I think we're in pretty much the same boat. My philosophy has changed (er, maybe grown.. I probably didn't actually have a philosophy when I drove my WRX) to the point where I really think driving is the ONLY thing I should be considering. Like I said before, I've made a handful of tire pressure adjustments, but at my skill level I think making any other changes is a detriment because my changes in driving plus car setup are too many variables for me to consider (plus making the changes is a distraction.

I can tell that turning in earlier at this feature or staying closer to the cones at that feature improve my time, but I certainly can't tell how appropriate the damping is or whether my front sway bar is too big. I'll save my $800+ and drive on stock struts and do "pretty well" locally.

Just as long as you're not in the Strano camp of "R-COMPS ARE THE GREATEST THING EVER! STREET TIRES ARE DANGEROUS!!" ;)

Honestly, our cars are more fun on crappy tires than good ones. On the OEM tires, I could toss the car around all day with a smile on my face. After putting RS3s on it and changing nothing else, it went from tail-happy to dump truck... just like that. If you want to be entertained by the car, crappy tires all day every day. If you want to be competitive.... better tires are required.

Wish I had a 2nd set of wheels with the OEM tires mounted for our 24h AutoX this weekend :(

There's your problem. After going from Z214 race tires to RS3s and changing nothing else, mine went from "what is tail happy?" to "oh, sometimes you have to use partial throttle"

Try a set of Z2s on this car. Wakes it up on turn in.

But I just put my RE760s back on the for the first time in forever last night. I forgot how much fun it in to have tires that will let me maintain a slide :)

Low limits are more fun!

And I want to try the 24 hours autocross sometime. One of my codrivers did it years ago

Z2s cost too much, plus Dunlop doesn't do contingencies. Even if I'm not in the running for contingencies, I'm going to support Hankook since they support our sport.

I have a set if you are interested, the tires only have like 2500 miles. :)

I know Sam doesn't really think that. I drove the BRZ last year on A6s and it was a lot of fun, but the drop off when I went to Rivals at the time wasn't nearly as much as I thought it would be.

Princess is supposed to have a set of wheels for me that he's delivering at Nationals. Unfortunately that's a week too late. And I still have the tires sitting in my garage waiting to be returned to hoon duty ;)

I for one can say the stock struts/shocks are pretty damn good. last year my prep to nationals consisted of camber bolts the cheapest set of legal wheels I could find, and some 225 rivals due to only having the car for a month. Still running a paper license plate I was able to get within a few thousandths away from trophies.(talk about upsetting) This year I'm hoping for a little better with the addition of some Konis and a strano front bar. but only time can tell if I just got lucky last year.

Intriguing... details?

Winston-Salem, NC this weekend. Starts at 9pm Friday night. Runs till 9pm Saturday night. Typically for every 12 hours you run, you do a 2 hour work shift. This year attendance is down, so we're having to do 2x 1.5h work shifts to get worker coverage. But whenever you're not working, you can drive anything you want like a test & tune. You get 5 official runs in whatever class you want that you declare when you pull up to the starter.... but otherwise it's anything you can get the keys to that has passed tech and make a run.

Do me a favor please. Drop a note to the management and ask them to do this further away from Nationals next year. I very well may travel for this but no way that will ever happen a week before Nationals.

It has historically been the weekend of Nationals (well, the ProSolo Finale), since it's a long weekend and gives us time to recover. I'm the timing chief, and my wife is a co-chair for the event, and the past two years we were probably up for 40 hours straight at each event. So this year we changed the schedule so it's a week before nationals to give people a chance for a last minute test & tune/shakedown for their cars (and hopefully give us some respite from the long hours).... and attendance is actually down. *shrug*

Oh wow. Bummer on the attendance.

My codriver did it and had a blast years ago and I'd love to do it, but no way I can schedule that time and money so close to Nats. Maybe do another one in the spring one year?

We'd love to have you Henry and it is a blast, but the attendance is definitely a bummer (~80 pre reg). The upside is the track will be that much more open for more runs! You can easily get a whole season of runs during the overnight part of the event.

I do know of at least a couple drivers in our region that are not running their cars at this event because they don't want to risk anything before Nationals. Although, some will still be there to hoon it up in other cars. Either way, we'll definitely take your suggestion and see if we can move the event further away from Nationals.