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I think we’re talking history and perspective, here. When I moverd to Northern California 30+ years ago, I was surprised that all the clubs out here had courses completely lined with pylons. I was used to “gated courses” in the Midwest. Since then, SCCA, AAS and some other clubs have been exposed to this kind of course marking and have adopted it. when larger sites are used, clubs don’t have enough cones to completely line the course, and the setup and teardown time is much longer even if you do have enough cones. Fewer cones are hit, course workers are exposed less, course workers are less fatigued, timing and scoring is not as hectic, there are fewer opportunities for scoring errors. When done properly, courses are easier to read. Admittedly, I’ve seen courses many years ago with too few cones, too much direction change from one gate to the next, etc. and these are things to be avoided. I haven’t seen a confusing gated course in a long time (10 years?) Of course, lining is needed.
There are NorCal clubs who have not adopted this type of course. UFO is one. The organizers have a very limited perspective, by their own choice. They also have a really strong “anti SCCA” passion and stubbornly refuse to do anythin SCCA does, “just because.” I don’t think current GGC management, or some regions of PCA, are actively choosing to not try different things, I think it is Northern California autocross history and just not being exposed to the way that autocrossing tends to be going nationally. I see videos from all over the country, marque clubs, autocross clubs, etc. and I only see courses completely lined with cones in Northern California.
In addition to cone usage, I really don’t think I ever see slaloms at 40-50 feet anywhere but at GGC and a few local PCA events. Most people just don’t enjoy them, in addition to the exposure problem I mentioned in a previous post.
Jeff and Jack, thank you for listening. We can continue to work on this and make an even stronger program. I’d love to see you give an AAS course a try. I think it will open your eyes.
Charlie
Jack, courses don’t have to have 50 foot slaloms to be safe. More cones are hit in 50 foot slaloms than in slaloms with longer spacing. More cones hit = more worker exposure to being hit by the next car. Too many cones to hit in other areas of course design is the same exact issue. GGC has some of the busiest course workers I see anywhere. We are exposing them to unnecessary risk by our course designs. Your “blowing through a wall” analogy doesn’t work. There shouldn’t be a worker station in a place where that is a problem. A wall is on the outside of a turn and you don’t put worker stations there.
I don’t rip on the course when instructing. I’ll try to prevail on the course designer to make something friendlier beforehand. I’ve been autocrossing for nearly 40 years and designing courses nearly as long. My suggestions are constructive. I want our sport to be better, and I want GGC to be better. My motivation for coaching for the last 30 years is to help them become better and faster drivers, not to complain about the course.
Fewer cones and lining the course is the standard for everyone and it is safer. Fewer cones to hit, fewer cones to distract drivers and get them lost no matter what the speed. Those are all good things.
[quote=”dacat” post=1646]I would love to see courses like this tried out at GGC, as long as they meet the safety precautions that we have to include due to legal reasons. I highly doubt any other club is under more scrutiny than ours. Does anyone have access to the course maps? Do they publish them ahead of time?
Charlie, this year has been great for retention. We have a far greater number of repeat new drivers this year, selling out all events so far. The main reason is the coaching and getting to know the new folks, not whether the course is slow or fast. Also, if there are better ways to set up a course for less confusion, we’d love to hear it (or just help set up the course in the morning). In the past, even many of the regulars were getting lost, these days a handful out of 100 is not so bad. The new drivers I coached last month were not lost. I need to sit in with the guy you are mentioning.
Also to be fair to Dave, I’ve done 40+ courses with GGC and many of them have been open and fast, though the last 3 have been pretty tight admittedly. I’m a fan of both slow and fast courses, more variety makes it a surprise each month. Since we do publish the course ahead of time, before cancellation, it’s very easy to just skip a course you don’t like. I’m not sure if other clubs even offer that option do they?[/quote]
Admittedly, new people are more likely to come back to a marque club with good coaching and a great social atmosphere. And new folks are just glad to be out there, and are less picky about course design. The other side of that is when you lose the more experienced people due to course design, and they aren’t around to help coach.
Most clubs with a point series allow somewhere around 1 drop for every 4 events. Marque clubs tend to publish course maps ahead of time. The rest don’t tend to. I’m not sure why that is, though I know as a course designer that publishing a map at candlestick or Oakland Coliseum is pretty pointless due to changing barrier configurations, surface problems, etc. You get there and find that your corner goes right through a really rough patch or someone left a lot of barbecue detritus, etc. and the course ends up varying from the map.
As for marking, one of the cardinal sins of course design is to have cones spaced the same distance apart down the sides of the course as the course is wide. I see a fair number of courses at Marina that have sections that are 20 feet wide, with cones down the side 20 feet apart. This is visually confusing. The current accepted standard at SCCA and AAS events is that every cone should have a purpose. It should be an apex cone, a pointer cone to an apex cone, the outside of a corner, a gate to keep you on course between corners, or a slalom cone. This makes the driver look at a cone or group of cones and say “there is something going on there.” Being consistent with marking helps him to continue with “and I know what to do when I get there.”
I also think that GGC uses that number of cones to avoid lining the course. I prefer lined courses with fewer cones from a visual standpoint, but there is an added benefit in course worker safety. If you go over the line between corners, your penalty is that you may have driven farther, but you haven’t hit any cones that need to be replaced. Course workers can concentrate on the actual maneuver areas, are not distracted from the car on course by calling in cones, etc. Fewer cones hit benefits everyone.
To most people, and in most instances on every course, a pointered cone says “I’m an apex cone, you will want to turn around me, at least to some degree.” Pointered slaloms say the same thing, though the amount of turning is more slight. We had at least one “outside pointered cone” at the last event. Cones on the outside of a turn should never have a pointer cone. There is a better way to mark that area.
I think everyone is under a lot of scrutiny at Marina. The problems that clubs have had are largely the safety of workers and spectators. Course design has little to do with that, unless you put course workers between cars going past them on both sides. Even drivers getting lost have little to do with it, since they are seldom headed toward workers at a high rate of speed. The really lost driver is rarely going very fast in the area of workers. The insurance regulations for all clubs other than SCCA are pretty much the same. I’m not sure, but I think there is ultimately only one insurer (K&K?) underwriting all the clubs. Even SCCA, with its own risk management dept. and the highest number of events per year by far has pretty much the same safety rules.
Charlie
I agree that AAS courses are more fun than GGC’s. PCA courses are also usually more fun. I think 50 ft. slaloms are tedious, Slow, low rpm corners are not that much fun, either.
I also see a lot of new people at GGC events and I don’t think they are as discerning as some of us who are exposed to a lot of events. I also think GGC might have a fair number of new people at each event that I don’t see again at later events (I haven’t done a study of that, but it seems that way, and it seems to me that if it’s true, it indicates that they didn’t have as much fun as organizers think they had…) Retention is a good thing.
There is one older driver who gets lost at GGC events. The same guy doesn’t get lost at AAS events. This has to tell you something about confusing course markings…
Just my opinion.
[quote=”ddunwood” post=1080]I was able to take almost 1.5 seconds off my time from last October, the big change is the rebuilt LSD.
Last year:
[video]http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaUAz_WjZBQ[/video]
This weekend, 47.567 seconds:
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXRLIPoYACI&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/video][/quote]I went from 50.074 to 47.595, mostly due to the diff and somewhat due to getting more runs this time than in October.
Don’t get hooked on the purple crack! Stay with Dunlop/Bridgestone/BFG, all of whom have new tires out now or coming out soon!
[quote=”TheCarousel” post=1073]Next he will be hoarding Hoosier A6s.[/quote][quote=”RobP” post=937]That schedule looks great! The January event sounds like fun, and August is going to be crazy-busy! There are going to be multiple one-day HDPEs at Laguna Seca too during the Oktoberfest for those who are so inclined.
For the March TnT, I’m torn. I wouldn’t mind the extra cost (and driving space) of Candlestick, but I hate that surface.
Looking forward to 2013 for sure![/quote]
I’m not convinced that testing and tuning at Candlestick is really worth anything due to the surface. I don’t think the car behaves there the way it behaves anywhere else. I would rather see an autocross there and a Test and Tune at Marina.
[quote=”jeffroberts” post=244]We teach… slow in, fast out. fast in, spin out. 🙂
Totally agree with both comments… you can’t ask your car to do two things at once, like turn and accelerate. You get on the gas as you unwind the wheel and straighten the car out. If the tires are shouting, open the wheel until they sing instead. Even an inch movement in the wheel can do wonders. A singing tire is a happy tire! Treat your tires like a Faberge’ Egg and they will reward you with grip and speed.
Watch all of the videos in the 4/14 video thread, listen to throttle application and tire noises, and watch the hand work on those where you can see it. You won’t hear any screamingly upset tires by those folks, just happily singing tires. Autocross is not track… you can cheat at the track by exercising your right foot on the straights, but at autocross you cannot do that. You must keep the car dancing on the edge of grip and balanced at all times.
Unfortunately, Star Specs are not available in 19″ sizes. Tim settled on the Bridgestone RE11 for the ISF for that reason. You will roast tires until you prefect your technique, so I suggest going less expensive while you’re working yourself thru that. Hankook Evo V12’s are inexpensive and decent enough.
Mod the driver before the car. If someone is out there running faster than you in the same car, it has to be technique vs equipment. Get rides with those people and have them ride with you, observe, listen, learn.[/quote]
I’d definitely go for the RE-11s. I’ve used them and find them to be very responsive and they communicate well to the driver. They also wear well.
I agree that you don’t want to do too many mods to the car, but the biggest deficiency that stock BMWs have is designed in push, mostly due to conservative camber settings. Why learn to drive around a serious handling deficiency, then make the car handle better later? Help the car a little, then learn to drive a better handling car…
As a former BMW service advisor for several years and BMW parts guy for the last seven, I’ve noticed that BMWs on performance tires often only get 12-16000 miles without autocross wear.
That said, BMWs are often camber challenged, and understeer at lower (autocross) speeds, which is hard on fronts. Higher pressures will help, and camber plates will also help. New autocrossers tend to charge the corners hard and exacerbate the understeer issue. The phrase goes something like “Slow in, fast out. Fast in, out backwards”. That would be the part where the fronts finally find grip and the back is hung out to dry.
Tires with really small tread blocks tend to have more of a chunking problem. The individual blocks squirm around and tear themselves apart, especially on the outside edges of the fronts.
I would look into tires with larger tread blocks (I really like the Dunlop Direzza Z1 Star Specs), some negative camber and higher pressures (possibly over 40 psi) for autocrossing. I would guess that your camber is around zero to 1 degree positive and your car may have toe in. Up to -2 degrees is fairly friendly on the street and just a little toe in (maybe 1/8″) Other E9X autocrossers can help you with more precise numbers.
Then, take it a little easier going into the corners, try to get more of your turning done early (also known as late apexing) and accelerate out of the corner. If a street tire is squealing (high pitch), that’s okay, but as the pitch deepens into more of a squalling noise, the tire is being abused.
Charlie Davis
