SCCA Camaro

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!

When it was time for the drivers of heat number three to autocross, I put my car “on grid” and prepped to race.  I started off with 34 lbs of pressure in all four tires and put some chalk on them so I could see if they were rolling over at all.  Since the Trans Am has a much lower torque curve than the ’68 Camaro, I decided to try my first run in second gear.  Some of my fellow competitors mentioned they did this in third generation F bodies and C4 and C5 Corvettes so it seemed worth a try.  In my first run, I came out of the slalom pretty hot and used the ABS before heading into the hairpin turn.  I was clean with no cones and a time of 34.845 s.  I was definitely not as smooth as I should have been.

For run number two I decided to go with first gear because I didn’t quite have the torque I wanted coming out of some of the slow sections of the course in second gear.  The rear tires seemed to have the chalk I applied still running right onto the tread so I let air out of them all the way down to 28 lbs, but I maintained the front tire pressure at 34 lbs.  On my second run my time improved by over four tenths to 34.402 s.  On the grid I let a little air from the front tires, bringing them down to 32 lbs, while maintaining the rear tires at the 28 lbs.  On my third run, I decided to try more speed after the slalom and came into the hairpin after the slalom too hot again, this time sliding deep into the turn with the ABS hammering away.  This strategy wasn’t working as I ended up slower on the third run by about eight tenths at 35.248 s.  I needed to pull it together for the fourth run or risk finishing very near dead last on the day.  I didn’t take air out of the front tires, so they were at 34 lbs of pressure while I let even more air out of the rear tires down to 26 lbs.  I finally put a decent run together by trying to be a little smoother and less abrupt in my inputs to the Trans Am.  I finished with a clean 33.474 s, good for third in the small CP class of four drivers. 

We had 113 racers show up for SCCA Solo II in O’ahu on April 13^th, and my time was only good enough for 94^th overall.  Worse, staying in the CP class (PAX 0.864) for the points even though the Trans Am could have raced in ESP (PAX 0.841) wasn’t helping me out since with the PAX my time was 103^rd!  I had an overall expectation to continue to improve with each outing at the track so was a little disappointed with my finish, but given the circumstances of not knowing how to drive the Trans Am and moving into the tougher CP class I wasn’t really surprised that I took a step back either.  During my fun runs I did get some level of consistency from the Trans Am: in 5 runs I was clean on all and ran a best of 33.024 s and a slowest of 33.760 s.  I missed the ’68 Camaro for sure, and was determined to have it ready for the next race day.  I had a full three months until the next SCCA Solo II outing—July 13^th.

Although I was without my ’68 Camaro for my fourth SCCA autocross event, showing up in the ’01 Trans Am WS-6 on the morning of the 13^th and tech’ing in was uneventful.  Although the Trans Am would be legal in ESP, I decided to race in CP since there is a year-long points race and I would be spending most of the year in my ’68 Camaro which is not legal in ESP.  This time my map covered all of the area that we race, and I was able to get all of the cones down pretty well while I walked the course.  The course started off to the right with a few cones set up in an exaggerated slalom, then entered into a narrow section that required a little weaving but was fast if you could stay steady through it.  A sweeping 180 degree turn brought you back around and through a relative long slalom followed by a turn to the left, then a hairpin turn followed by a turn to the right before a hairpin exit from the course. 

I didn’t expect to be able to perform as well in the Trans Am as in my ’68 Camaro mostly because I knew the suspension was a lot softer and I had no experience racing the Trans Am.  Since this was only my 4^th SCCA race and my autocrossing skills were still infantile, I didn’t figure I was going to be able to switch between the two cars without missing a beat on the track.  My first autocross day in December of 2007 with the ’68 and ’98 Camaros taught me that.  I was, however, very interested to see how well the 315s in the rear and 275s up front would grab the blacktop in an autocross event.  I was racing in the afternoon heat so watched some of the morning racing and hung out in Rick’s American Muscle tent the rest of the time.