Chicago SCCA: Autocross Event #5 (2016)

Autocross #5 is in the books! This was kind of an awkward event due to the weather, which forced it to be canceled at about the half-way point. As such, this will be a shorter post than usual. I wound up in 3rd place in STX (only 0.003 seconds behind my nemesis in second place), but he was actually further ahead of me until the results were “adjusted.” I’ll explain below.

Date: Sunday, August 28, 2016
SCCA Chapter: Chicago Region (Event #5)
Location: Route 66 Raceway, Joliet, IL
Weather: Dry, partly cloudy, 80-85 degrees F in the AM (then it poured, but the rest of the event was canceled due to lightning)
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Car: 2015 Subaru BRZ
Class: 345 STX
Wheels/Tires: 949 Racing 6UL (17×9)/Bridgestone Potenza RE-71R (245/40R17)
Brakes: Hawk 5.0
Suspension: KW V3 coilovers, Raceseng Cas/Cam plates, Velox LCAs
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Raw: 52.996 (3rd of 6 in Class)
PAX: 44.304 (58th of 137 Overall)

Sunny… sunny… sunny… sunny… THUNDER AND LIGHTNING!

There isn’t much to say about the car or the setup for this event. I only really got four runs in. The three morning runs, and one afternoon run. The morning runs were a bit sloppy, and there were a few areas where I knew I needed to clean up for the afternoon. One example was the 180-degree turnaround at the far end of the course. After that turnaround (0:45 in the video), you entered a “wide slalom,” but you had a lot of room to run out. This meant you could get on the power very early coming out of that 180-degree turn, but because all of those cones always seemed to be right behind my A-pillar, I kept hesitating there until I saw the cones and remembered how much room I had. I did clean this up for the first afternoon run I received, which took a few 10ths off of my time, and there was room for other improvements too, but I never had an opportunity.

The weather, though! The day started off innocently enough. The above photo is one I took on my way to the event. It was a bit humid, but the forecast really only called for partly cloudy skies. We weren’t really thinking about rain when the event started. Things went well for the first two heats, but right at the end of Heat 2, out of nowhere the sky turned very dark just to the south of us. Within 20 minutes, we were seeing the image to your right. Lightning quickly followed, which forced us to temporarily suspend the event. Eventually the event was canceled altogether.

Funnily enough, it turns out that this was the only storm on the radar. One small band of storms that formed directly over our event, and also refused to move. It endlessly rained for several hours (I had to change my tires in the rain), but as soon as you drove 10 minutes north it was blue skies and sunny. Rotten luck. Not sure what we did to piss off Mother Nature, but hopefully she is a little friendlier for Event #6 in September!

Results Modifications

The event was actually suspended partway through the first half of Heat 3. This left some Heat 3 folks (such as my STX competition, Chris) with 5 runs, and other Heat 3 folks (such as myself) with only 4 runs. I’ve never actually attended an event that was permanently suspended for any reason, so I wasn’t sure how the results would be tabulated. As things stood when the event was ended, Chris was actually ~0.7 seconds ahead of me. I hadn’t yet gotten a very good run in, so I know I could have improved, and I’m sure it would have been a close finish as it always is with the two of us.

However, it seems that the final decision was to eliminate the morning runs altogether. I’m not sure if this was the best decision or not, but they have their reasons for doing it that way. I’m not going to complain too loudly, since that means that I wound up taking 3rd place only 0.003 seconds behind Chris in second, which is much better for me from a seasons points perspective. I’m sure Chris wasn’t too terribly pleased with that decision (as I would be if I were him) but that’s that, so we will have to see how the rest of the season unfolds in the final three events.

I’m not entirely certain where we all fall at the moment in terms of points standings. For each class, they take your 5 best runs of the 8 events. I’ve gotten 1st place in three of those, but I can’t quite remember by how much. I don’t think I’m very much ahead of Chris, so this event just tightens up the race even further. Hopefully I can eek out at least one more solid win at the next event. I really like Route 66, and it’s my favorite surface of the three locations I attend around here (the other two being Lake County Fairgrounds, and Miller Park) so hopefully I can turn that into an STX class win at the end of the season!

Here is my [second] fastest run of the day. My afternoon run was faster, but since that one isn’t being counted, I figured I’d just show my morning run so you could see some of my sloppy lines that needed improvement.