September Autocross Report

 

I like this very orange Porsche 911 GT3R

The highlight of last weekend was NMS-South and the Bunch of Idiots winning 2 races and the season long championship in the Lucky Dog Southern Endurance Cup, but up here in NY, Nassau Coliseum was the place, and Porsche Club of America autocross was the event. NMS-North once again took first in the S05 class (OK, only two drivers in the class) and a pretty good 7th overall PAX, and 6th for Porsche cars on PAX. This keeps the #77 Cayman smack dab around the middle of the top 10 for the year, although we're waiting to see the official results with points from the two day event in Massachusetts to be included. 

Ruby Red Metallic

The weather was great, with only a few sprinkles that didn't really impact the times as far as I could tell. This was a really fun course to drive, with some big sweepers, one complete circle, and a couple of slaloms. After the first run or two I tried driving it without braking, and almost made it! Of course there is nothing wrong with using the brakes, but our research lab tells us that braking tends to make the car go slower. This would be the opposite of rule #1 in autocross: Make The Car Go Faster. 

Porsche calls this interior Sand Beige

We all got 10 runs on the day, split up by 5 in the morning and 5 in the afternoon. Here's my morning run times:  

47.239: OK, you've got to start somewhere!

46.124: This run felt good and put me in the top 2 at the time, but a lot more drivers to go

46.748: Slower? Yep, slower.

45.715: Ah, dropped another 0.4, hopefully more to come in the afternoon. 

After driving 5 times, I got to work on the starting grid, and sure enough, plenty of other drivers were going quickly too! Well, let' go to the afternoon's driving:

46.266:  Not too far off the morning, let's go faster!

45.396: Hey, about 0.4 faster than the morning, this might be fun!

46.201: Wrong. Slower. Not having fun. Not at all. 

44.925: Ah, more like it, my fastest so far, glad to get into the 44 second range, one more try to go!

44.722: Hey, a little bit faster, and suddenly autocross is fun again! 

While I was happy with my time, the fastest time of the day (FTD) was a Miata in 41.411. 

My PAX adjusted time was 41.412, while the fastest PAX of the day was a Boxster in 40.048.