My first autocross!

[chrisl]

Well, to start things off, as everyone knows, I do not have a BRZ/FR-S. However, I figured this thread fit here better than it did anywhere else, and I wanted to share my video and experiences, so here goes...

Last weekend, I attended my first ever autocross, which was put on by the Rocky Mountain Region of the Porsche Club of America. Everyone was really nice, encouraging and helpful, and I had an absolute blast. I honestly wasn't expecting everyone to be so welcoming, and I was expecting to have a much more difficult time than I did. I'm a bit disappointed I waited so long to attend one, actually, since I've been apprehensive about taking my car to an event like this.

The course we had was a lot of fun too - I obviously don't have much to compare it to, since it was my first autocross, but it had a really nice variety, ranging from 25mph slow turns up to an increasing slalom that I exited wide open in second gear at almost 70mph.

Basically, to sum it all up, I had a blast. It's the first time I have really been able to push my car (including a couple of times on the course that I pushed it a bit too far with the TC off - I never spun, but I did end up sideways a couple of times). If anyone reading this is considering getting into autocross, I highly recommend trying it - it's a huge amount of fun, with pretty much zero risk to your car (assuming a well set up course). I nailed a cone straight on at a pretty high speed (probably 45-50) at one point during the day, and it didn't even leave a mark on my car.

Here's my best run of the day (sorry about the video quality). For reference, the fastest person of the day ran a 52.021, and the fastest car that was roughly comparable to mine (a stock Cayman S on street tires) ran in the high 53s. My car is a stock Cayman S on Pilot Super Sports. As an interesting side note, there were 4 or 5 911 Turbos there, and they really didn't do all that well - they seemed to really have a hard time putting down any power. The fastest one was putting down similar times to my best, but he was on racing slicks, and the rest were all running a couple seconds slower. There was also an E36 M3 that put down a pretty fast time, and a John Cooper Works Mini Cooper that was absolutely flying. In my run, there are definitely a couple areas I could have improved (the most significant was probably right at the end - I came into the right hander at 55 seconds into the video a bit hot, and lost a lot of speed in the subsequent slide, followed by a pretty wide line around the cone a couple seconds later), but I think I did OK for my first time ever, and most importantly, I had a blast (and will definitely be doing it again).

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4yVIeFoots&feature=c4-overview&list=UUkFnAspA444CbehcSxNdI1g"]Best run from my first ever autocross - RMR PCA 10-26-13 - YouTube[/ame]

[chrisl]

Also, here's an onboard from another driver at the same event, to give a better idea of the course layout (I'm definitely going to want to get some onboard video next time):

[ame]http://youtu.be/qUtwk-xsT3o[/ame]

[7thgear]

holy shit that's a huge course

congrats on the first even

[DarkSunrise]

Congrats! Try a road course next, you're going to get hooked...

[muffinz]

Wow I couldn't believe that car can hit 70mph in 2nd gear....but it can.

Did some quick research and used the speed calculator below. Crazy!

http://www.apexgarage.com/tech/gear_ratios.shtml

[chrisl]

Originally Posted by DarkSunrise

Congrats! Try a road course next, you're going to get hooked...

That's my plan

Sadly, there aren't any more driving events with the local Porsche club until the spring (with the exception of an ice autocross in January, but I'll be using my Outback for that), but I definitely want to try a track day sometime.