This is the last car blog for a while, but it’s a doozy. Next summer when the gaming drought hits I won’t be sad at all. Because summer is when the autocross season starts. Basically I’ll let the pictures do the talking, but I have to say at the outset that if you have a decent auto or know a friend who does makes sure you try going around an autocross course or a road track at some point in your life. You’ll realize just how little you know about driving.
First of all, here are the two courses I ran at my first event (I went to another one since).
As is custom at the autocross club I went two, they run a technical course in the morning, then modify it to make it faster and run it backwards in the afternoon. When I showed up in the much talked about turbo Cobalt, expectations were high. Many people had read articles about how fast the car went around the Nurburgring and VIR. In fact, as I rolled into the pit I could hear people talking about the car.
“Did you hear about what cars that beat at VIR in…” they would say. Which was a great feeling, considering I had the cheapest car of the bunch. My class consisted of two BMWs and a Mazda MazdaSpeed3, to give you an idea of the caliber of cars there, let alone the fully modded 350Zs, Corvette Z06s and numerous Miatas.
I got a couple pics of the car from a photographer who takes shots of the competitors. Sadly, no one came with me, so I didn’t have someone looking for my car in particular. Luckily, the club is very welcoming and the guys with cameras make sure to get pictures of everything.
Yes, I have a printout attached to the side of my car instead of real numbers, and a big goofy R to point out that I was a novice. I ended up being ranked in the D-Stock Class instead of the rookie class, which was good for the rookies, as I pointed out on the podcast I might have had an edge on them from my “experience”.
The next event I returned with magnetic numbers in tow.
It’s important to not a couple things here: 1. No “R” on my car anymore, 2. I’m coming out of a hard left hander here, notice the chassis is level and all four wheels are down, 3. You can tell it’s out of a left handed corner because there are pointer cones on their side (I didn’t knock those over). Not shown in picture above: my big goofy-ass smile.
So what have I learned autocrossing?
Well, that it was a ton of fun. That I have a lot to learn…
And that it will shred your tires if you drive as hard as I do. Maybe I need some race rubber…
