Took the MR2 autocrossing for the first time on Sunday the 15th of January at the World Arena in Colorado Springs.
Pre-event work on the car:
I replaced both of the rear struts and springs with junkyard parts from Cars N Parts in Eaton ($30 each…SUCH a good deal – less than HALF what I could find them for anyplace else).
Had the car aligned to my specs – asked for “maximum negative camber” front and rear. The rear got to -1.7*, but the tech could only get -0.1* out of the front…which isn’t great – other people have gotten -1.7* out of the fronts, too.
(Negative camber means that the tops of the tires are closer together than the bottoms – which aids in cornering, because the direction of force applied to the tire stays closer to the same through a hard corner).
Based on this information, and a couple rounds of parking lot “testing” (*Shhh*), I expected the car to have a lot of grip in the back, and not much up front, and would “push” (not turn as much as I wanted to) through the corners, much like the Vibe…
Tech: There’s a little play in the passenger front wheel (bad inner tie rod on that side), but not enough free play to fail Tech.
The Course:
Easy as cake.
here’s the view from an ’86 Corolla (same engine/drivetrain, taller body – though the run was within 1/2 second of my best time.
* A couple of right/left offsets, followed by
* A sweeping 180* right hander that gave the illusion of tightening up (but really didn’t),
* A 45* right hand jog (that if you got fooled into tightening up at the end of the last corner, you scrooed the pooch for a good set up for this bend.
* A 180* lefthander that led into
* A 4 cone right-side-entry slalom (again, an easy one to screw up the setup for…if you fooled yourself into thinking you had to tighten your lefthand corner in order to get in on the left side of the slalom, you lost a LOT of speed compared to knowing that you could come out of the 180* corner going as full tilt as you could manage.)
*A 90* left hand corner with a little jog in the straightaway that followed it – again, if you set up for it, it was easy, breezy beautiful, but if you didn’t have your head far enough “beyond the windshield” you’d slow down for it and leave lots of time laying on the track…
* a flat out section about 75 yards long that was really a gentle bend, with a…
* 45* right hand corner after it – again, if you weren’t paying attention, you could get going too fast, not see the corner for what it was, and not brake soon enough to catch the left side cone when you took the corner (quite a few of the faster drivers brought that particularl cone back with them to the finish line…), or you’d see the corner, and chicken out and not go fast enough…
*120* right hand corner – pretty straight forward.
* A 135* RH corner – another spot where if you set up for the corner properly, you could scoot through smoothly…if you didn’t set up properly, it was going to be a hard jab on the brakes and some hard turning to not catch a cone in the process.
* A second slalom that was disguised as a set of “offsets”. People that saw them for a slalom and set up for it out of the previous corner went fast. People who saw them as 3 corners in a row often were slow, or missed one section entirely, went off course, and DNFed.
* A flat out 100 yard dash with a hint of right hand turn to it to the timing lights.
* 100 yard braking/runout area.
The “competition” (S, A – H fastest to slowest)
04 Mini Cooper (G)
05 Saab 9-3 Aero (G)
05 Lotus Elise (SS – Super Stock – Faster than A)
05 Saab 9-3 Aero (G)
03 Infiniti G35 Coupe (F)
03 Nissan Sentra SE-R (D)
01 BMW Z3 (B)
98 Porsche Boxter (A)
05 Chevy Corvette (SS)
03 WRX (G)
99 Chevy Corvette (SS)
87 Mazda RX7 Turbo (B)
Needless to say, I was feeling pretty intimidated… 🙂
4 runs:
First run – about 9:30. COLD COLD COLD tires with not enough air in them (35-37 PSI all the way around). The car was (surprisingly) LOOSE and sliding all over the course. After the post-slalom flat out section, I nearly spun the car… I saved it, but it was a wild ride for a couple seconds.
Finished with a 64.706 second run.
Increased the pressure to 50 PSI all around.
Second Run – Didn’t lose it…that’s about all I can say.
Finished with a 64.471. Figured that’s about what I lost in the sliding all over…
Third Run – started to feel a little more comfortable with the car, and the way it feels in the butt-o-meter. Finished the run feeling like I was at the limits of what the car could do, and I wouldn’t be going any faster without upgrading equipment (Tires – needs more grip, for sure.)
Knocked out a 64.158. Figured I’d be happy if I could find another couple tenths on my last run.
Fourth Run – I really don’t even remember the last run. I was thinking that far ahead of where the car was, that it didn’t get stored into short term memory in order to be put into long term memory after the run.
I *do* remember the first 180* RH corner…I was FLYING through it…just going for it, letting the car hang out there, not caring if I lost it and spun…trying to hang on and keep it pointed mostly where I wanted it to go, and trying not to nail that last cone on the outside. I remember that I did manage to get right up on it, which set me up for that 45* bend to the right… 🙂
I remember a couple other bits, too, but it all went FAST…
Results?
I didn’t find a couple tenths…
I pulled *16* tenths out of my ass for a **62.466**
Once you index the times based on class, I was 0.056 seconds slower than the ’05 Corvette.
Not bad for a $600 car and $50 in parts…