Philly SCCA Mini of the Mainline Event #1

Photo by Anthony DiGiovanni

Welcome back readers.  On Sunday, April 19th, Philly SCCA had their first event of the season for points-- Mini of the Mainline Event #1.

The week following this event was full of racing action.  I had a test and tune on the previous Sunday, I had a track day on Wednesday of that week, and those events all led up to the first autocross of the season.

With over 150 entries, the season opener is always full of people and there is a limited amount of runs.  This means that there were only four runs for each person and therefore less opportunities to tweak the car's settings.

My run occurred in heat three.  During heat two, I took the opportunity to prep my car for the first run.  In addition, my friends Edd and Shawn ran in heat two!

Edd's Car

At the test and tune, I noticed that I was getting a lot of sidewall scrub at what seemed like the optimal tire pressure for a compromise of grip and oversteer for my heavy, front-wheel drive car.  So, I decided to change my tire pressures from low to high.  Here is what the tire pressures were at before I ran:

• Front Driver: 34 PSI
• Front Pass.: 32 PSI
• Rear Driver: 32 PSI
• Rear Pass: 30 PSI

It looks like they had changed since my track day since my tire pressures were two PSI lower on my passenger side than my driver side.  Maybe I don't remember changing them after some hot laps?  NJMP's thunderbolt does have a lot of left turns after all.  The pressures for the first run were:

• Front Driver: 40 PSI
• Front Pass.: 40 PSI
• Rear Driver: 36 PSI
• Rear Pass.: 36 PSI

For the second run, I noticed a lot of understeer.  Despite this I went down to 36 PSI in the rear while the tires were hot.  Note that hot PSI are always higher than cold PSI.  Think ideal gas law if you've ever been in a high school chemistry class.  Run 2:

• Front: 40 PSI
• Rear: 36 PSI

Second run was my best run.  I understeered like crazy into a corner after the turnaround at Warminster, but the time I made up in the slalom on the first half of the course made a huge difference.  I don't know why I didn't just wait to see if my brakes would heat up to allow me to stop sooner or if the increased tire temps would increase my quickness, but I guess I was just antsy.

Photo by Anthony DiGiovanni

I think that's one of the challenges with autocross for a guy like me.  I'm so tempted to make changes to the car when it may not be necessary.  I may have just been able to leave the car at the same tire pressures since I did so well in the first half of the course and just adjust my driving style for the second half of the course.

Photo by Anthony DiGiovanni

I guess it all comes with experience.  Anyway, I adjusted my tire pressures for the third run despite all of this.  Run three was as follows:

• Front: 38 PSI
• Rear: Same as before

Photo by Anthony DiGiovanni

Run three was actually slower than I predicted.  I got some pretty nasty oversteer in the first slalom and that slid me into the Chicago box on the firs thalf of the course.  As a result I decided to lower the rear tire pressure for the fourth run:

• Front: 36 PSI
• Rear: 32 PSI

The fourth run went better in the first half of the course, but again my brakes didn't bite as I had expected in the second half of the course...so I ended up hitting a cone head-on with my car.  It kind of sucked!  At the end of the day my best time was a 42.9 and I got third in DSP thanks to my mishap on the fourth run!

Photo by Anthony DiGiovanni

Despite all of this nonsense though, as you can see in the above picture, my friend Alex finally got to autocross his winter build known as Touge Turbo!  Go look up the hash tag on Instagram to see more his build!  #TougeTurbo

The video of my runs is below!  I even included cockpit video with this one and as usual I included commentary on my driving technique and on the car setup.  Thanks for reading guys!