PCA Zone-1 Autocross, Sept 23-24, 2000
My autocross wheels are not color coordinated, sorry!
This year I went up to Fort Devens in Ayer, Mass for the 2nd year in a row for the PCA Zone-1 autocross championship. It is a 2 day event. I drove up and back with Mike Soloman, the yellow 993 driver. Rain was forecast but the weather held out just fine.
Saturday's course was set up by Dave Newman, who was my main competition in his brother's 3.2 "73 RS". This VERY fast SCCA ASP car was built by Dave, sold to John "rennlist" Dunkle, and now owned by Rick Newman who beat me at the Zone-1 in New Jersey two years ago in his 911 RS America which he has sold. Saturday's course was under a minute, mostly slaloms with a tough turnaround at the end of the runway, all second gear. It went down a runway, turned around, and came back so there was not a lot that could be done. There were some very tight thread-the-needle type gates. My first two runs were bad, my tires were slick from Formula-V traction treatment and my timing was off. I finally got a decent run on our last run before the heat change, with a slight lead for FTD.
In the afternoon I got some decent runs but nothing spectacular, cleaned up my driving to keep cone-free and came up with about a 7/10ths of a second lead over Dave Newman and Mike Solomon for overall.
The second day's course was designed by Jim Pasha from California, and set up by some of the local people. It was VERY long, over a mile I heard. It went around in a basically pentagon-shaped series of runways. This allowed for some good 90 degree turns. The course was also much faster, I hit the rev limiter in 2nd towards the end of the first section, shifted to third at the BEGINNING of a fast, flat-out slalom on the back section, and hit my rev limiter in 2nd once more coming into the 2nd to last turn after a FAST offset. The finish was ATROCIOUS, (according to Don, I agree), with a tough left hand ninety degree turn followed immediately by a tighter right hand turn to the lights. There was no need for such a tight finish. This year we still had to work every heat that we were not running. I think too many people got out of work assignments (tech, etc) so there were not enough course workers to allow working only one shift which would have been much better. But there was a food truck so I was able to bring a sandwich out to my corner and eat it there.
My tires were working great on Sunday and the car was handling perfectly. My first run was clean (!) and it would have been enough to win the event. My next two runs were not really faster though I thought I was pushing harder and had warm tires... weird. In the afternoon's heat we had three more runs and I was able to go about a second faster each run, by braking enough for each tight offset but carrying speed by setting up through them. I was having trouble taking the fast slalom in 2nd and shifting while slaloming, so I hit 3rd while entering the slalom in a straight line which worked great. Sometimes short shifting a bit settles the car and allows you to go faster.
My times amazed me, I was about two seconds faster than I thought I could go. I ended up about 2.5 seconds ahead of Dave and 4 ahead of Mike who just beat Mark Davia's 996 (the only one there!) for 3rd overall.
I think my LSD is really working on the autocross course, 2 events this year and 2 FTDs. I'm thinking of getting some slicks next year and really setting it up for autocross to see if I can compete nationally in the SCCA FP class. I am down on power and heavy for that class but the car feels great so who knows.
Here are the Results from the zone-1 Web Site or from the NER pages.
Here are some pictures from Erik Badia who was working the course almost all day, waiting to become legal age to drive his dad's little red car (just a 400HP 993 twin turbo...):
Under braking. There was a lot of this on the LONG course (my
front tires are square now...)
Here is a nicely panned shot by Erik. Did I hit the cone?
Here is nice shot of my '73 RS ducktail, which I installed for the HSR vintage race at Lime Rock, to replace my '74-'76 whale tail that I normally run. The ducktail is good for autox as it's lighter than the whale tail. I should have painted it green maybe?
It's amazing that my front tires (225/45/15 Hoosiers on 8 x
15" fuchs) don't rub in these situations of turning and
braking.
On the gas and turning.
See you next year, can I make it three in a row???