[7thgear]

Originally Posted by Skurj

That's what has always bothered me with these events whenever I have seen them on youtube or when driving by.. it seems a forest of cones.

this is a large portion of the autoslalom competition experience,





Your cognitive abilities of reading and memorizing the course are as important as the driving part.





A clean completion of the course at a brisk pace is often enough to land anyone in the mid pack.


Pylon penalties are crippling and completing a run only to be told that you went off-course, without knowing where, sets you back at least another 2 runs before being able to attack at full speed.


This is how a typical day for an uninitiated novice goes.


Go like a bat out of hell from the start,


Totally forget that there is a corner coming up


brake super late and super hard


completely overshoot the entry


full lock the wheel


severely overheat the front tires while scrubbing off speed just to make the corner


then back on the throttle 100%, most likely oversteering in a RWD car and continuing to plow in a FWD hoping to pull out
now you’re flying towards the next corner with tires that are cooked and the process repeats over and over again


you cross the finish line having hit 2-3 cones and get told that you went off-course.. but they don’t tell you where exactly


you don’t get a timw


you finally stay on course on your 3rd time but you’re still hitting cones and you’re still blowing through turns because you think that’s fast




the day’s times are posted and you’re bottom of the barrel


you’re too proud and say fuck it and never show up again.




If this has/will be your first experience, then it’s time to relax a bit and be humble and start from the basics.