Sunday, April 27, 2014

4/26 BMW CCA Autocross

Yesterday I participated in my first real autocross event. The weather was perfect and it was fun doing timed runs for the first time, as well as running in the dry for the first time. Prior to this year, I had never done autocross of any kind. The BMW CCA novice autocross school gave me a taste of what autocross was like, but we weren't using timing that day and it rained the entire day.

I got down to the Baysox stadium at about noon and immediately got registered, prepped my car, and went through tech. That gave me enough time to walk the course twice on my own and once as part of the guided "novice course walk." I think walking the course that many times helped me a lot. There seemed to be a lot of other people having "off course" runs (where they miss a gate/cone and get no time for their run), and that never happened to me. After the course walks, we had a driver's meeting and then split into two groups. My group was racing first, so I jumped in my car and got in line in the grid.

I don't know how many people participated in the afternoon session, but even half of the group felt like a lot of cars. I was lined up in the grid at about 1:30 and we didn't finish running until at least 2:30. That means each of my 4 runs was spread apart by 15+ minute breaks. That aspect of it kind of sucked, since it was hard to stay in any kind of rhythm and hard to remember what you needed to change from run to run.

In my first run, I got a pretty bad start off the line, got slightly confused by the double-cone pass-through gate, and sort of forgot to keep looking ahead on the course. I also went diving into one of the turns and had so much understeer that my steering wheel was turned way to the side even though I was barely turning. Oops! The end result was a 45.277. On the bright side, I didn't hit any cones and didn't go off course. Plus since it was my first run, I was still getting used to how tight certain turns were and where I could get on the gas more.

My second run I got a better launch and did a much better job of looking further ahead on the course. Seeing more of the course ahead of you makes a huge difference with placing the car and getting through the turns smoothly. It was fun jumping on the gas and brakes a lot harder that run and feeling the car slide slightly as I approached the limit through the turns. That run was a 42.704, which was a nice improvement over my first run.

My third run was essentially more of the same. Slight improvements got my time down to 42.630 which ended up being my fast time of the day. The fourth run felt pretty similar too but was slightly slower at 42.764.

One of the weird things about the format was that it was hard to follow who was in what class and where I stood at any given time against the people with similar cars. So I would sit and watch cars come in with anywhere from 39s times to 45s times and have know idea how I was really doing.

After my half of the drivers were finished, I worked one of the flag stations as a runner for fixing cones that were knocked over. The weather was great and it was fun watching some really nice looking cars weave through the cones, so I was surprised that working the track actually wasn't so bad. Plus I got a little exercise running around picking up cones. One thing I wish I had done was wear sunblock! I'm a bit red today, working on an awesome farmers tan.

Once all the drivers were done, we had a little awards ceremony where they announced the top three in each class. I finished second in my class and got a little foam cone as a "trophy!" Turns out there were only four people in the S2 class, but it's still fun to see that I was faster that at least somebody. :-) Actually, looking over the results, I was faster than three out of the five drivers in the S1 class and the one driver in the S3 class, so that's not too bad. Overall I finished 62nd out of 102 drivers, which I'm pretty happy with considering it was my first autocross and I'm running a bone-stock 335i.

It was fun getting out for a real autocross event. It's something I wish I had gotten into a long time ago, although until now I never really had the car for it. Plus, talking to some of the other guys, it sounds like the National Capital Chapter of BMW CCA does a great job of putting on events that are nice and relaxed, since after all it's really just for fun. So I'm glad my first autocross experiences have been with the NCC BMW CCA.

Most of the rest of the NCC BMW CCA autocross season is down in Waldorf, about an hour from my house. As fun as autocross is, it's still kind of crazy to think about prep time, leaving home at 11:30, and getting back at 4:30 all for less than three minutes of actual driving time. Adding an extra 40 minutes of commute time in each direction would make that even worse. But, I'll see how I feel as the summer goes on. I'm sure I'll try to make it to the only other event at the Baysox stadium in October. Plus, in mid-June I'll be doing autocross in a Ferrari with Gotham Dream Cars! I'm hoping my little bit of autocross experience I now have makes that day even more fun.

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