2014 FAST Novice School

[Loren]

Okay, let's hear it!

[yamaha731]

to tired to type

[AScoda]

GT class, best class!

[Solar]

to tired to type

I second that, long day, but very enjoyable day, the beginner group had a great bunch of students too.

Great job by everyone, even after a late start, Ron worked his magic and got us back on schedule.

Great to get home and crack open a cold one and watch some football, and Ron I just want to let you know, I really do enjoy my iPad.

[snookwheel]

A fine day of AutoX school'n! The Brooksville venue worked out very well, I saw a lot of improvement in the Advanced Group over the course of the day. Wish I could have stayed to see the After-runs.

[co s13]

to tired to type

I second that, long day

Third

[BoneHead]

Loved it!

[Dave S]

Thanks to everyone that worked so hard to make this happen. The instructors were great and the course workers put in a very long day. The event was very well run overall. It is much appreciated. I hope I can put all the excellent instruction in to practice!

[Loren]

Huge thanks to all of the volunteer course workers and instructors who put in nearly a 12-hour day for today's school event! You guys rock!

And thanks to all of the students who entrusted us with your indoctrination to autocross. As it turns out, -- after a bit of instruction -- you guys rock, too!

Here are the Offical Results. The first two times for each driver are their baseline runs pre-instruction. The remaining three were late in the afternoon.

I'm gonna crunch up some stats now...

[92mx-5]

today was awesome...

great day of learning, had an awesome time.

I really do want to thank all the instructors and volunteers who helped out, with out you guys today wouldn't have been so awesome.

thank you

[Carracer]

Lots of fun, it was really nice watching the improvements. Especially in the slalom. I was wearing my most comfortable shoes ( that need replacing ) and my feet still hurt

It was really cool watching the "turning section" it was fun watching when the drivers "get it". Same with the turnaround. But I'm not going to lie, as a course worker, the "launch & braking" section was basically just standing in a field. Thank goodness a few cars came with nice exhaust notes, I would have fallen asleep otherwise.

From my view the event seemed to be a success minus a few course setup issues thanks to the lack of light.

I wanted to join you guys afterwards for food but when I was following the cars down I noticed I needed gas NOW. So I had to double back to the Hess station. After that I wasn't sure of the location and I had some how forgotten the name of the place so I just gave up and headed home.

[92mx-5]

I wanted to join you guys afterwards for food but when I was following the cars down I noticed I needed gas NOW. So I had to double back to the Hess station. After that I wasn't sure of the location and I had some how forgotten the name of the place so I just gave up and headed home.

we were wondering what happened to you and were waiting on the side of the road for a few.. but no one had your number..

[Carracer]

we were wondering what happened to you and were waiting on the side of the road for a few.. but no one had your number..

Sorry, I didn't expect anyone to wait up, thanks!

I really should have written the name down, next time I'm going to try to give some people my number.

[Solar]

Huge thanks to all of the volunteer course workers and instructors who put in nearly a 12-hour day

Just thinking how nice it is that we get an extra hour back tonight..

[ExecutiveHydra]

Thank you Thank you to everyone! But a BIG thank you to Eric who lent me his extra long sleeve shirt, because I was "that guy" who wore shorts and t-shirt (because I'm a good reader and our Student Packet said to )

My clutch foot is tired, and I'm sunburnt, but a great day indeed.

[Loren]

My clutch foot is tired, and I'm sunburnt, but a great day indeed.

Student Packet also told you to wear sunscreen!

[Loren]

Fun Facts:

Fastest Time - 35.760 - Andy Lachance
Most Improved - 14.920 SECONDS! - Josha Wojtas (Just got his DL, woohoo!)
Least Improved - 0.473 Seconds - Paul Dombrowski (Would have been over a second except for one cone)
Average Improvement Raw - 4.282 seconds
Average Improvement Adjusted - 4.029 seconds (Highest and Lowest dropped)
Average Improvement Novices - 4.713 seconds (Excluding Advanced Group)
Average Improvement Novices Adjusted - 4.429 (Excluding Adv Group, Highest and Lowest dropped)

Average Improvement Per Group:
Beginner - 6.600 Seconds (still 5.411 if you drop the highest)
GT - 4.141 Seconds
Advanced - 2.628 Seconds
Sport - 3.327 Seconds

Interestingly, about 10 drivers lost their best afternoon times to cones. Were it not for that, the average improvement would be even more!

Any way you cut it, average improvement today was over 4 seconds. More typically, it's closer to 2 or 3 seconds! Last school we did, it was 2.43 seconds.

[Solar]

Any way you cut it, average improvement today was over 4 seconds. More typically, it's closer to 2 or 3 seconds! Last school we did, it was 2.43 seconds.

Awesome !

I'm thinking that being at Brooksville helped somewhat with the times, having more room to "stretch out" gave the beginner students a bit more room to correct their lines. Just my observation compared to how we ran the past school at SPC.

[Evan]

This was an amazing event. I loved being able to dissect the course into each section, practice that section over and over with instructor feedback and minimal downtime, and sometimes even have a lap timer for direct comparison of runs.

I could finally compare and contrast different approaches to turnarounds. So good.

Instruction was on point, and a huge takeaway that changed my thinking was to place an emphasis on your position more so than your speed. When I started looking out for it, I saw that being in the right place at a lower speed trumped being in the wrong place at a higher speed every single time for me.

Other major takeaways courtesy of highly specific instructor feedback:

• Attack the back - I've always "known" to do this, but apparently I was incredibly guilty of late turn-ins on slaloms (and other places, but this element was great for practicing it). It felt so weird having an instructor tell me to turn in a good 5 feet before my brain wanted me to, but all of my runs got faster when I consciously turned in before my brain wanted me to. Click.
• LOOK AHEAD - This has also been a very difficult one for me, but not until being on the skidpad and being told to look 180° of the circle ahead did my brain understand just how much I was not doing it. The more I did this, the more things felt "natural" to navigate rather than requiring so much thought about when to turn in, when to brake, how much to blah blah blah...

I went through a few phases in my driving as a result of all this:

• Looking 0-2 cones ahead, being way off of cones I needed to be close to
• Looking 0-2 cones ahead, getting right next to the cones I needed to be close to
• Looking 3-4 cones ahead, navigation feels almost effortless now but that's because I'm way off of cones again
• Looking 3-4 cones ahead, getting right next to cones - this would be autocross nirvana, I imagine, where navigation feels effortless but you're also close up to the cones you need to be close to. Not there yet, but I was struck with the startlingly obvious realization that I could drive right next to cones while looking at other cones. Revolutionary. I can only imagine that our autocross jedis drive like this

This was an amazing event. Were people actually out there doing nothing but picking up cones all day so we could learn? How is that even possible? All of you folks involved in setting up and running this event are clearly magnificent persons of exemplary moral fiber. Thank you so much.

[jev61]

[*]LOOK AHEAD - This has also been a very difficult one for me, but not until being on the skidpad and being told to look 180° of the circle ahead did my brain understand just how much I was not doing it. The more I did this, the more things felt "natural" to navigate rather than requiring so much thought about when to turn in, when to brake, how much to blah blah blah...[/list]
.

You nailed this on the skid pad, I saw you looking all the way across the circle. Great job.

I was so tired yesterday evening all I could do was shower, eat, and ice down my knees before bed. I couldn't even watch Mississippi State continue its march to a national championship.

Sara said she had fun too. I hope she'll race with me again soon.