WAI Autocross

Sunday was a fun day for a couple of members of Team SuckerPunch! It was the final WAI Autocross event of the year - titled "Return of the Jetta", based on a theme of "Cone Wars" (Star Wars).

We worked the first and third heats, driving the second and fourth... The first heat we walked out and took our corner. The first car on the track makes it through ok... Then the second makes it through the initial slalom but spins and takes out a couple of cones after the slalom. Watching a subsequent car take the course, they did a good run until the finish, where they spun out, damaging the cabling to the finish line sensor. By now we've established that the surface is a bit... slick...

Heat two... Matt and I finish getting the car prepped and wait to start our run. Matt's driving first, and I'll drive afterward. We get up to the line - and then we're off. Matt does a good run around the course, not hitting a single cone and getting a pretty solid time.

This event, I made a decision to try for "flow" first, then speed. Trying not to trounce brakes or gas, but just to flow from section to section of the track. Ease in, ease out, and just work with the car instead of against it. It worked. It worked very well! I had a personal first for my first run... I beat Matt's time. Riding along with him through the course really helped me identify where to do what, and going for flow first made the run feel great!

And to make things even more fun when I finished it put me in first for STS class.

Of course, subsequent runs on heat two Matt got better times than I did, but I really managed to tighten the gap between the two of us. It turned into a fun trade-off between us, each of us pushing the other to improve our driving (and thus our times). Discussing strategy on the course was a lot of fun.

Lunch break - tasty chilli for us.

Then heat three... And the rain started. Just gentle rain for us working heat three. Surprisingly, fewer people got into bad situations in the rain than out of it. One car did manage to take out an entire side of the finish line (4 cones), but beyond that, not too much exciting.

By heat four it was raining fairly well - an amazing amount of the people that were to be driving heat four left without driving, but Matt and I stayed through it. Performance driving in the rain definitely adds some interesting aspects! I managed to get the tail to do a controlled slide around a few corners, which is something I always enjoy the feel of.

Matt did three great runs in the rain, to the point of the announcer saying something to the effect of "He's pulling the closest heat two to heat four times I've seen today". Matt was able to get very similar times moring to afternoon, which was quite impressive. I didn't do quite as well, but still managed to be about 1.5 seconds off of Matt's times.

On a side note - Matt got a chance to talk to several people about Lemons, and it sounds like we may have at least 2 more members of the team for next year!