First Autocross of 2012

[FooBag]

This past Sunday was the first autocross event in my area and my first chance to test out the car with the Whiteline rear sway bar installed. All I can say is that sway bar is the best $240 I have ever spent!! I was running it on the lightest setting and holy cow did it make the car handle so much better. I even have some slightly empirical proof of the improvement; at last year's last event, there were two drivers in the same class as me who were consistently beating me by about 2 seconds. This race, I was ahead of both of them by roughly 2 seconds. While the course was different, I highly doubt the differences would allow me to make this improvement over their times. Additionally, I also doubt that any of our driving skills changed over winter, so the difference can mostly be attributed to the sway bar as it was the only change to the car.

I ended up finishing first in H stock and 39th in PAX time out of 105 drivers. Had I not clipped hit the finish gate cone on my last run, I would have finished 31st. My girlfriend didn't fair so well, with her best time being 5 seconds slower than me (generally the gap is only about 1.5-2 seconds).

I've got two videos of the event to share. The first, LINK, was taken by my g/f holding the camera in car as she rode with me. If you get motion sick, I would not recommend watching it. The second, LINK, was taken of my 4th run from the sidelines. Video links will edited in shortly; Youtube is taking forever to process the videos.

As usual, there was a photographer on hand for the event. I credit Alan High with these great photos.

Me:

IMG_8063 by alanhigh, on Flickr


IMG_7557 by alanhigh, on Flickr


IMG_7559 by alanhigh, on Flickr

Girlfriend

IMG_6375 by alanhigh, on Flickr


IMG_6376 by alanhigh, on Flickr


IMG_6379 by alanhigh, on Flickr

[darek_dade]

That's awesome! I want to take part in some Autocross events in the Toronto area this summer as well!

I'm curious, what are the other two cars in your group?

[blackastra]

Car looks clean. What were some of the otehrs in your class?


Also, vids.

[FooBag]

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to this. Here are the two video links. Link1 Link2

I'm racing in H stock and my competitors were a 2010 Mazda 3 sedan, 2000 Subaru Legacy GT, and a 2001 Kia Spectra. Class results can be found here; just scroll down to where the second column reads HS.

In case you're curious what other vehicles fall in H stock, take a look at the rule book starting on page 175.

[DigitalSaturns]

Put a Progress rear swaybar on the back of the ION 5 yrs ago. Also swapped in a Redline front bar. Had a 3 way adjustable one on the back of the SW2, great addition on or off the track. If I spend much time in the ASTRA I'll add a bar to it.

By the way, Great video!

[phatfire6]

First off, congrats on going so fast you lost the #1 off your car. It's nice to see this car auto-crossed. I feel you could have a better time though. It seems as though the lines you chose for the turns were too tight causing you to be slow out of the end of it. It could be a perception issue though, the camera was not locked into place and hand held.

How many practice runs did you have before the trial?

[oilburner]

Wow! that was a tight course! You could have turned the bar up to the max setting for that. For a normal course I doubt you would need to to stiffen it too much beyond stock. I would be curious to see how the high speed behavior is with a bigger bar. I don't have much experience with doing that on a torsion beam suspension.

It is good to see Astra's out there. The one time I ran mine it did very well. It is a capable HS car and might even be decent in STF if it was on the list like it should be. Its very predictable and good for beginners.

[FooBag]

Originally Posted by phatfire6

First off, congrats on going so fast you lost the #1 off your car. It's nice to see this car auto-crossed. I feel you could have a better time though. It seems as though the lines you chose for the turns were too tight causing you to be slow out of the end of it. It could be a perception issue though, the camera was not locked into place and hand held.

How many practice runs did you have before the trial?

I'll fully admit that I'm learning as I go & there is definitely room for improvement in my lines. This was only the fifth event that I've raced. My time improved every run (if you ignore the cone I killed the last run); I shaved over 3 seconds off from my first run to the last. Not too shabby IMO on a course that took roughly a minute to race.

There are no practice runs; your runs are all counted. We got 5 runs each which is pretty good considering there were over 100 cars racing.