0.051 seconds

Last Sunday was the season finale event for the New England Region of the SCCA. This event is essentially 3 events in one. In the morning, we get 3 runs, these 3 runs count as the 9th and final event of the year. This decides the class championships for the year. The champions and the top 10 in season PAX then get to compete for the Stirling Moss championship.  The winner of the Stirling Moss championship gets the their name engraved on the 1959 Nürburgring trophy that Sir Stirling Moss donated to the New England Region chapter. Making it onto that trophy is the top honor in the region, and a sort of local racing immortality. The New England Region is very lucky to have this way of honoring it's top drivers. Those who don't qualify get to participate in the other afternoon event a 3 run non-points fun event.

For the second year in a row, I started the finale with a theoretical chance at getting my name on the trophy. Last year I was slower than my nearest competitor, Jonathan Leith (aka. Leafy), but had ridden a wave of points from early in the season before his car was fully working. I lost, and in many ways, it is a good thing I did. Had I won, I might well have become complacent.

This year I got off to an abysmal start, loosing 3 out of the first 4 events.  Much like the end of last year, Leafy was driving faster than me. This year it was me staging the comeback. I worked hard on my driving, focusing on seat time and attending the Evo School in July. I beat Leafy in events 5 and 6, lost by 0.330 in event 7 and won event 8. This is about 1000 times more fun than riding a lead gained by virtue of your competitor not having a working car.

Unfortunately, my early season win, and the win in event 5 had come on days when national champion or soon-to-be national champion drivers had entered the class, and so I did not get first place on those days. Although our head to head record was tied Leafy had a points lead of 4 points, and the ability to win tie breaks by virtue of more first place finishes. I needed to gain 5 points, which can only happen with me in first, and him in 3rd or less, or me in 2nd and him in 5th or less. As the event neared, only Leafy and myself were signed up. A 2 driver class would leave me with no chance of winning at all.

With that in mind, I invited Ryan Field to drive in my car, so that there would be at least one other driver with a decent chance of beating Leafy. Ryan is actually a faster driver than I am by a good margin, so beating him was pretty unlikely, but a small chance is better than no chance. Soon after Ryan registered, Derick Sivret, also a very fast driver registered in Leafy's car.  This would be a sensible points move by Leafy, now I have to beat 2 top flight drivers to win.

As a concequence, I entered the finale again with a faint hope of winning. The points situation was just too far against me. The season had been virtually lost early on and I was proud to have made it this close to begin with. My main reasonable goal was to beat Leafy, and at least be able to say I won 5/9 events vs him.

My first run was a flop. I didn't take quite the right line, and then spun when I tried to correct with a quick tap of the brake, but I got underway quickly and worked the rest of the course as a practice run. I wasn't worried, because I knew exactly how to fix what I did wrong. I didn't really pay attention to the other drivers, and on my second run I laid down a nice 50.649. Now that I had a real time I checked the other drivers times, I found that Ryan had coned every run, and I heard by word of mouth that Derek had only one clear run that was a 50.4xx, Leafy had no raw times better than 51 seconds!   I was in 3rd, and only needed to gain around 2 tenths to win first place and the season trophy. It was the dream scenario! Holy crap.

Driving up to the line for the final run I recalled last year when I was trying to make up almost 3 seconds to beat Derek in a similar points situation. 3 seconds was hopeless, I drove hard but lost it near the end of the run. I knew I had to NOT over-drive this run and spin. That would be a horrible way to finish. But I also had to go faster. I was really nervous. Choking and going really slow would suck too. So I took a deep breath, and focused on getting the cameras working. At the line I decided to focus on improving my line near the tower to improve my entry to the taxiway. That should get me the 1/4 second or so I needed if I just ran the rest like I did before.

I improved my line and got a much nicer entry to the taxiway as planned. The taxiway and the first half of the runway went well, much as they had on the previous runs. All I had left was the big cut back across the taxiway and then the offsets to the finish. Perhaps it was because I saw so many novices screw up the cutback in the morning, and perhaps it was because some part of me recalled the end of the race in the previous season where I almost spun on the last bit turn. For whatever reason, I over broke just a little for the cutback. But this sort of mistake is not a tragedy. It's much, much better than braking too late and I belayed the excess traction conferred by the slower speed into a good exit from the element and made a great run to the finish where I hit the rev limiter. To the best of my knowledge it was a clean run...

The time...

50.457

Wow! It was CLOSE! When I got back to the paddock it was a dive for the phones, to check sololive.ner.org. And the result...

Derek's time turned out to be....

50.406

I was 0.051 seconds short of winning the season championship and gaining entry to the Moss competition.

0.051 seconds... less than the blink of an eye...

Yet I was not unhappy. Here I was, nearly surviving the onslaught of two very fast drivers, and beating Leafy a second in both of the last 2 events. It's true, I don't get the jacket that says class winner on it, but a jacket is just a jacket. 0.051 sec is a tiny differential, and that's all that stands between me and being a class champion. My driving has improved drastically this year. Basically I'm there... the difference is tiny.

Next season should be very interesting... Hopefully both Leafy and I will up our game, and some of the national champions who visit the class will start coming up short.

And finally, congratulations to Dave White who won the Sterling Moss Trophy this year. Dave is a National Champion in Street Modified, and one of our fastest drivers. Now he has his slice of local immortality too. Here's a picture of him holding up the trophy...

Stay Cool FTW

When one gets a run of continual improvement going it has a sort of magic of it's own. Each time out there is the dual hope that it will continue, and fear that the bubble will burst, and the streak will be broken. I have a streak of improvements with each event this year, and as a result I am already bursting through my wildest expectations at the beginning of the year.

Two events ago, I went into the event, more or less having achieved my goals for the year, with several events putting me in the top 20-25% already. Then I ran 22nd of 139, just one place (and 0.091s) short of my top 15% stretch goal. It was fabulous, but how on earth could I top that? How do I keep the streak going?

Well, my tires were mostly toast, ending the last event at 120 runs and 138 after the last renegade event. The 70 run tires I took off just before the tour went back on. Changing setup and car balance during the season can be disastrous, if the car behaves different and you can't adapt, cones and slow times will often result. But, I was facing elimination in the points race. If I lost, I would be mathematically eliminated and the final event of the year would amount to a test and tune/fun runs. With this in mind, I decided to fix the front splitter.

Over the course of the season, the plywood splitter I had added had become warped. Attached at the front and the back with foam to seal the air in the middle, it the middle was bowing downward, and the car had started to push. Both Ben and Brian remarked on it, and I felt it too.

This warping is a result of my insistence on not attaching the splitter to the fiberglass. Attaching to the frame in the back with supports on the front was fine when I was using a carbon fiber splitter, but not so fine with plywood, especially after it got wet.  I needed a stiffener. I didn't want to add more aluminum angle along the bottom. The front already scrapes on the occasional curb cut if I'm not ultra careful about where I drive. Adding something that hangs down further would not work, and of course I always want to minimize the weight. Thin, light and stiff made me think Carbon Fiber. I found some economy 5mm 6"x30"  carbon fiber for under $100. 5mm CF is rock solid. When I got it I could barely flex it at all. So I applied that along the top, eliminating the aluminum bar that hung down in the middle previously

I probably gained a few ounces, but I only have the "feel" of it since I forgot to actually weigh it. In any event it worked marvelously...

Much straighter, much tighter to the bottom of the car. But would it mess up my driving, or help it?

SCCA points Event #8 was a cool, blustery day to start, Morning runs for the 3rd run group were in the low to mid 60's. My first run was messy and slow. On my second run I spun in a slalom, but I got a good practice run at the finish. Both Dan and I noted that the car felt different and that the push was reduced, or maybe gone. Sounds like a disaster in the making...

BUT here's where the seat time this year paid off. I didn't panic. Instead I set about trying to figure out how to adjust my driving. I said to myself... "If it's not pushing at high speed anymore, that means I should be able to nail the sweeper hard. I need to set that element up so I can take advantage" and I also said to myself, "I need to be extra careful on my entries to the slaloms...." My 3rd run of the morning was faster and clean... and came in just 0.4 sec behind Leafy, whom I needed to beat to remain in the hunt for a season championship.

While I was fairly happy with the first part of my 3rd run, I knew that the finish had been a near disaster. I had become late on the angled walloms, and then been forced to focus on controlling the car rather than putting power down at the finish. I only just barely touched the rev limiter at the finish line. When I checked the numbers, my run was fairly decent. After the rest of the morning runs finished. I was 2.8 seconds off top pax, which usually equates to a top 30 finish. But of course folks will find time in the afternoon, so I need to find time as well. I said to my co-driver Dan, "I need to put the finish of my 2nd run on the first 3/4 of my 3rd run."

Then came the afternoon runs... Temps were up by about 5-10 degrees. The tire blankets were not needed, but it was still cool with somewhat less wind. On my first run, I more or less did what I set out to do. I pasted together the front of run 3 with the end of run 2, and managed to find half a second, enough to put me in the lead vs Leafy's morning time. But I knew that Leafy would likely find time too. Reviewing the run in my head, I decided that I still wasn't working the first part of the course hard enough.

On my second run of the afternoon I found another .8 seconds which firmly cemented my lead, but I FORGOT to turn on video! DOH!! However SoloStorm did start it's data logging, so here's a video of my 3rd run of the afternoon which was as fast or faster than my fastest until I botched the finish (if you ignore the cone). Overlayed on that video is a video of the solostorm comparison playback with my fast run (run 5). The paragraph that follows is my from memory description of run 5 (not 6 which you see in the video)

So here's my "in-head video" of run 5, (the green line on the above video):

I made a more agressive start and it felt good but I slightly under broke in the turn before the big sweeper, so my sweeper was a tad slow, however I kept my foot in and built good speed, barely taping the breaks to get through the following slalom. As I did so, I realized I probably didn't even need to touch the brakes, and I felt I slightly over broke on the turn towards the taxiway too. As those thought flitted by, I immediately said to myself, well if I'm a little slow, I should be able to get a good turn onto the taxiway to compensate. I remember feeling that I did a good job of the turn, but didn't really get on the gas until the end of the taxiway. The surge of power as the cams kicked in at the end of the taxiway reminded me of some other times I had overshot breaking points, so I laid into the breaks as hard as I could, and then let off and just turned the wheel where I needed to and prayed it stuck. It did stick, but just barely. The back end slid just a tad and then hooked back up, putting me in a pretty good position entering the main runway. Even as I was noticing this, I found myself thinking "GREAT, lets take advantage of this!" and I accelerated out of the turn as hard as I could. This actually put me just slightly shallow on my entry to the first slalom on the runway, but I realized I was not getting a great entry and with a quick stab to the breaks managed to rotate the car and get in half way decently anyway. I knew I was immediately facing a cut back across the runway at the end of the slalom, so I only fed minimal throttle to avoid making that turn too difficult. This worked well, and I got a more comfortable entry into the second slalom. With a good position on the second slalom I was able to be on the accelerator at the cone before the end of the slalom and gained a lot of speed through the slanted six pack. Much like the exit from the taxiway, this left me slightly shallow and I again compensated with a stab of the breaks. Then through the walloms I worked on being patient and getting ahead of the cones in preparation for the finish. I was able to mash on the accelerator and I knew I was going to be all over the rev limiter so I tried to go to third and missed (oops).  As I crossed the line, I wasn't quite sure how I had done, it felt clean and fast, but I'd been so busy thinking and adjusting through the run I wasn't sure. When the display read 50.9 I was shocked and elated, and prayed it was clean, which it was.

In retrospect this run was a huge achievement, but not because of the time or the PAX position. It was huge because I had retained focus, and adjusted on the fly effectively. In essence, I had successfully implemented the advice Eric Chiang had given me a year and a half ago. I drove the car as it was on course. I drove based on the feedback the car was sending through the steering and the seat of my pants and by the status that my looking ahead was giving me. A year and a half ago I was falling prey to driving based based on my expectation of the course. Eric had noticed when he road with me that I accelerated in some spots beyond what made sense, and guessed correctly that I had been thinking to myself  "I should be fast here, I should get to the rev-limiter." He said it was a common problem and hard for some people to overcome.

I also felt that the run was a huge achievement in that I went from coning and spinning in a car that was doing new, strange things to running my best time ever within a few runs. Even better, it's easy to see from the above video that there was more time out there 50.4 seems very doable, and that would have been top 10 (just barely)!

Here's my thought on all of this... the big thing that seat time gets you is a familiarity with driving at speed. It brings instant recognition of "Oh crap, I'm getting too fast, brake hard NOW!" (e.g. at the end of the taxiway), and the calm analytical workaround of stabbing the brake to help rotate the car on a less than ideal entry. It allows thoughts about where to go faster next time without becoming disappointed or distracted, and it allows you to find the silver lining when you are slightly slow and just keep driving... I finished that run, my fastest ever, and I didn't have the shakes, I wasn't out of breath. I had remained calm and focused throughout, and that's probably why it was possible. Without that calm, the success of the hard breaking would be wasted on relief that I escaped disaster. Without that calm, the timing of the break stab would likely be early or late doing little good at all.

And as I said in my last post... drive fast, and the points will follow. I won first place and I remain alive (if just barely) in my hunt for a season championship. I think my driving at this event this event was championship level driving, but alas, I was not driving like a champ at the beginning of the year. I have to hope that someone beats Leafy, and I beat them. With a result like today, where I was almost a second ahead, it seems like a possibility, but very very far from a certainty. I'll give it my best, but smarter money is on next year at this point.

I really hope I can keep my cool like that in future runs. The results are waaaay cool :).

Just get faster...

Hi folks, I've been a bit busy and so I haven't gotten around to posting for a couple weeks. I've got a backlog of a couple events but let's start with a review to draw a clearer picture...

This season I started the season saying "Don't worry about points, just get faster and let the points follow" To that end I committed to running 50% more races than last year, finding a co-driver and attending an Evo School. So how's it working out?

The first half of the season went by quick, and my relative pax rating climbed 2 points vs the previous year by July, with the highpoint being the National Match Tour with a .938 (which was also fresh Hoosiers). Seat time and more regular participation had already started to pay off by the time I got to the EVO School.

At the Evo School I was lucky enough to get 20 time National Champion Mark Dadddio as my instructor. He spotted my difficulty easily and I learned a very key lesson about the correct way to look ahead. I also was reminded to be patient in the slow parts. After these lessons one of course looks for signs that they helped...

Since the Evo School, there have been hints of some improvement. The first SCCA race after it, I had a scratch time that would have been a record setter for me... but I had hit a cone, so it didn't count. It was a scratch time only and scratch times just don't really count in the end. What counts is the fastest clean run. Still scratch times are an indication of what is possible with a little more attention to detail...

On the next event I finally had a genuine win over Leafy, and I was 14th in PAX with a (personal) record shattering 0.949 pax rating. However New Hampshire Motor Speedway courses are atypical for our group with only 40% of the normal attendance. Certainly it sounded good, but it's very difficult to figure out how that compares to the regular full length courses at Devens.

Ok so that's the review, now into the new news

The next weekend we were back at Devens, and some solid signs of improvement came through. I placed 22nd in pax, 8 places higher than ever,  and almost scored a second win against Leafy. I came up a quarter second short on my fifth run, but it was pretty clearly my best performance to date at Devens, and to beat me Leafy had to score his highest ever pax rank as well. So he beat me but he had to run his best ever to do it. This is a nice contrast the same mid-august event as last year where I lamented missing the opportunity to catch him when I hit a cone on my single hero run at the end following a spin and a DNF. This time I laid down 2 runs at the end, one within about .25 and the other within .1 but with a cone. This time it wasn't a fluke.

Furthermore, I ended that day on tires that had 120 runs vs tires that had 37 runs the previous year. I probably had a tire advantage last year and did better at a disadvantage this year. The other thing that was encouraging about this event was that it was a difficult course with some tough elements. I can see some folks did worse than usual on it. In the past I used to be one of the ones that fell down on the more difficult courses. This time I did better on the difficult course.

Then, at the end of August, was the next Renegade event. In this event I pushed my scratch times to a new level, but had some cone trouble. I have never before run scratch times let alone clean times as fast as Scruffy in his Porsche GT3 type RS. This time, on tires with 135 runs on them I posted a dirty (+1 cone) time that was only .05 seconds slower than Scruffy's clean runs including the 2 second penalty for the cone. On his very last run scruffy found the extra .9 seconds I was pretty sure he should, and I ended about a second behind him unable to find a fast clean run, but in fun runs I cleaned it up and posted a time more or less equal to his fastest, another first. So Grant usually runs a second faster than scruffy, and my scratch time therefore was (possibly) competitive with Grant on raw times. Grant often has FTD... If I had run clean, and I hadn't handed my car to two super star drivers, I would have had the fastest time of the day. I've never been so close... Brian and Ben are superstar class drivers and so they proved that there was another 1.3 and 1.8 seconds out there respectively vs my scratch times, but again I've never come within 2 seconds of either Ben or Brian before.

So guess what? It's just like the experienced drivers always tell you... seat time, and Evo School pays off. I like the shape of my curve this year...

Now all I have to do is keep it going! As for the points. They came, but not quite enough. I'm in  almost the same position as last year, BUT Leafy's car was in working condition from the start this time, unlike last year where he didn't really get it going until the 4th event and then killed me for the second half. This time, I've stayed close. Theoretically I could still win, but the odds are against me. Perhaps next year... or perhaps not. As long as I drive faster I'm happy!

Let's end with some video...

And now... side by side of Brian and me.... (Damn I wish I had video from Ben too!)

New Rotors, New Acheivements

Autocross eats brakes. It's just a fact of life. Tires too. My wife still marvels at the idea that I replace race tires after 100-150 miles (while most racers marvel that I wait that long!). Brakes are somewhat better, the Sector 111 Ultra disc rotors I have been using lasted about 2 years in the front and 3 in the back. That doesn't sound too bad until you consider that I put less than 5000 miles on those rotors. Guess what... after the last event, my front pads were getting very thin, and I was seeing bluing from heat where the vents in the rotors were. It was kinda neat, almost like an x-ray of the rotors, but what it really means is that the rotors are too thin, and not discharging the heat well anymore.

The Ultra discs and super grippy Porterfield pads were a marvelous improvement over stock, but every now and then, it seemed like the brakes just didn't quite do what I expected. With this combination of pads and rotors I had begun to suspect that while it gives you most of the power of a big brake kit without the weight and price penalty, they still lack something in terms of modulation. To try to improve the situation, I decided to try the new vented, slotted, full-floating rotor offered by Beyond Original Equiptment since they claimed to have better breaking modulation for a similar price. I left the Ultra discs on the rear because they are lighter, and also because the fronts do the lion's share of the work.

I ordered the rotors immediately after my last races and they arrived in about 3 days. There was a small issue I ran into, but BOE has EXCELLENT customer service, and they resolved it quickly and professionally. BOE has become a leader in aftermarket lotus race parts, and you can definitely order from them with confidence. There's a bunch of pictures of the rotors on their web site, but none after the black coating has worn off, so here's what they will look like after they've seen some wear.

Looks are nice, but this is a race car, not a concourse car. What matters is results! The first event was Renegade Miata Club's 5th points event of the year. This event was opposite the SCCA's Racing against Leukemia charity event, and so I expected a soft turnout. The attendance numbers were somewhat low but luckily, the top of the field was still pretty typical. Bob Lang And Leafy didn't show, but Lanna and Hank, who are both national champs did. Scruffy didn't show but Grant and Steph were there, Mike Stukalin was there an he's always fast. Furthermore the New England area seems to have acquired a new hot-shoe, Ryan Field who was there in his CSP Miata. So the competition could even be considered slightly stiffer than normal.

My result? 5th raw time... again. Not exciting on the surface but if you dig into the numbers a bit, to retain the 5th spot I had to drive faster than Matt Mickle, which I have not previously done. I was still 1.25 seconds behind grant though. The pax factor vs Grant however is 0.958. That is way better than I usually do at NER SCCA autocross events. However, this year Grant has not been dominant as in past years, so perhaps an NER pax factor could be as much as 0.015 tougher... or maybe not? Hard to know I was just as close to him at the Match Tour. Even so, it would still could be my best result ever. The other good news is that even if they were running crappy old tires, I was too. My tires ended the day on their 99th run. The great thing about new tires, is you go faster than old tires. The great thing about old tires is if you do well when you are on old heat cycled tires, that means you simply drove better, or did something good to your setup.

Event #1 on new rotors: Success!

So the second event was Points event #7 for the SCCA season, and as I said before, this is where it counts. At the start of the race I was 6 points back in the standings (after accounting for drops). I desperately need a win to stay alive. On my first run I put down the fastest time of anyone's first run in the first session. On my second run I shaved another 4 tenths off. That doesn't sound that impressive, but this event was in the small parking lot at NHMS, so my times were 28.8 and 28.4 respectively, and this was equivalent to finding almost a second on a Renegade course, or .8 seconds on a course at Devens. As I returned from that run, they announced I had Top Raw time and Top Pax! Now THAT has never happened before. It didn't last, Billy Davis took it away on his next run, but it sure was a fun thing to hear. In the afternoon I ran a 28.3 and another 28.4 shaving a small amount but not really improving much. I was a little disappointed that I didn't find a 27.x but I had multiple people tell me how good I looked out there, including some really good drivers. These sorts of compliments seem to be happening more often lately, and I'm not getting the highly dubious "awesome spin dude" or "that was awesome when you drifted through that corner" compliments from the novices as often.

And the points race? After the morning session I was ahead of Leafy by a good margin, but the same thing was true last year, and then he found a ton of time in the afternoon and beat me, so I was very nervous. I may have begun over-driving on my last runs for fear he would catch me again. Sure enough he found lots of time on his first run of the afternoon, running a 28.2 but he also had 2 cones. On his second to last run, he was clean.... BUT he was still 0.2 seconds behind me, and he coned his last run. I finally picked up a class win and now sit in second place 3 points out of first. If I win next weekend I Tie things up with one more race to go. Also, I was 14th in pax of 57 or so competitors, which doesn't look that great until you consider that most of the folks who don't come to the New Hampshire event are the novices and casual folks and the people who do show up tend to be more skilled and involved in tight points races. For this reason I long ago stopped using these events in my stats calculations. However, with Billy Davis there, top Pax will not change much vs a regular NER event and my PAX factor for this race was a nice leap forward. I scored 0.949 vs my previous best of 0.938. I was 1.2 seconds off top pax which is approximately equivalent to 2.4 seconds off top pax at Devens... also a nice step forward. So all crazy attendance factors aside, I feel confident saying that this was my best race ever.

Event #2 on new rotors: Success!

So is it the Rotors, or the lessons of Evo School finally sinking in? Hard to tell, but one thing can be said for sure, these rotors have shown a positive correlation with successful autocross! Next weekend is another SCCA race, this time at Devens... The full long course. Many folks there will be gearing up for nationals. If I can do well at that one, I can do well almost anywhere.