Zigzagn

I have been in 20 or 30 autocross events over the last 3 years, so I have driven a few, but the question I have is there any basic guidelines for setting up a new track. I have been “volunteered” into the position of autocross guy in our local PCA club. The few times I have attempted a layout, there were too many cones and not all that much fun as compared to the last fellow who did this for the club. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks in advance

Jim Michaels

Barry:

I'm no expert, but no one else has responded. Good of you to recognize your limits and to try to improve your designs. I run with SCCA and they have course guidelines, but they relate more to safety concerns than to setting up a fun and fair course. Thus, they indicate the minimum widths of gates, minimum distances from course to hard objects such as curbs and light poles, and maximum speed. PCA probably has similar guidelines, although some regions use the SCCA Solo II book, so you might want to get one of those.

I'm not an artist, but I consider setting up a fun and fair course to be an art; and some people are just better at it than others. It seems to me that the major variable to "drive" course design should be smooth flow for big powerful cars and small nimble cars alike. That means no extremely sharp turns or transitions that some cars can't make, or can make only very awkwardly. I also think the gates should be wide enough to allow drivers to pick their lines. Although that widens the gap in times between veterans and novices, it reinforces novices for learning about lines and apexes, and their times start dropping significantly (that'll bring'em back).

I mentioned "fair" course design as well as "fun." A fair course does not require any car to engage in awkward or dangerous movements, and allows good drivers in different classes to compete across classes for FTD, or fastest in stock, SP, P, etc. This is pretty much a crap shoot, however, except at the extremes where you can design an obvoiusly open or "power" course that favors torque, a "technical" course that favors planning and precision, or a "tight" course that favors small size and nimbleness. One can try to balance those three in a single course for one event, or vary the styles across events during the season.

I don't have much specific advice on how to create smooth flow; sometimes you have to drive it to feel it, then maybe change it to provide smoother flow. I think it helps to draw the course to scale on paper before laying it out. This can be done at home long before the event. Run around your paper drawn course with pencil point, following correct lines (or what you think they would be). Any section that seems awkward on paper will likely be so in full scale. Like most drivers, I hate short radius 180s. I also don't like pulling up to the line and seeing a sea of cones in front of me. We've had a few course designers over the years who wanted to use all the cones we had, but I'd prefer that most of the cones be left in the truck.

I don't think this bit helps a lot, but the main thing is that you recognize a problem and are motivated to improve your designs. I haven't designed a course for years, but I used to "waste" a lot of time drawing courses on paper and trying different things. Good luck.

M758

Zigzagn..

There is an SCCA autocross design booklet out on the web some where. I downloaded it last year. It has all kinds of deatils on how to make a fun and fair autocross course.

Send me a Private message with your email and I can send it to as I have lost the link to the original site.

Z-man

Check out this link:
<a href="http://www.ghg.net/cmjfsl/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.ghg.net/cmjfsl/index.html</a>

He's got a Solo2 Course Design Booklet available for download. Not only does he cover the basics of course lay out from a course design point of view, he also goes into specifics like the use (and misuse) of cones, safety concerns..etc.

He also has some course layouts from past Solo2 events.

Real good stuff.
-Zoltan.

M758

That is the same one as I have!

Zigzagn

Thanks all for your replies. I checked out the above link and there is sure a lot of great info. I guess I will have all winter to play with layouts and come spring, hopefully have a plan that will work.

Thanks again
Barry

Gary Gudinkas

I designed a few courses when I was our region's auto-x chair. I good course should have a nice flow and you should be able to easily identify whcih gate is next. My last year I translated some real life road courses to auto-x designs with great success. My "Spain" and "Daytona" were particularly well received!

DTFASTBEAR

The one piece of advice that I have is to make SURE that you drive the course after you've laid it out but before chalking the cones and lining the course. On my first course design I made what I've heard is the most common "rookie mistake". The course always looks faster and wider when you are laying it out on paper and on the ground compared to when you are behind the wheel.

I laid out my first course and thought the problem would be that the course would be too fast. After I laid it out on the ground, I drove it and even going very slowly, it was WAAAAAAAY too tight! I opened it up quite a bit and it turned out great, and I learned an important lesson along the way.

That course design booklet is great. Treat it like the bible of course design.

Dean

Tom

My pet peeves are:

Using too many cones. Porsche Parade courses can be counted on to do this. They think using lots of cones will make it easy for novices to follow the course when the result is that all you see is an ocean of apparently randomly spaced pylons and it is very confusing. Try to put gates and pylons only where they are really needed. Less is best.

Putting a tight turn right before the finish, or right after the start. The theory is to slow people down but all it really accomplishes is to guaranty someone will be off balance going through the finish and it puts the timing equipment at risk. Better if possible to have a wide gate at the finishthat can be taken straight then provide a runoff area to slow them down leaving the course. It is less of a problem at the start but usually we want to accelerate and get into 2nd ASAP at that point.

Also be prepared to tweak the design after it's set up, as noted above some things that look good don't drive very well. The best courses have a good visual flow to them.

yarin

MetroNY PCA comes up with some of the tightest more rediculous courses i've ever been on. Tons of fun!!!

<a href="http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~yarin/Picts/6-30-course-map.jpg" target="_blank">6/30/02 MetroNY PCA Course Map</a>

Here is another one... fairly straight forward.

<img src="http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~yarin/Picts/autocross-4-7-02.jpg" alt=" - " />

K27

OK, no interest I guess.

Thanks
Lance