Axis of Oversteer Porsche GT4 Attacking the SCCA Solo National Championship.

There will be an Axis of Oversteer Porsche campaigned in the SCCA Solo II National Tour and National Championships this year.  
It's the fourth Porsche for Adil Abdulali: after a Boxter S, a 997 GT3, a 991 Carrera S,  now it's time for the wicked Porsche Cayman GT4.

"In the past I have always chosen cars that were fun but not quite up to competitive snuff in their SCCA class"  said Adil  "but, I might have one now:  I believe the GT4  can take the fight to the 997 GT3, the top dog of the current Super Street class in SCCA Autocross.   Last year I campaigned an under-dog car in that class:  a 991 Carrera S which at over 3330 lbs and only able to fit 285 Bridgestones in the rear,  wasn't quite enough of a weapon.

The GT4 has the same tire issues, it runs the same sizes as the 991, but it being 250 lbs lighter and mid- engined would make it a winning package for Autocross. 

 To help the cause, I have Perry Aidelbaum and Rich Wayne, both National level competitors, co-driving to keep me honest and give the GT4 a fair outing at the big events.

Bridgestone is rumored to be coming out with a 305 size 19 inch RE71-R  by August so we won't have any excuses when it comes time for the Big One in Lincoln Nebraska."

All it needs are some Axis stickers on the side,  Go Adil, Perry and Rich.

SCCA Solo National Finals Video

It's almost impossible to translate US style Autocross into something visually compelling but this video does a pretty good job.

Fun to take part in, even just for the combined 6 minutes of driving over a week end, the competition at the national level is pretty fierce. For those not familiar, autocross, officially SCCA Solo , is essentially a timed gripfest run on gigantic parking lots. Competitors get three runs on each of two courses with the two best runs on each course added. A two second penalty is given for any cone hit so clean driving is essential. There are classes for almost any kind of car imaginable with very specific rule requirement for each class.

The main point of posting this clip though is to give a shout out to two Axis friends who became national champions this year: Radomin Delgado won A Stock with his #199 2007 Porsche Cayman S and, with the same car, Stephanie Chang won the A Stock Ladies title. Congratulations!

2010 SCCA Solo National Finals Results



end of post

Three off.

Andy Mcinnis, Englishtown NJ, July 4th 2009. By Perry Aidelbaum (autox4u.com)





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A proposal to make autocross more exciting...

Seriously, people would be lining up to get that "moving cone" work assignment... and that's a way more interesting "Chicago box" than I have ever seen!

Let's face it, autocross is not much of a spectator sport, I can guarantee you that if the SCCA instituted a "moving Segway" cone, TV millions would be pouring in. Imagine: "On this week's course we put a celebrity on a reasonable priced Segway". The possibilities are endless.

From Ken Block and 0-60 Mag




Read more about it on 0-60Mag

Autocross requires chops!

Let me put down the Formula 1 crack pipe for a second to tell you how much I sucked at the autocross last Sunday.

I used to be pretty decent at autocross when I did it religiously but it's pretty clear that not going to any at all this season has not done wonders for my cone dodging chops!
I could use my old gripless tires as an excuse but that would be lame...ah, what the hell, truth is the car would not turn, would not stop and I could not get on the power much at all without either the rear slipping or the front washing out.... But back in the days when I had the chops I would have been able to drive around the issues to some extent. Sunday I was late on every cone and I generally completely out of it.

Speaking of chops, take a look at how it's done properly and how a car is supposed to behave over on the Holunfie blog. John Winchester, Kevin Lau and Dan Chang have really taken the rally car thing to another level this year. Too bad they are not going to the SCCA Nationals next week, they would do well for sure. Well done guys!

PS, I did use my Traqmate to start and stop the ChaseCam PDR100 and it was very handy, however I still have not figured out the new autocross/rally feature on the Traqmate 2.0 ...I might have to bite the bullet and actually read the instructions!

PPS. For international readers, Autocross here in the US is, as you can see, a timed slalom on pavement event not a race on a mixed dirt/asphalt track as in the UK. Not to be confused with Rallycross which here is an autocross on dirt but in the UK is the pro version of their autocross.....confused yet?

Key Corners

Amazingly, there was something other than the standard inane banter said at today's post qualifying press conference, something of actual interest to drivers. It came from Kimi prodded by Peter Windsor.



This applies even to autocrossers*, it's the slow technical bits that will get you. A car will spend much more time in a slow corner than in a fast one so there is much more of an opportunity to really screw up your lap time. In Turkey it's turn 9-10 complex and the final 12-13-14 section. Especially true of turns 9-10 which immediately precede the longest straight on the track.






If you are going to the track this fall and want to learn more about line and technique, I can recommend two sources beside the more obvious textbooks:

• The Rookie Chronicles by Jeff Gabel.
• High Performance Driving a one off magazine and DVD.

Both are great starting points and have loads of info in easily digestible form.

Have fun at the track and keep saying to yourself..."what would Kimi do?"

* the US style autocross, not the euro offroad

Axis trophies at TireRack National tour

Our own Mr. Vishnu Evo Adil staged a nice comeback on the second day of the Tire Rack SCCA NAtional Tour in Devens MA. Adil was running his Evo IX in Street Touring Unlimited.

Results here

Great performances by John Winchester and the fastest man you can lend your car to: Mr. GJ Dixon who in Chris Travis's Street Mod Civic went faster than "the Alien" himself, Mark Daddio by a huge 4/10ths Sunday almost making up his deficit from the first day. GJ was 2 whole seconds faster than the car owner even if to my knowledge this is his first time in the car! Awesome.



Adil's emails:

Saturday "...STU was rain in the beginning and drying out later. Ideal for evo but I could not fnd good setup. Corey 1st with 61.7, dan 2n4 63.3 nd me 3rd wth 64.3.
Notable event was John Winchester running his BSP Evo beating Daddio's SM EVO by 0.3 second. Daddio was shocked!"

Sunday "...really interesting event. ... I think STS and FS were faster than STU on Sunday when the whole day was dry and consistent.
The course had only two mild break zones and no straightaways but high speed sweepers and slaloms the whole way. Ultimate cornering grip and gearing was the key. Power did not help as speed was restricted but probably higher than 50 thru the entire thing except for two corners. ...
...The first day every run was on radically different surface...going super wet to almost dry. Had to change shock settings between each run and was on tires, wheels that I never drove efore. Corey was running same and helped.

Sunday had a course element that was amazing..visually and to drive..will have to diagram for u guys "

Read up more on Evos, autocross and all things rally car on holunfie .

BMW M5, casually autocrossed by instructor Harold, 22 April 2007 by badbadM.


Read about the BMW M5 here.

AC adds:

Too bad BMW missed the boat and doesn't export the one REALLY cool M5... And don't even get me started with Audi not bringing RS4 and S and or RS6 wagons over.


download

Autocrossing again.

Well allright, winter must be over because I saw a guy in shorts at the 40 degree, make that 28 degree with wind chill factor, autocross today at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.

Nobody cared how cold it was, I don't think anyone really cared how they did, everyone wanted to just run their cars after the long winter.

I had a great time but I was also reminded why after 3 seasons of running almost every autocross available, last year I ran in only one...happily. I don't want to knock autocrossing in any way, it's just that you have to be in the right frame of mind to get into it and I'm not there right now.
I think a big factor for me is the lack of a really good venue in the whole of the Tri-State area.













That being said I had fun sliding around the M Coupe, now propelled by a shorter 3.46 rear end ratio, on three year old Kumho V710 that still refuse to show any sign of cord. BadBadM and I were contemplating doing a Jeremy Clarkson on them with a catapult and a shotgun...

The video is not from my best run, you can see how little grip there is as I miss the first slalom cones by about 6 miles, I did like the end though a good save from a nasty tank slapper and I hit neither cones nor the timing lights. Weeeee!


download

photos AC and BadBadM

another way of thinking about autox....(grin)

Imagine the outraged forum posts....

Maybe this is how pro-solo should be...

SCCA Pro Solo is going through a bit of a rough time at the moment, yet it seems to me they do it right in Germany. No dinky 25 second courses that are about getting the start light right but real balls out super fast courses with a few slaloms tossed in for good measure....check out this beautiful e30 m3 do it's thing: (...notice dogleg 1st.)



Renn Slalom Cup

comments here please

Kumho v710, Tire of the Undead!

Seriously, you can't kill the damn things. I think of Adil's set of Hoosier ARS05 that corded in 16 runs.... this set of v710 lasted me all of last (2005)season, many times with two drivers.
They must have 150 runs minimum so when I decided to get my lazy ass out of bed on a Saturday to go to an autocross near my house, I never imagined they would have anything more than the traction equivalent of a shopping cart wheel.
But no, the Tire of the Undead just won't die, it worked in the wet and it worked in the dry... I'm sure they were much faster in the first 30 runs but there is still plenty of rubber on them. I guess I will try and kill them at a track event later this year.
Kumho, the choice of the fast and the cheap!

Here is a run in the wet, plenty of oversteer and arm waiving.


Click to download

and here is a run in the dry and fast time of day, as neat as I could make it with the MCoupe.


Click to download

So what is this autocross thing anyway?

Click picture above or here


Let's face it, as rabid as a car nut as you might be, getting to a track often enough to satisfy the 10/10ths jones is just not as easy as it ought to be for us in the northeast.

What better way to satisfy the urge then than waste a Sunday on a boiling hot parking lot engaged in one of the more technically challenging things to do well with a car. Autocross, or Solo II as defined by the SCCA is, in the immortal words of BadbadM "the only thing more frustrating than golf".

People will jump up and down telling you it's 10 minutes of driving for 6 hours of waiting, and it is, but so is ski racing 2 minutes of skiing for 6 hours of waiting....See what I mean? The key here is the competition. And competition in autocross is pretty fierce with top runs separated by literally 1/100th of a second. The frustrated have little patience for it but the true competitors find a way to have a great time.

The video above is from my best run at the SCCA/TireRack National Tour from 2004 in Washington DC.. It's a sentimental favorite of mine because for the first and likely only time in the history of SCCA national competition a BMW M Coupe beat a Corvette Z06 in ASP class competition! It was a bit of a fluke but I'll take it!

As you can see fast autocrossing is an exercise in controlled aggression, you need to be at 10/10ths but you have almost no margin for error. Of course what makes it fun is also the extremely low risk involved though I have seen at least 3 car totalled at events, two killed by light poles and one by a curb. It is not unheard of for cars to flip over as well because of the huge grip some of these cars and tires can develop.

8 one thousands of one second.....

CG and I have been co-driving at autocross events for the past couple of years. We are incredibly well matched: in almost all events our times are within the same half second, often within the same 1/10th of a second.

Here is a video, side by side, of our final runs in the SCCA-Tire Rack National Tour in Washington DC from 2003. We were driving CG's e46 M3 as an A Stock car.

AC is on the left and CG on the right with gloves. Our delta at the end of the run was 8/1000 of a second but you'll notice our driving styles could not be more different....

(Because of the aspect ratio, I doubt this video will play properly if you download it to your video iPod, I apologize for that in advance.)

Precision

We talk a lot in autocross about shortest line vs fastest line, well it turns out in most all cases that the shortest line IS the fastest line. getting as close to the cones as possible is crucial. Someone even came up with a formula to determine how much time you lose in a slalom for every foot you are away from the cones...the answer was startling, something like 1/10th of a sec per foot.

In any case here is an amusing clip assempkled by our good friend Bo Asciu from a recent Autocross. There are two SCCA National Champions in the video...can you guess who they are?
download the clip here

Contrast in Style and Equipment

Below we saw what a National Champion autocrosser looks like driving a SS Corvette. Now let's examine another past National Champion driving a completely different type of car also in the same Super Stock class: The Lotus Elise
Here, again at the 2005 Washington DC stop of the SCCA-Tire Rack National Tour is Mike "Jr." Johnson flogging the pumpkin.
Notice his trick of letting the wheelspin caused by the Elise's lack of a Limited Slip Differential work FOR him, keeping the engine revving in it's narrow power band. At least that's his story...and he's sticking with it!!

Find the clip of Pat Salerno in his C5 Zo6 Corvette here...

The axis of Oversteer video Blog

OK here we go

Pat Salerno driving a SuperStock Z06 at the 2005 SCCA N.E. Divisional Championships.

Please note the smoothness of his technique while attacking a challenging course in a high HP car.

Please use Quicktime 7 to view. As a plus the video is encoded so that it can be loaded into your new Video iPod!