My scca auto x novice school/competition

baller_v24 · 03-14-2009, 07:51 PM

Well I finally decided to do an autocross event and man it is bad as shit. It's a two day ordeal, today was the novice school, which was very nice. Tomorrow will be the actual competition. The instructor first drives my car so i could get a feel of how it should be and my first impression was

I was truly shocked at what an sti can do, and ive had this car for about a year and a half. Those brembos and dccd really did wonders through the turns. It really felt like a roller coaster..........well almost. I got to do 10 passes and 5 of them was with the instructor and he critiques every pass. He said it was night and day from my first pass and the last. It really does help improve your times. So tomorrow is the actual competition and i'll be in the stock class so let's see how i do.

I will post pics and video when i get back tomorrow.

my tires probably shed about 5000 miles worth of thread atleast

, but well worth it IMO.

I highly recommend one of these novice schools, they are a blast and really help you discover what your true limits on your car is.

zmanoside · 03-15-2009, 02:15 PM

Cool! Lets see some pics!!!

baller_v24 · 03-15-2009, 08:17 PM

You guys are going to be dissapointed...................

............I pulled a straight noobie move. So i had a camera mount on the car and everything and somehow it kept running out of memory fast and I was like

. It turned out the memory card wasn't in the slot all the way in and it never once crossed my mind to check the card. I know, it's embarrasing. Turned out i got 3rd out of 31 in the novice class and i was stock. I got it down to where I could get within inches of the cones and blast through turns and didn't hit one cone in all 4 of my passes.

zmanoside · 03-16-2009, 04:36 AM

Damn that sucks. I cant wait to do some autox

newtothegame · 03-16-2009, 10:41 PM

Sucks about the camera. But congrats on the solid finish. Best of luck on the next outing.

baller_v24 · 06-18-2009, 07:19 PM

Well, speaking of the next outing......I did it again this past weekend and didn't want to say anything again until I had the video for you guys. So this video shows the event I did this past weekend and with my underinflated tires,(you will see in the end while they were underinflated).

The angle of the camera kinda sucked but I guess it's better than nothing. BTW I did crappy in this event. Im doing another one in September, so maybe it will be better then........Anyways, enjoy.

YouTube - 06' STi Auto Xing @ TMS Bus lot

man show · 06-18-2009, 09:49 PM

Man, that looks like a lot of fun. I was always under the impression that when you auto-x, you bang through the gears, but I guess that's really not too much of an issue. I guess the brakes and tires take the worst of the abuse. I've never done it, but that video makes me want to try it.

baller_v24 · 06-18-2009, 09:56 PM

yea, it was such a blast and yea i like to brake hard and drive it at it's limit, so the tires do suffer a bit.

I only used 1st and 2nd gear, at one point i redlined 2nd gear

man show · 06-18-2009, 10:42 PM

You know, another thing was surprising to me... for all that tire squealing I heard, I didn't really notice a whole lot of black tire marks on the course. There were a few, but I guess I expected to see more.

mosc · 06-18-2009, 11:19 PM

baller_v24, seems like you're learning a lot each run. If I could give some advise it appears that you're doing things a little late. You need to be more aggressive with the nose of the car. Get it pointed in the direction you're changing to sooner so you can stay on the gas a little longer. You'll know you're doing this more when you start hitting cones with your front bumper instead of running them over in the rear.

EDIT: Actually in reviewing there were a couple of turns on the 4th run you did this on and looked much better. You're a quick study.

baller_v24 · 06-19-2009, 01:04 PM

Thanks, yea it always takes me a couple of runs to see how my tires react on the different surfaces that i'm racing on. I pretty much use the first couple of runs to try and familiarize myself with the course and my best times are always better in my last two, except for that spinout.

I learned when i did the school back in march that i actually have to turn before i get to the turn itself. It gives for the best times and lines.

I know the angle I had it didn't justify much of the distance of the car from the cones but in the last run I was within inches of most of the cones through the turns.

mosc · 06-19-2009, 02:59 PM

The angle worked pretty well I thought. It's like you said, you just have to start your turns earlier like you did on that last run. You can see a huge difference between the first and last runs.

baller_v24 · 06-23-2009, 12:15 PM

Well I was looking the local region Auto X website and there is a photographer that goes out to these events and takes pics and posts them on a website. Here is a few of them from this last event. You can clearly see my camera mount on top of the car.

man show · 06-23-2009, 03:20 PM

Ha.. sweet grill. I forgot you had that. Did you put the tiny roof vane spoiler on there or did your car come with it? ...I thought that was a 2007 STi thing? Also, how does the camera mount on your roof - is it held on by a suction cup or magnet?

baller_v24 · 06-23-2009, 03:25 PM

Thanks man. The roof vane spoiler started in '06. The camera is held by suction cups and two little levers on it to create that suction. It stays pretty firm and it's even kinda hard to take it off after i lift the levers to lift it up.

I think I paid like $35 for it on ebay. works great as long as it's on a flat surface.