Spokes (www.spokes.org) is the local autocrossing club in Austin, they use all of the SCCA classifications and most of the rules but are a little more lax with some of the rules and therefore a little more fun. I missed their first outing of 2009 and was wrenching on the Camaro in an attempt to get it together for their second outing, but alas it was not to be. So I saddled up my daily driver, the 2001 Pontiac Trans Am WS-6, for a little auto-x! In terms of prep, I pretty much just checked the fluids and tire pressure and emptied the car out before heading to San Marcos in the morning. It’s about an hour drive from where Cris and I settled in Cedar Park, TX, so I left just a bit after 7 AM. The drive was enjoyable (down US35 toward San Antonio) and uneventful. I arrived at the San Marcos Airport a bit after 8 AM and was waitlisted to race since they had a full registration.
As I was waiting I met Ann Hollis, she the wife of Andy Hollis, autocrosser extraordinaire and instructor at Evolution Performance Driving School (http://www.evoschool.com/). Andy has his own Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Hollis) which is pretty cool! Andy is a six-time SCCA Solo National Champion and was the designer of the course at San Marcos! Anyway, Ann was very sweet and welcomed me to the region and introduced me to a whole slew of people (sorry I don’t remember all of your names!). Ann is an accomplished autocrosser in her own right and is I believe also an instructor at Evolution…but she is modest and doesn’t have her own wiki, so I am not sure about the details.
Well, I made the “cut” (in fact I think all of us on the waitlist did) and was allowed to race my first time out with Spokes. Tech inspection was uneventful so I was off to walk the course and try to map it out. Prior to leaving in the morning I had printed an aerial photo of the airport space where we were racing from Google Earth. As you can see from the scan, the course started out with a three-cone slalom to set up a roundabout on the right. After the roundabout, there was a short straight with a turn to the right through a tight gate, which was followed by a sweeper back to the left. Another fast turn to the right with a few cones up top and then a tight right turn before entering the long slalom, which ended with another chicane and then an offset slalom to end the course.
I worked the first heat, and was keeping my eye on the blue Corvette of Lance Adams in SS who was the first to run the course in under 60 seconds. He managed a 59.818 s; at that point I decided if I could run within 10 seconds of that time I’d be doing pretty well, given that the Trans Am was almost certainly one of the heaviest cars at the track that day and that I was rolling on some bald Sumitomo HTR-Z (UTQG 160 A A) that would be replaced next week. So I set my goal to break into the 60s.
On my first run I ran 73.866 s, slower than I had hoped for, but I did a conservative run and hit no cones (no sense making a fool of myself drifting all around the course in my first outing with Spokes!). Run number two was over two seconds faster at 71.838 s, faster through all three sectors of the course. I was feeling that the 60s where in reach. I had a passenger for run number three (chicks dig the Trans Am!), and cut another second and a half off at 70.372 s. I had another passenger for run number four (actually the boyfriend of first passenger) and made a fairly major mistake coming out of the first sweeping left turn too hot and nearly taking out an entire row of cones. This forced me to come nearly to a complete stop to avoid the cones and killed my time. Although I was faster through sectors one and three of the course, I added over two seconds in sector two, netting me a 71.750 s, the only run of the day in which I didn’t improve.
My last two runs were solo, and I put together a 69.559 s run on my fifth run; I also had my fastest times of the day for sectors one and two on this run. For my last run, I was about 0.150 s slower through sectors one and two (combined) but I shaved an entire seven tenths off in sector three, so finished with my best time of the day, a very satisfying 69.020 s. I had improved on all but one run, hadn’t hit any cones on the day, and ran within 10 s of a very well-driven SS Class Corvette. As an added bonus, I also beat both of the Mustangs that showed up (sorry Paul M!). Add to that I met some great folks, all of whom were very nice and inviting, and I had a great day of racing!