as a hotspot yet again. Not optimal, but as usual, we worked around the problem and got things going. I confess I was a little worried about power for the computers and timing equipment for this event. At PGS, we can run off the mains, so we don’t need to worry about a generator. We have a generator, but when I tested it during the off-season (it hadn’t been run in 2 or 3 years), it wouldn’t start. It was most likely a carbu-

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Chesapeake Region

Autocross (cont’d)

Words: Greg Hartke

retor problem (I heard it had had them before my tenure as Co-chair), but the estimate to fix it was high enough that we gave up and bought a new generator. I had tested the new unit a month or so ago when we got it, but you never know. As it turned out, it started first pull and ran flawlessly throughout. Phew! I must confess, though, that I almost forgot to refuel it during the event. That would have been embarrassing if we had run out of gas because we would have had to restart everything, wasting a lot of time. Thanks for keeping me on track, Pinto! We had an interesting time with the course design for this event. Brad has been going nuts with work and was too busy to get one done, so AX Registrar Meilyng Wigney-Burmaka developed some concepts, but they didn’t quite fit what I wanted. We went back and forth a couple of times, then she submitted her latest iteration to AX expert Danny Kao, who put the finishing touches on a course design that in the end I thought looked good on paper. You never know how it’ll work in the real world, though, but I was hopeful. Once Brad and John finished building the course, Brad and I went out for the safety runs. We felt the course was really good, so we didn’t have to do much. We wound up extending the stop box and adding some pointer cones to help keep drivers from getting lost, but IIRC, that was it. This course was neat because it was a big course, not particularly technical and very fast in places, yet had some interesting and challenging elements. Meilyng and Danny came up with an excellent design that was probably the best we’ve ever used at this venue. We don’t use the entire lot at Ripken because there’s a big dip for a drainage line that runs across the lot, cutting off maybe ¼ of the total area. We learned the first time we used this venue some years ago that it was undesirable to have cars go over that dip with any speed because they’ll risk damage with a ground strike. We did cross the dip with this course, but it was right after the start when it was safe to do so. Interestingly, Howard L. told me he had been racing at Ripken the previous day with BMC and they did use the whole lot, crossing the dip in a slalom (IIRC), which he found required care because it certainly upset the stability of the car. The first car went off at 9:45, about 15 minutes later than scheduled, but that was because of the excessive time we spent trying to get the hotspot connected. The first run was a little slow even though there weren’t a lot of cone hits nor off-course calls, but that’s pretty much par for the course as we work into our usual tempo. We were eventually running about 18 minutes or so per run and we finished the first heat (6 runs) at 11:45. The changeover for the second heat took about 20

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Chesapeake Region

Autocross (cont’d)

Words: Greg Hartke

minutes and the second heat began at 12:05. Amazingly enough, the second heat took almost the same length of time as the first – we finished racing at 2:05. It was great to see CHS AXer Dave C. out there with his new car for the first time, albeit with 3 y.o. tires. When Dave told me about the tires, I figured it was only a matter of time ‘til he spun the car and, sure enough, I was right. He spun it on his third run. Dave being Dave, though, he still managed to put up great times with his car skittering all over the place. Amazing! Dave told me he thought he preferred his old car for AX, but we’ll see how he feels when he gets real tires for the new one. All I can say is that it’s a good thing it was a warm day, or he would have had no grip whatsoever! ;) Speaking of a warm day, we went through plenty of water and 84 lbs of ice. Not much ice left over at the end of the day, either! First place overall among the Porsches and 3rd overall was POT AXer Kevin K. (49.422 sec), who was also first in S4. That’s particularly impressive when you consider that he bested some really fast drivers in S5. Wow! 2nd among the P-cars, 5th overall, and 1st in S5 was CHS AXer Scott B. (49.691 sec), which marked a particularly impressive comeback from what Scott thought was a terrible performance in the deluged POT AX a few weeks earlier (mentioned above). 3rd among the P-cars, 6th overall, and 2nd in S5 was POT AXer Howard L. (49.701 sec), who was also very glad to escape the rainy POT AX a few weeks prior. 4th among the P-cars, 7th overall, and 1st in P5 was Norm F. (49.736 sec), who’s also thoroughly enjoying a hot new (to him) car this season. 5th among the Porsches, 8th overall, and 2nd is S4 was POT AXer Rafael G. (49.982 sec), which was a somewhat surprising result because Rafael is blazing fast. 6th for the Porsches, 9th overall, and 3rd in S5 was CHS AXer Dave C. (50.081 sec), which I still think was an amazing result driving on tired tires. Another interesting story among the high-finishers was CHS AXer Brad M. driving a borrowed car and finishing 7th among the P-cars, 3rd in S4, and 10th overall. In the Guest Class, Tom. C. was 1st overall (48.373 sec), Wil C. was 2nd overall (48.907 sec), Danny K. was 4th overall (49.551 sec), and CHS AXer Slava B. was 11th overall (50.564 sec). Slava’s Porsche is awaiting suspension parts, which is why he was driving a non-P-car for this event. We had a bunch of new AXers at this event who did very well for first timers and from what I heard, enjoyed themselves to no end. I sure hope they come out again! I was worried we’d struggle to fill the registration on a holiday weekend, but the registration was full (65 drivers) and I was very pleased to see that we had 38 Porsche drivers at this event, which amounts to almost 60%. That’s better than our usual where we struggle to get 50% Porsches at our events. Great job of support by the PCA Membership! Once we were done racing, participants were tremendously helpful getting all the equipment and cones brought back to the trailer so we could pack it up and hit the road. With so many racing friends pitching in, we were packed up and ready to go in no time. Somehow it really seemed quick and easy, which is hugely appreciated after a long day for those of us putting on the event. Thanks so much! I must say that Brad, Meilyng, and I are really getting spoiled, though. Lisa Gritti provided cookies yet again for us and this time, Meilyng and I even let Brad have his. Were we magnanimous, or what? ;) Lisa also made blondies, which I had never even heard of before, but they sure were a hit with the trailer crowd. Thanks a bunch for taking care of us, Lisa! Thanks to everyone who came out and made AX#2 at Ripken Stadium a very successful event. If you weren’t there, you sure missed a great AX! Racing at Ripken is so much fun that I’m thinking about doing more than one event there next year. The Events Manager told me they anticipate getting their schedule from MLB a bit

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Chesapeake Region

Autocross (cont’d)

Words: Greg Hartke

earlier for the 2023 season, hoping for around mid-July, which would be a bit before it will go out to the public. She said she’d be happy to reach back out when they have the schedule to give me a chance to snag available dates early. I’ll need to look into that! Mark those calendars! AX#3 is scheduled for Saturday June 25th at Prince George’s Stadium in Bowie, MD and we already have a good number of drivers registered. Again, if you think you have an interest in AX and would like to see what it’s like, come out and register for Taste of Autocross (ToA), for which you’ll receive multiple runs on the course riding with an instructor. We had several ToA passengers at Ripken and there’s nothing like it to whet your appetite. Come and see! Looking forward to seeing you soon at the races! Greg Hartke CHS AX Co-chair

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