Tuesday, October 29, 2024

October Autocross Report

Great weather for some driving!

On a beautiful October Sunday, I drove across part of South Carolina to the Michelin Proving Grounds for another autocross with the Porsche Club. I enjoy the driving to and from the events as a great way to see the countryside and listen to music on the radio. In this case the ride home included part of the Carolina Panthers game and a bit of the NASCAR race from Vegas. You get a WHOLE LOT of football and NASCAR on the radio in SC, I can guarantee you! One other part of the drive that stuck out was the large number of trees that were down from Hurricane Helene. It was very noticeable, and certainly nothing compared to the flooding and way bigger impact farther inland in NC and TN. 

Michelin Proving Grounds

Competition wise, I took the class victory out of 3 cars in my class, and managed 3rd fastest Porsche on the day, only about 0.5 seconds behind the fastest P-Car driver. Out of all the drivers regardless of car, I was in 8th place on RAW time, so that was also good to be in the top 10. 

Hey, here's a video of the course! 


We got mooned!


According to my unofficial records, this locks up the class championship for the year, with one event coming up in November, so that was my goal for the year. I also asked one of the fastest drivers to ride along with me and give me some driving tips, and I sure learned a lot from that. Then I rode with him and learned even more, seeing how a much better driver gets around the course. That's the part of this sport I enjoy, just trying to improve my own performance, and always looking for more to learn. 

Driver meeting

Anyway, besides all that, over my ten runs I felt like things were pretty consistent. That is kind of both bad and good; bad because it's more fun to be improving every single run, and maybe improve by a LOT over the day. It was good as far as me being consistent and looking for tenths of a second here and there. Oh, along the way I hit my share of cones, but here's my 10 run times without the extra cone penalties that added time: 


1   58.733     Jumped right in and tried to go fast, let's see what's next. 
2   57.039     Dropped 1.7 seconds, groovy!
3   57.002     Just a little faster, happy!
4   57.307     Whoa, a tiny bit slower. 
5   57.518     Ugh, 0.2 slower. That's the morning done, lunch break then 5 more. 
6   59.570     Getting tips from my coach, cold tires after lunch, will apply them next time                           out. Also hit two cones on this run!
7   57.043     OK, back to 57.0xx for the 3rd time. Let's go for 56 something!
8   56.803     Finally, into the 56.xxx range! Keep it up. 
9   57.040     Nope, back to 57.0xx again. Four times. One more run to go. 
10 56.992     Ooh, ok, back into the 56s, but not the fastest of the day. 

So long from Michelin until next time!

So, it was a very fun day, great weather, and the big open course was fun to drive. Along the way I experimented with some different tire pressures, used both manual shift and the automatic PDK on different runs, and even did a few runs without the rear wing up. I didn't try switching off the traction control, so maybe I'll work on that next. With four of the 10 runs on 57.0xx I'm happy with being consistent and will continue trying to be consistently faster. 

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