6/30 best day evar!

[mabrahams]

Micheal, what are you using to get your videos? I like the layout. Simple and tidy.

Garmin VIRB XE outside. Older Garmin VIRB inside. Edited on Garmin software as well.

[aw614]

Well, I ran the second run group of the morning session so was lucky to just miss the rain. I enjoyed the course but my driving was very inconsistent - run 3 was my fastest and was going great but I carried too much speed and got way behind on the last offset slalom before the finish so definitely gave away some time there. With that, I know I could get into the 38s, but somehow was never able to match, let alone improve my time in the last two runs. (Or even the bonus run).
Still, had a great day as always.

Here's my fastest 39.198
https://youtu.be/-u4XO36yDTg

How did the sway bar feel in brooksville for you?

[dbeng]

How did the sway bar feel in brooksville for you?

The handling was great at Brooksville, exactly what I was looking for by switching to the stiffer setting. It helped improve traction and front end grip, without creating excessive oversteer.

I'm sure it was just the dusty surface for the first run at Dunnellon that caught me out last time.

It gets an official

[Loren]

Micheal, what are you using to get your videos? I like the layout. Simple and tidy.

Garmin VIRB XE outside. Older Garmin VIRB inside. Edited on Garmin software as well.

Very cool.

[PrestonJ]

The morning session was an epic battle in M3, everyone one of the front runners except Curtis showed up. If I have done my math correctly, only one point separates Tyler from myself going into the final Open event to determine First Place for the year. I think only two point separates the next two competitors for Third Place; can Elexis earn a t-shirt her first year autoxing? I can not leave out Aaron; it was a lot of fun seeing him competing on new tires, he will be at the front of the pack now too. Will any of us ever again see 1st place again with Preston joining the class?

-I don't attend enough events anyways, so I think you guys will be fine. I'd be willing to bump to S1 or something too, doesn't matter to me. The car is on it's way to STU prep, but I still have quite a bit of work to do.

-Michael Abrahams, kinda surprised to see your coolant temps hang out in the 220-225 range on your second run for so long, love that car though, some good wet times.

-The event was fun, even with the million cones that were hit by nearly every driver in the first slalom. Start to turn-around was slalom city, turn-around to finish was incredibly fun, fast, and flowing, it was the most fun I've had at an autocross anywhere for some time. A+ on the course.

-Weather for AM held out, thank god, sounds like afternoon made the best of what they had though.

https://youtu.be/7P1mSHXO3dQ

This was my fastest run...with a cone: 34.4

[Loren]

Preston, sounds like M2 would be the class for you. Once you start doing turbo mods, that's where you'll end up. They'll love you there.

Man, I sat and watched at least every other car hit the 3rd cone in the first slalom REPEATEDLY Saturday afternoon! I can see maybe your first or second run, but... it was just a slalom, geez! People just weren't pulling hard enough to the left after the second cone, and running right over the 3rd cone. It was absolutely nuts to watch!

Perfectly straight slalom spaced 60-50-50. At the beginning of the course where you're not going all that fast, anyway. It was intended to be a little tricky to get into, but it wasn't that hard. The other two slaloms followed the same theme. 75-62-62 on the one before the crossover, and 100-75-75 on the return side.

Felt really bad for the Station 1 guys, and made sure we had enough people there to alternate resetting that cone.

[CaptainSquirts]

https://youtu.be/7P1mSHXO3dQ

This was my fastest run...with a cone: 34.4

Was comparing video to see where all the time I left off was at. Literally almost every section I was lacking compared to yours

[Carracer]

Pictures! Big thanks to my spotters. Unfortunately I only have pictures of the morning thanks to the rain. I have some video coming at some point this week for a few of the afternoon people.
https://flic.kr/s/aHsmivxeR7

[jbrannon7]

Preston, sounds like M2 would be the class for you. Once you start doing turbo mods, that's where you'll end up. They'll love you there.

Man, I sat and watched at least every other car hit the 3rd cone in the first slalom REPEATEDLY Saturday afternoon! I can see maybe your first or second run, but... it was just a slalom, geez! People just weren't pulling hard enough to the left after the second cone, and running right over the 3rd cone. It was absolutely nuts to watch!

Perfectly straight slalom spaced 60-50-50. At the beginning of the course where you're not going all that fast, anyway. It was intended to be a little tricky to get into, but it wasn't that hard. The other two slaloms followed the same theme. 75-62-62 on the one before the crossover, and 100-75-75 on the return side.

Felt really bad for the Station 1 guys, and made sure we had enough people there to alternate resetting that cone.

Never seems to work that way, even with 3 people it seems 2 are always watching the same person run out to reset the cones. It was that way when I was doing timing in the second afternoon run group, the same person reset all the cones at station 1.

[Bigdog]

Micheal, what are you using to get your videos? I like the layout. Simple and tidy.

Garmin VIRB XE outside. Older Garmin VIRB inside. Edited on Garmin software as well.

have Garmin VIRB can do many cool (but marginal effects - slow mo, time lapse, other wireless) and takes good video and photos. It will also connect wireless to the OBD port which allows recording of whatever is available from your ECU. This feature is still too much for me. The camera itself via GPS gives the speed, course design, tilt. The key is the free GARMIN SW that allows the creation of the video. lots of features or you can just select a simple preloaded design. Able to buy a refurb unit from Amazon and save $100 (make sure you check all functions, had to return the first one).

No doubt, GoPro does the same.

[Loren]

Never seems to work that way, even with 3 people it seems 2 are always watching the same person run out to reset the cones. It was that way when I was doing timing in the second afternoon run group, the same person reset all the cones at station 1.

Yeah, same thing happened in the first group. Sometimes you have to babysit them. If you're the timing guy, and you see a problem like that, try to fix it.

First run group, I saw it happening. We brought in an additional worker from another station. And the new worker camped out on the far end of Station 1 where nothing was happening. Same guy was still running every other car! Finally had to call Station 1 and explicitly TELL them to swap those two workers.

Sometimes you have workers that are smart enough (or old and tired enough) to say "hey, let's alternate this busy spot". Sometimes you have a fresh 16-year-old who is going to just keep doing what you told them to do until you explicitly tell them to do something else!

[Charles]

I'm sure I'll just be told I'm wrong, but for the majority of the morning session the start interval between cars was too close.

I know in the 1st heat of at least 1 instance of a car coming through the finish shoot to find another one sitting stopped or barely rolling though the end of the shoot. Missed his name, but he said he was going to report it to someone.

I know in the 2nd heat it was more of the same because I was driving in it. Seems like we should have been waiting an extra 3-5 seconds until the 1st car was fully committed to the turnaround entry before releasing the 2nd car.

~38 second course on average with ~5 second variation between the fast crew and the slower crew doesn't leave you much room for error. If anyone spun or slid, the 2nd car was on them like white on rice in no time.

I didn't see any value added by saying we aren't counting the last run in the morning session. In the future shouldn't we announce "6th run won't count if the afternoon crew doesn't get one" ?
After we were told it wouldn't count it was clear to me the thought was it might take too long to duplicate in the evening but what if it doesn't?

When you tell a group of autoXers that a run doesn't count they all go to 11/10th right away clubbing more cones and generally eating up more time compared to a competition run.
I called from grid that there was no point in calling in cones if the run didn't count to save us some time if the course workers and/or timing were overwhelmed trying to keep up but no one wanted to hear it

Yes my fastest run was my last run but it wasn't even close to changing my finishing position. Making this point as a suggestion for the club not for personal gain

Championship points files are labeled June but I assume these results have not been added yet? I see points listed for event #10 but some of the folks with points didn't attend this event.

[Loren]

I'm sure I'll just be told I'm wrong, but for the majority of the morning session the start interval between cars was too close.

You're not wrong. This course lent itself to a VERY short start interval. We were able to send a car every 18-22 seconds. Our normal target is 25-30 seconds. Rather than fight it, we opted to work with it, and starters were instructed to simply hold the start for ANYTHING. If a worker flinches, hold the start. It seemed to work well enough. It allowed us to take advantage of the fast pace... but, without running the workers ragged.

In the late session when it was raining, we ran each group through two complete runs one-car-at-a-time to be sure everyone knew the course before we did any overlap at all. Then we slipped into the same routine because it worked.

I know in the 1st heat of at least 1 instance of a car coming through the finish shoot to find another one sitting stopped or barely rolling though the end of the shoot. Missed his name, but he said he was going to report it to someone.

That's either a worker problem (didn't red flag the 2nd driver), or a driver problem (not recognizing that they spun or whatever, but there's still a car coming BEHIND THEM). It does happen from time to time.

From a driver perspective, you should see a car in the finish chute when there shouldn't be. And ANYTHING that distracts you like that, whether it's a worker still on course when he shouldn't be, or running out in front of you... anything that's blown your concentration... Stop. Don't try to finish your run and risk hitting another car or a course worker. Just own the situation and Stop. "Hey, I stopped because there was a car in my finish chute." "Okay, we'll get you a rerun."

I know in the 2nd heat it was more of the same because I was driving in it. Seems like we should have been waiting an extra 3-5 seconds until the 1st car was fully committed to the turnaround entry before releasing the 2nd car.

There was also a "window" on the finish side. Depending on the relative speeds of two cars on course, the starter may have been waiting for car A to finish before starting the next car. Car B is "somewhere in the turn-around", and that was fine for this course. The DANGEROUS thing on this course was to send a car too late. Then they cross paths mid-course in an unsafe place. So, while you might not have liked it, I much prefered the "early" start to the "late" start due to the passing point.

You've worked start enough that you know the starter has a lot of things to look at, AND drivers don't always start when you tell them to. Getting a car started +/- 3 to 5 seconds of your intent is usually good enough. And if it's not, we'll usually opt to run one-at-a-time or whatever it takes to ensure safety.

~38 second course on average with ~5 second variation between the fast crew and the slower crew doesn't leave you much room for error. If anyone spun or slid, the 2nd car was on them like white on rice in no time.

We did have the luxury of plenty of experienced course workers this time. There were no sketchy "3rd event" corner captains. This weighed in our decision of how quickly to let the pace be.

I didn't see any value added by saying we aren't counting the last run in the morning session. In the future shouldn't we announce "6th run won't count if the afternoon crew doesn't get one" ?
After we were told it wouldn't count it was clear to me the thought was it might take too long to duplicate in the evening but what if it doesn't?

Well, now you're just whining. We had the time, we made the decision to allow the 6th run in the morning and not count it. Had it been POURING down rain, or worse yet LIGHTING that we would have had to wait out... maybe we wouldn't have had time to do the 6th run in the afternoon? You got a bonus run, be happy.

When you tell a group of autoXers that a run doesn't count they all go to 11/10th right away clubbing more cones and generally eating up more time compared to a competition run.

But, again, we had the time. And it was the decision that we made.

I called from grid that there was no point in calling in cones if the run didn't count to save us some time if the course workers and/or timing were overwhelmed trying to keep up but no one wanted to hear it

I heard that call. It's NOT a call that you should be making from the grid. We don't like changing procedures like that for just one run. Everyone out there knows how to play the game. Why change the rules for this one run? Business as usual. Get these 26 cars through their one last run, it will take about 15 minutes and we'll be done.

Yes my fastest run was my last run but it wasn't even close to changing my finishing position. Making this point as a suggestion for the club not for personal gain

I'm not sure I'd have made the decision on the 6th run any differently if I had it to do over again. Unless the decision was to just stand at 5 runs and NOT give the bonus run, which is more often the case. When afternoon weather is iffy, we don't want to over-promise for the afternoon. If we'd just done 6 official runs, then we'd have been locked into doing the same for the afternoon. I was actually very surprised that so many of the afternoon drivers WANTED to take that bonus run in the rain. People are unpredictable.

Championship points files are labeled June but I assume these results have not been added yet? I see points listed for event #10 but some of the folks with points didn't attend this event.

Philip hasn't updated the points yet. What's out there is from early June. (Jun 3)

[Carracer]

I'm waiting for files to update the points.

[Loren]

Ron said he sent them to you.

[jbrannon7]

I'm waiting for files to update the points.

Did you update the points yet?

[Loren]

Hehe. He did. But, then he sent me the wrong files. We'll get it right eventually...

[Loren]

POINTS have been updated!