Lead photo courtesy of Brian Stone.
Today was an interesting weekend. My mom came to visit, which doesn’t sound entirely relevant to autocross, but it’s the reason I was at this Milwaukee Region event this weekend. She wanted to see what autocross was like, and well… as you will see from the video below, she definitely found out all about what autocross is like! As far as the event itself, I feel pretty confident in stating that I struggled more at this event than at any other event this year. More details below:
Date: Sunday, August 21, 2016
SCCA Chapter: Milwaukee Region (Event #8)
Location: Miller Park, Milwaukee, WI
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, calm, 70-75 degrees
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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: 61.440 (5th of 11 in Class)
PAX: 51.363 (67th of 186 Overall)
Mom’s First Autocross
Before I get into the typical autocross details, I’d like to introduce you to my mom. She has been wanting to see what autocross is all about ever since I started doing them, but it wasn’t until today that she was able to actually attend one. In fact, she not only attended, but rode-along with me… twice. I will preface the video below by stating that my mom gets very nervous as a passenger in any vehicle, so I knew that this would be something worth recording. I’m still laughing… and she’s still recovering.
Understeer
The reason I was so disappointed with how today turned out, regarding the event itself, was that I struggled with seemingly endless amounts of understeer during the entire day. I’m not sure why this suddenly became a problem today, but it was such a stark difference to previous events that I had a hard time coping with it because I kept expecting it to sort itself out as the day went on. Normally the car slides around a lot on the first run, partly due to cold tires (and cold pavement), and partly due to the driving line still being full of gravel and other debris that gets cleared away as the event progresses. That was no different today; my first run was a bit slip-‘n’-slide-y, with the car wanting to hang the tail out everywhere, which is fine because it got some great reactions from my mom (still laughing over here…)
The difference today is that after that initial run, the car immediately transition to understeer mode. Granted, this tends to happen on my second run anyway. First run is “figure the course out,” and second run is, “see just how fast you can do things,” which usually leads to a lot of overcooked corners. However, this became an issue for me for the rest of the day. I don’t typically run at Miller Park, but I definitely didn’t have this issue at the last event I ran here. I don’t know if it was the cooler temperatures, (pretty sure it was 10-15 degrees warmer and sunny last time), or if I just was REALLY out of my element, but no matter how early I braked for the corners, the front tires really didn’t seem to want to turn the car.
I will be curious to see if I encounter the same issues this weekend at Event #5 for Chicago Region. The weather looks like it might be similar, but I’m curious to see if that surface feels much grippier than the surface here in Milwaukee felt this weekend. In any event, the video below is my fastest run of the day. It is full of horrible lines; mostly blown apexes, that demonstrate exactly what I am talking about, and is generally very sloppy (no, that cone didn’t count against my time!) I’m aware that the obvious solution is that I needed to slow down, but the point is I was taking these corners as quickly as I’ve become accustomed to taking them at other events. This time, that seemed to be way too much for the RE71Rs to handle. If I’ve learned anything this weekend, it’s that I need to get better at adapting to different surfaces than I currently am.
