Let me tell you about Autocross (or Solo) racing. This is the most popular and most affordable racing you can get into. You can drive your daily driver car or you can drive a heavily modified car. There are even classes for go karts and formula cars. This is where you go to see what you can do and not worry about rubbin' or bumping anything but orange cones.

The event master will find a big parking lot or even airport tarmacs where available and set up a challenging course of traffic cones. You have fairly decent speed areas maybe long enough to get up to about 60mph max, slalom areas to test your reflexes, and then you have very technical slow areas where you need to keep some momentum to help your time. You run your car as fast and hard as you can all alone against the clock. Every cone knocked over subtracts 2 seconds from your time, and if you miss a cone (out of bounds) you are DNF'd. Six runs and your best time is recorded. Fun thing about autocross is you don't even have to be a member. Just show up, pay your entry fee, sign an insurance waiver, and go!

http://scca.com/divisions.aspx If interested, click on the map of regions and go to their website. Most are heavily involved in autoX/solo and you can see their schedule for events.


Since Indianapolis Raceway Park kicked my butt a couple weeks ago (see Weasy Wracing Part Deux) I felt my confidence in the "Snot Rocket" Neon fall...after having such a good time at my driver school at Blackhawk Farms in April. IRP's road course really was bad as far as maintenance and could use a lot of work so I pretty much shook it off and racked it up as just a drive to help get my license. Chad (my buddy and the car owner) thought a fun run at my region's next solo event might help out so this weekend as part of our city festival, the Fort Wayne Region of the SCCA put on an autocross event. We signed up as co-drivers in the Snot Rocket meaning we'd both be able to do our 6 runs by taking turns driving.

Autocross is it's own community since it's grass roots racing at it's finest and you get to help out with the event as well as drive in it. You show up and get split into two or three race groups and if your group isn't up...you work a corner. Main responsibility is resetting cones if they get knocked over, and reporting downed cones for a deduction in time for the offending driver.

The two on the right are me and Chad working.




After two hours of the first group getting their runs in it was our turn.

Here's the gang. Me, a work buddy I talked into coming with his own car (Josh), Chad, and the little guy is Chad's son. Chad's son was the luckiest kid in the world today. In autocross you can take passengers with you...and he rode along with me, Chad, and Josh for a total of around 8-10 runs.



Had to get one of just me and the Snot Rocket (see the sticker above the Tire Barn sticker )




I kind of went into this with a feeling of "yeah, whatever...driving solo in a parking lot". After running door to door on road courses at 120mph this seemed like it might be a little boring (and do you have any Grey Poupon?). Well, it ended up being a blast. The course was set up quite well, and with my wife finally at one of my events I decided to give her a show.

Gridded up...waiting for my turn.




Took Chad as my passenger for tips since he's done autocross for years (as well as road racing).




Geezer and the link he gave me for tips..."where your eyes go, your hands will follow"




Took Josh (total noob) with me to show my lines...he looks scared




Self and SimHQ advertising




Gotta love fwd and kickin' out the back end...series of pics going through a hairpin...

Brake to set the nose...




Let the back end slide out...




Gas hard to get straightened out...




And go go go!




Running with Chad's son as my pax




Hard to see, but notice a head in the middle seat...poor kid's head was swaying back and forth with my aggresive driving...and he loved it! This pic he lost his grip on the roll cage and his head almost went into my lap




Big smile...




Swinging around to the finish line (90 degree corner)




And braking after the finish to check my time



My biggest competitor was Chad since I was just there for fun. His best lap was 56.9 (I said he's been doing this for many years) and I finished my best at 57.4 (my first ever autocross...half a second slower). I wasn't paying attention to any of the other car's times until late in the runs and realized I was quicker than a lot of them. I ended up just unwinding and having fun in the car...and without realizing it I had done pretty well. After the event ended I was awarded a 2nd place trophy for G Stock class (Chad got 1st place) and I received a 1st place trophy for a Novice driver (fastest Novice out of about 10 other novices).



Yeah, it's not road course racing, but it's still a lot of fun in it's own way. I'm running a double regional road course race at Nelson Ledges next weekend, and now seriously thinking about running the next autocross event here on August 3rd.

Stay away from the cones! He hates those cones!

lol, good job Weas, thanks.

Thanks for the pics,WK it looks like a serious fun!

is that the 24 minutes of LeMons?

hehe

looks like fun

Hehe, not quite.

This car in the past has run a couple 6 hour events and a 10 hour race at Gingerman Raceway in Michigan (before I joined the team). Next month we're running Chad's other Neon for "The Longest Day at Nelson" which is a 24 hour enduro at Nelson Ledges, Ohio.

http://www.nelsonledges.com/LONGESTDAY.aspx

Other than using Nelson Ledges next weekend to get my second required race for a regional license, we're using it as a warmup for the 24 hour event next month.

We don't want to see this though...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=50lGdQvVF3Q

Very expensive ouchie! (Dodge Viper)

From that last video: That track looks narrow and bumpy! Looks like he hooked his front left off on the edge and it turned him off into the grass on the right. I like the guy's "Ahhhhh!" calls... I could think of other things to say at the time.

You know PapaK, you'd think you'd be able to say something in a situation like that other than "AHHHH!". I thought that too, but at Indy two weeks ago when I had a couple high speed spins through the grass I never uttered a word or a sound. The only time I caught myself making any sound at all was once when I'd almost lost it and then saved the car...I let out a small "woohoo", and after realizing how small it sounded I laughed out loud and let out a giant "WOOHOO!". These road courses are small enough even with some long straights that there's no time to do anything but keep your SA and work the pedals, gears, and wheel. The Viper driver in the video didn't make a sound until he realized "this is gonna hurt...and be expensive".

This is more like what it should look like...but not in a Miata...and no spins...lol.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=h7J4UHDmi3E&feature=related

Looks like rain may have been a factor in at least one spin.

I like the "Thanks for laughing at me" comment - after the camera car's driver laughed at his spin... "There I go".

WK, I think you've revealed what those patterns on the ramp were in the GoogleMaps sat photo of Grissom AFRB (now Grissom Aeroplex) I showed you last year. It *might* be the pattern of an AutoCross (SCCA Solo) course, but I'll be danged if I can see the cone boxes:

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=40.660083,-86.14455&spn=0.003154,0.005391&t=h&z=18

It's times like this I almost (almost!) wish I was back home in Indiana. A division semifinals at my old stomping grounds?

http://www.scca.com/newsarticle.aspx?hub=3&news=3383

BTW, I am now the stunned owner (well, me and the bank have this agreement... ) of a BS-Class daily driver 'crosser. Where to practice, and better yet, how, without garnering the attention of the town clowns is fast becoming my prime concern. Well, that and not letting the wife find out I want to (GASP! HORROR!) actually race the beast. Cripes, it was bad enough with her in the passenger seat during a rather "spirited" test drive of a Mazdaspeed 3. The following smiley sequence describes it better than I can in english:

Striker, like I said above, check out the SCCA website...look for your region (local or close) and go to their website. Most regions are very big into autocross and usually have many events throughout the year. The cost is almost nothing to enter an event. Last weekend it was $20 for SCCA members and $30 for general public who wanted to try it out. That gave me 6 timed runs, and since I preregistered I got coupons for 2 fun runs after the official runs were over (I took my wife for both fun runs...she loved it ). My region has scheduled 8 events this year.

I know my region hosted a solo school earlier this year (I imagine other regions do too) but I missed it because it was the same weekend I did my road course school. Last weekend we arrived early and they had about an hour for people to just walk the course so you could figure it out a little. It was really pretty cool and I'd suggest that everyone give it a go at least once. Nothing to hit other than cones.

I didn't know it at the time when I saw the picture you showed, but yes Grissom has a couple huge autocross events every year. It's centrally located so people from the South Bend region, FW region, and Indy region show up for it (as well as from other regions in Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan). I might check it out next year. Cone boxes are drawn in chalk so they most likely washed away. Man, an airport ramp would be sweet to run on. We tore the crap out of Verizon's blacktop parking lots last weekend.

Too bad you're not still military Striker...mil discount membership in the SCCA is like $45 (including regional dues) for a year. Still for the amount of fun, $60 (plus region) isn't too bad.

Dude! They retired me, I didn't quit!

I'm looking into it, along with NASA regional. All of this interest started up with a casual glance through a magazine at the Dover BX. "Project Berzerkley", "$2007 Racing Civic", "The 25 Hours of Thunderhill"?

"The 24 Hrs of LeMons!?!"

Grassroots Motorsports magazine. All this STUFF you can get into, for less than horrible megabucks. Hell, I might revisit trying to resurrect the RX-7, or just Craigslist it as a parts donor for someone else's project. I start AutoX, baby's gonna need new shoes, I'll need a helmet, you get the drift.

Yeah, get rid of the RX-7...hehe. I have a guy in an RX-7 who keeps showing up at the same events that I do...and he's pretty good in it (smokes me!).

If you choose to go NASA, the SCCA recently decided to allow NASA guys to run SCCA events too (without further license issues). How cool would that be to have an event at Nelson or Mid Ohio with Striker and da Wease running together? (only because Nelson...at the PA/Ohio border is as far east as I'm willing to travel right now to race).

I'd love to give the Glen, Lime Rock, or VIR a go though.

The Ledges looks like it could be scary/awesome fun, but VIR? Man, that looks intimidating for a first-timer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4PGh3_UHsw

At least this was a miss from a Viper !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb8gKQJQoN4

Wease, you were right! The first thing you say on a near miss is "Whaaaaa?" or something near as makes no difference, the rest is just a religious experience with recitation of the "Profane Mass" and such...

Read the comments below the video. The Viper driver "manned up" about what happened, definite kudos to him and the author of the vid for being gracious about it all.

Holy crap! That second video scared me...heh.

VIR really looks like a cool track to drive. Lots of long fast areas, and the tight corners have plenty of runoff. It would be a little scary cresting that one hill at speed and not knowing what's on the other side. Too bad it's just out of our "commuting" range. Nelson was about 25 miles from the PA border which was about 280 miles from home...and we drove the Neons to the track and back.