MSNE Autocross #7 (6/6/08) - June 7, 2008

This was an interesting event. My friend co-drove the car with me, so I got to compare my performance against someone else. We ran similar times, and our best times were particularly close.

I added a lot of camber in the front to try to increase front grip. I made the front camber about -5 degrees. The car did feel like it had more front grip, but I think the braking power was adversely affected by the increased camber. I locked up the brakes a lot more often than in the last event. I'll probably back off on the camber to -3.5 degrees for the next event.

My only complaint about the car was the inside wheel spin coming out of turns. I just couldn't get on the gas as hard as I wanted to out of corners. I think it kept getting worse as I made my runs because I was heating up the tires so much and the runs were only a few minutes apart so the tires didn't cool down much. I may have been able to run faster if I got into the gas easier off the corners.

Both my co-driver and I ran relatively well in the class. The three cars that ran faster than us were all on slick tires.

The results for my class (E) are shown below. I had to move up a class to E after installing coilovers.

  1. Dawn Ammirata: Miata - 45.654
  2. Rogers Simon: Honda Civic Si - 45.672
  3. Matthew McGuire: BMW 325is - 45.803
  4. Miroslav Ovcharik: 1992 Nissan 240SX - 46.111
  5. Dat Khong (my co-driver): 1992 Nissan 240SX - 46.149
  6. Brett Conklin: Escort GT - 46.458
  7. Jake Seiffer: Subaru Impreza - 47.237
  8. Archie Nevado: Nissan 240SX - 47.798
  9. Howard Mintz: Porsche 911S (2.7L) - 48.947
  10. Mac McParland: Mazda RX-8 (automatic) - 50.650
  11. John C. Consiglio: Porsche 944 - 51.335
  12. Jared Abrams: 2003 Mini Cooper S - 51.918
  13. Kunal Sheth: 2007 BMW 328 Xi - 52.194

Full Results

The fastest time of the day was a 40.528 put in by Robert Ida in a Porsche race car.