Went Autocrossing (videos included)
 

Hey 80's here.... well Scott (7dust) and I headed up to College Station to do some autocross racing. It was Scotts first time to ever Autocross... We had some good times..

Took my ole 84 1st gen CSP car out there.

Here are a couple of clips of us having fun!

1st clip is one of me having fun...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw96HR5ZIQs

So I told Scott to quit being a pussy and drive the shit out of the car.... well he did... Watch at about 1:41 into the run.... he gets it sideways...overcorrects and does a 360 in the car... He then takes back off and accelerated hard through the shutdown area!!! He then gets his butt chewed by the A&M boy!! He deserved it!!

The prize goes to Scott for doing the best 1st gen wipeout!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pVa4UBMA5s

Ever wonder what an autocross run looks like backwards??? I did....here goes...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB-p9mH3TGc

Ok, so we are leaving College Station and my wife calls me and asks if we can drop by Chinatown and pick her up some groceries (she is Asian)... so we go and they are having this huge protest rally....not sure what it was cause they were yelling and shouting in Vietnamese... There was like 1000-2000 people there....Looked cool so we decided to join in the fun!!! We were so out of place, they started taking pictures of us!!

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

Few more videos....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYBWIQsH71A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIiymeTLff0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeFsr6BAZh0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Pskmbgwp0

enjoy...

Nice, I'll have to check out the videos when I get home.

Always glad to hear of other 7s out there teaching the Miatas
to be a bit more humble. :)


.

how do you know where to go? i tryed it in a game with the same kind of setup i ended up geting lost or missing everything. i am hoping to get another rx7 to do somthing that or use my civic.

You have cones that are set up as gates...then you have pointer cones that lay on their side to direct you in the direction to go...you have slalom cones also.

Some events have maps so you can figure it out... this event did not and the cones were set up in a hard to figure out fashion....

God, I wish I could have been there, my friend told me today in class there were a few FB's out there. I figured he was talking about you.

Did you see that white EG Civic with white wheels? That's the car that's been my life over the past year.

Yeah I saw the civic...I asked them if you were there...

Civic looks like it will be cool!!!

Alright, if you've met my car you've pretty much met me.

Depending on how early you show up, there is plenty of time to prep your car then do a few walks through the course. The more you walk the course the better idea you will have where to go and where the clipping points through the corners are. As an added bonus you can look for nails and other sharp objects that may end your day early. I've found a number of screws on course and I would be pissed if I pick one up during one of my laps.

I found one with my race tires once. Never drove on them anywhere but the airfield that TAMSCC races on, and picked up a screw right in the middle of the tread.

Hey, are you very involved in TAMSCC??? I LOVE the area...love Riverside Annex...love the concrete.... love going to the Dixie Chicken after the race and talking shit............ HATE the way they lay out courses!!!

I have raced twice at Riverside Annex... Both events, DNF'ed at least half the runs. The courses are very hard to read... I realize I am new at autocrossing, but I have raced 6 events at Gulf Greyhound Park in Houston and have NEVER DNF'ed....

How much effort would it take to have a map of the course??? Maybe use pointer cones a little more.....and I know it's a stretch, but use chalk/flour to mark the course on the ambiguous parts. (football field marking machine)

I REALLY want to race here more but it is so frustrating...

I kept missing "corner 2" last weekend... I finally walked over to the corner and asked what was I doing wrong.....there answer was "don't worry, everyone is messing up here".....that is a fucking problem!!! I then pointed out the problem, and that they needed a pointer cone...they went out and added a pointer cone.... The event was already almost half over.....you don't change the damn course after the event has started!!!

Who can get this information??? My wife will be starting A&M Engineering in the Spring and I will be up in College Station every weekend....I want to make Riverside annex my second home.... I really want to be able to figure out the course!!!

Yeah, I'm a student at A&M and a member of TAMSCC and SAE.

This may sound like a dumb question, but how much do you walk the course? I walk it about two or three times before every event, and I've never DNF'd. The club's website is tamscc.org. The Autocross Chairman is Will Hiltebeitel, username whiltebeitel on the forums there. I suggest you contact him, he's a real nice guy and a friend of mine.

I walked it two complete times. I usually walk Gulf Greyhound park once.

A Map would help. Maybe it was just this weekend....the time I raced at riverside before was when Spokes from Austin came down.

I also like how Houston SCCA uses chalk outlines on the courses where it gets difficult to understand.

Now granted i have only been autocross racing for most of this year....I am still new. It's just I am now competititive in Houston at GGP and with the BMW club at the Houston Police academy.

I will try to contact him...if you know him, do you also mind making reference to my concerns? I am really trying to get more folks involved in autocrossing, my friend who wentr with me this time had never autocrossed. He was about to totally give up on wanting to autocross until his final run when he made it through.

Yeah, next time I run into him I'll say something.

Cool and hope to see you at the next auto-X....

Do you have a car that is currently ready to auto-x??

Not if you don't count that GRM Civic. My FB's still under the knife, and I just sold my Civic's autocross tires to pay for parts for the FB.

But I'll still be out there with my helmet trying to get rides. :icon_tup:

Even on the "easy", clearly marked courses I walk them a minimum of 4-5 times. The last thing you want to have to do when you start your run, is have to think about where the course goes. By the time you're making your run, you should already be very familiar with the course so that you can concentrate on driving. :) You cannot walk the course too many times, the more the better...

Kentetsu, i will try that. Do your SCCA event have course maps? They sure seem to help me. This particular event i am bitching about did not have maps and the cones were laid out in a way that i did not understand even when walking it!

Next time i come, you can co-drive my car with me if you want...

I would LOVE that. I may be driving the Grassroots car at AX2 (on the 4th) but if I can talk the organizers into putting us in different run groups, I may take you up on that.

Are you going to be at that event?

I have only been to one event that included a map of the course, and it wasn't a very good map. That event also had some "creative" use of cones that didn't really make sense. Turned out to be a real "shit" event, if you know what I mean.

Luckily, our group is very experienced and well trained when it comes to laying out a course. Corner markers are corner markers, etc. Consistently using the cones the way they are supposed to be used is the key. Clearly marking the turns and such makes all the difference.

I would suggest that you volunteer to assist with course setup. This not only allows you to see the course as it is built, thus giving you a better understanding of how it goes, but also gives you the opportunity to "advise" them on proper use of the cones. It's hard to raise good event promoters these days. :)

No, I am racing at Houston on the 4th... I will make AX-3 on the 8th of Nov.

Hey are you going to Gainsville to race the grassroots car? Will you be the one auto-x'ing the car?

I want to "pick your brain" sometime about grassroots cars... i might build one for upcoming events.

You know, I was watching your videos and the whole time through each I was wondering "where are the damn pointer cones?" They are probably the most important on a course that is stretched out the way that one seemed to be, because you come up to a couple cones out on their own at 30-45MPH and you have only a split second to figure out which way your supposed to go around them. That makes it way too easy to DNF, and it's so simple to fix. They clearly have more than enough cones to spare an extra 10 for pointers. It's supposed to be fun, not frustrating, and DNF'ing half the day is only going to make you angry.

I agree... I am not that seasoned of an autocrosser.... I want to learn, but a course like this frustrates me!! It makes you 2nd guess yourself and not push your car near as hard as you should. I look back at my videos and think "man I am coasting, where I should still be in it"...