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Had my first autocross in the BRZ this weekend, and it was my first autocross in a RWD vehicle. Running in C Street, bone stock down to the tires.
It rained early, so the first group kind of dried out the track, and left the very heavily used TMS bus lot with it's oil/tire deposits with a surface like ice for the second group. Jeebus, never seen this car so tail happy. After my second run, I just shifted short out of first as soon as traction felt sketchy at the rear to keep myself from just completely doing a burnout up to the rev limiter.
On my first run, I totally spun, but kept myself from grabbing cones or adding myself to the legion of DNFs that morning. But it was appropriately a 72 second run when the FTD was already 48 seconds. I got progressively more in control of the thing, bringing my runs down to 61, 56, 55 and finally a 52. I was still 6/6 in C Street, and basically 1.5 seconds behind the slowest Miata in the class, but at the end of the day I had beat an STX prepped twin on raw time, and beat another twin on PAX. So I was almost happy with my first outing in it considering my prep level.
I had a nice coach with a Nationals jacket on my 56 second run. Other than she thought I was easy on the throttle because she was in the car (it wasn't because of her, it was because I totally spun on my first run and was gun shy), she just thought I needed to be easier with the steering inputs. And get some tires. She asked "So what's the story with the tires?", when she offered to coach my run. I answered "They're the stock Primacy HPs". "Oh, you know what your problem is, then." I'll probably run the stockers until I'm within a clean second of the next fastest car in my class, or they just die, whichever comes first.
Either way, the car is a glorious load of fun in that environment. Coming from FWD in the sport, it's a very different struggle.
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