Managed to take 1st place again today, which means I've still got a perfect record for this season with Chicago Region! (I missed event 5 entirely, but we get up to three drops for the season, so that doesn't matter.) Only managed 39th in PAX, which isn't that hot, but I never really managed to get a truly "satisfying" run in today. I'm trying to work on getting closer to the cones, as that [...]
Lead photo by Andy Seipos. 4 for 4! We are well on our way to securing the Class win now! Not much to say about this event. Things went pretty well overall, I think. I continued to play around with 3rd gear at this event. I'm not sure it was really saving me any time, but I need the practice of downshifting quickly and smoothly from 3rd to 2nd under pressure, so the more [...]
Well today definitely did not go according to plan! 4th of 6 is quite a dramatic departure from my usual results, and against all the same typical folks. Can't win 'em all I guess! So why the drastic change in standings? Well, first off, one of my opponents was an expert driver who I am typically not up against, who was co-driving Chris's excellently set-up car. So 1st place was going to be difficult [...]
With three of nine Chicago Region autocross events completed, I am halfway to securing the STX Class Champion trophy! I took 1st place this weekend by nearly 1.5 seconds, and managed to finish 27th in PAX out of 157 entries. I'm slowly making progress on that PAX list as it used to be rare for me to crack the Top 30, and I've done so twice in a row now! The course was a [...]
Lead photo courtesy of Austin Boynton. Autocross #2 is in the books! I think the most interesting thing about this event was the course layout, which was quite odd. There were the two long, sweeping turns towards the beginning that were difficult to get right, and then there were a lot of slaloms that led into sharp turns which I kept forgetting existed. Nothing like coming out of a slalom at full throttle only [...]
Lead photo courtesy of Brandon Wilk Photography. Ohhhh boy! Stiff competition! TSSCC's first event was won by myself in STX. The last event was won by a gentleman co-driving someone's BRZ. This event was won by a different driver in a white BMW 135i. This makes for a very interesting, and exciting STX battle this season! All of our times were very close to each other, and we were each clawing away at our times on each [...]
Autocross #2 for TSSCC is over, and it was definitely an interesting one. I got my butt handed to me by someone co-driving my nemesis Chris's BRZ (who was also called Chris!) 2nd place will have to do! I've learned to completely despise the Lake County Fairgrounds surface, because it brings out all of the weak points of my current suspension setup (street-oriented vs. autocross-oriented) which makes it difficult for me to be competitive. [...]
Lead photo courtesy of Meghan A. Yay! Grissom Air Force Base! I'd always been told that this was a fun surface to run on, but never managed to make it down here the one time a year that TSSCC does so, as it is 3 hours south of Chicago and I always had schedule conflicts. Not that I picked the best weather to finally attend the event. It was basically raining most of the [...]
We're finally back to autocross season, and kicking things off with Chicago Region SCCA's first official event of the year! I had hoped to return this year with a more competitive car (read: header and tune) but financial obligations prevented that from happening. The only change this year is the Fujitsubo Authorize R catback exhaust I installed last November, though realistically the only "performance improvement" I'll be getting out of it is a few [...]
Autocross #9 is in the books! This marks the last autocross event for the Chicago Region, and likely the last autocross I will attend this year. Ended things on a good note with another 1st place win! More importantly, this was THE most exciting course I've raced on thus far. I was shifting into 3rd gear in not one, but TWO sections of the course! It was a relatively wide and open course with [...]