RXDOC

Safe? I was hanging out at a NASA DE event with a ZO6 driver, who told me he had flipped and damaged his car at an autocross! This happened at an old airfield, long straights, long course, and a ditch and a tree!

rockitman

relatively and in a general sense yes...I would rather take my chances having an incidental roll over at an auto-x than hit a wall at 120 on a track...

Brian_77_3.6

I have been Auto-Xing since the 1970's and have spent the past 10 years as either my clubs AX chair or assisting the AX chair. In all those years I have only seen two "Incidents" at an AX. One was a rollover and the other a spin that was so out of controll that it only stoped when a light pole ended it. I have been doing DE's for the past seven years and see an average of 2 "Incidents" per event. So surely AX is less likey to wreck your car. There are a lot of new owners who are affraid to take their car out onto a race track and for them AX is where they begin to learn car control. Many gain the confidence in AX to move on to DE. I am not a 10/10ths driver in DE or AX (don't have those big *****) but I know that the sharpened senses I aquired sliding the car and adjusting throttle input to keep the car going where I want it to go in AX has helped me progess in DE and has been a contributing factor in being smooth and consistant. Since I have become hooked on DE I always seem to moan and groan before an AX about the long wait for a short run but once the day is over I always seem to come home ready to do it again.

RJay

Sigh... To all you guys that think AX is only 8 minutes of driving, I think you've completely missed the point. Driving isn't just turning the wheel, stepping on the gas or the brake and shifting every now and again. Its about using your brain. The skill is in your head, not your hands. It really shouldn't be surprising that a tremendous amount of time is spent analyzing, plotting, tweeking setup, etc. at least by those who get good at it. To be a good AXer, you have to see, think, understand before you ever turn the ignition key. Having only a few runs to prove yourself, means its imperative that you do so. It imparts discipline, routine, visualization, determination. Seat time is only a small part of time you spend actually learning.

Getting better at anything means doing some work. I could infer that if you're not willing to spend an extra 80 hours in a season to hone these skills, you're not all that committed, but I won't. Is doing AX necessary or a guarantee to be fast on track? Obviously not. You can certainly find other ways to learn the same stuff. So undoubtedly, its not for everyone, but rather than judge things from the outside, if you really want to improve, stop by, drive and see just how badly you get you're *** kicked. Do it for a few weekends and see if you don't try to figure out what those guys and gals know that you don't. I suspect you'll be spending a lot more than just 8 minutes a day trying to figure it out.

Bull

The inferrence would have been wrong in my case, so I'm glad you didn't!
I simply choose a different venue to hone my skills.

hinchcliffe

AX is fun if you take it for what it is. Up here we do it a a local, Batavia, Kart track. Just big enough for a car. But its seems rougher on your car than a DE where everything gets ample time to warm-up. Bu you can pay a little extra and jump in a kart instead of your car. Makes its a bit more fun to learn a line and such.

If you want to learn how brakes and the accelerator effect your car in a slide, drive RWD without snows in the winter up here. I learned all sorts of stuff from that.

I've done one AX ( one year after my first DE). At the DE my instructor was very much impressed with my skills. I attributed it to my winter driving and learning a car skills. AX wasn't for anything other than fun and seeing who was the fastest in what type of car.

Darren

If I'm an idiot, why do I need to correct your spelling in my quote???

When we did the skid pad at Summit, I was of course doing it with PSM off, just trying to practice seeing how far I could get the car to slip without spinning (while balancing inherent understeer with throttle oversteer), lots of fun. On the way back, I took a loop around with PSM on and was amazed that I could still maintain a decent slip angle. It was actually really easy to do -- the PSM just kept the car at a conservative slip angle and I could still go pretty fast. This is harder to see at the track because there you go thru the turn and then are straight again, and if the PSM comes on, it corrects the situation and you keep going. At the skid pad you can make it constantly intervene.

So it might be as important to teach students skid pad with PSM on than with PSM off, IMHO. On the street of course you always want PSM on, and they should know what it does.

bobt993

[QUOTE=Darren]If I'm an idiot, why do I need to correct your spelling in my quote???

If I sit and proof-read a casual conversation then I might as well be back in school. Are you around this weekend? Need to pick parts left in your pickup. Your one compliment for the year........I think in your case you do a really good job driving around the PSM considering the rest of your fleet does not have it. I promise not to call you an idiot for at least a week.

hrk

DE is practising with safe limits.
Racing is a bit closer to those limits and one is forced to rethink lines to manage traffic.
Qualify is at the limit.
Stuff still happens slow, war-up laps, long straights to figure out gauges, open palms, talk to radio, plan for dinner
Autocross is about planning ahead and when driving time comes giving 100% right from first run, things are so hectic that one has to remind himself to breathe. No correction time after mistake and only few second chances. Very competetive sport and that rush of adrenaline has never happened in real track for me. Which is probably why I am still here writing this and not in a wheelchair or worse.
All this without real danger for your car.

It is not for everyone, and it cannot be measured by how many seconds one gets to drive in a day.

hrk, who was told to grow up on that very event

TT Gasman

AutoX sucks IMO. The one and only AX I ever attended we were split into 2 groups , while one group ran the other would work the corners and pick up cones. Seemed fair enough. The first group , mostly track regulars, ran run after run (about 1 hr), then most of them took off during the intermission. This left only a handful of people left to work the course. It really sucked. Plus I also found it quite hard on the car. Never again.

Lothar

Why do some drivers have great careers as test drivers for F1 teams (the pinacle of international motorsports, right?) but don't make it as race drivers?

The answer: Racing is a different skill set. A good test driver can drive the car at the limit, analyze the performance of the car, communicate that to the team engineers, who then improve the car. A great racer makes the best of what he has and wages a tactical battle one opponent at a time.

At some point, some instructor will ask you, "Do you know what the racing line is?" The answer is: what ever line you are on. DE focuses, I believe to a fault, so much on finding the optimum line. When racing, the driving must be automatic and instinctive. The tactical side of "Race-craft" consist of seeing your opponents weakness and picking the place and time to exploit it. The strategic side is choosing the right strategy, i.e. tires, fuel, and car set-up, to be a contender in the closing laps.

There has been much debate about DE vs. AX vs. Time Trialing vs. Club Racing. Which one of these is not like the other? Club Racing is the only one where another car wants desperately to keep you from passing and will force you to drive a line and in a manner that is NOT OPTIMAL to gain the position.

FSAEracer03

One trick to getting more wheel time at an autocross is to get involved with the governing organization(s) and get involved with setting up the events. I had half an hour straight seat time in a formula car under a "testing" day. Another event, I got a full 20 runs in the day before an event, and I wound up beating two out of three Honda S2000s that each had 4 runs the following day... I was in a bone-stock 1987 S10 long-bed without an LSD or 4WD.

Just get involved and you get as much seat time as you'd like to have.

Personally, I think it's certainly not the end-all, be-all of motorsports, but it is the best stepping stone beyond indoor karting on the road to racing.

When I have kids, my car enthusiast sons are learning to drive sprint karts, then autocross, and DE before they road race. That's my idea of a purebred wheel man!

Gator_86_951

(In part)

Ok. In the alternative. You may have missed the point of what others have been saying about AX.

We all us do this to have fun. So, clearly my definition of fun and your definition of fun are different. I don't think you have to realize the benefits of AX to decide it doesn't interest you.

Your idea of fun is either coextensive or in some part related to improving as a driver and being competitive. So like this:
Improvement, Competitive --> fun OR
Improvement AND Competitive AND Driving = Fun

For me I just want to drive, the competitive part is ancillary at best, and the improvement part is reinvestment for having fun later.
Driving --> Fun --> Incidental Improvement-
^----------------------------------/

So from this perspective AX is no fun for me. I just don't want to sit in a parking lot forever. And yes, I have done some AX'ing. Not as much DE. But, that is my decision.

I guess my point is that you can't just throw out either perspective outright, and you have to think about the benefits as it relates to each person. Some like it, some don't. And, it really isn't a train-wreck if somebody decides they don't want to AX having never actually been.

RJay

My comments had nothing to do with enjoyment or the lack thereof. The initial question here was around the value returned by AXing for the amount of time spent. I'm saying that driving is a skill and to get good at it requires work. Hopefully its enjoyable work, but either way unless you're a prodigy, to get better is going to require effort. Perhaps some can simply read Speed Secrets or other texts of its ilk and get it immediately. Certainly Karting will equally teach many of the same skills, assuming you're young enough to still have your internal organs intact after a year or so. None of that alters my statement that there is far more to AXing than simply a few minutes of seat time. Every successful AXer I know who has moved to track, be it racing, time trialing, DE even Rally attributes a large measure of their accomplishments in their new venue to time spent AXing. Those that simply stop by to observe whats going on or try it once or twice are likely not to realize what can actually be achieved.

You've try it, don't like it, that 110% fine by me. I'm not overly fond of the long days myself, but as I consider myself to still be a work in progress, while I no longer do 35-40 events a year, I still do a dozen or so. Bottom line for me. I've been able to avoid wrecking, spinning, becoming involved in someone elses incident on multiple occassions and very little of the knowledge necessary came as a result of the half dozen or so days of DE instruction I received before being turned loose on my own. I already had exposure to the effect of lifting both for good and evil, identifying understeer before it resulted in snap oversteer, dealing with cold or overheated tires, the effects of too little or too much tire pressure, overly loose or stiff sways or shocks adjustments, correcting with throttle versus steering, where and when to consider trail braking and how to do it, how to slide versus skid, reacting to a spin, when to give up, when to keep trying, whether to stay tight or go wide, where to push and where to stay conservative, how to look ahead, visualize and keep a sharp mental focus, see whats important and ignore whats not, compensate for coming in too slow or too hot, walk a course to find apexes, camber, sweet spots etc... all before I ever set foot on a race track. These are just some of the skills I acquired to varying degrees as a result of making a commitment to becoming a reasonably good AXer. I've tried to refine this understanding further since moving on track. I consider that result an excellent value for time invested, just as I'd consider my time in DE an excellent investment should I decide to go racing. Others may not, thats their call.

Bull

Clearly, one can't expect many, if any, of those who spend some serious time or years autoXing to say...nope, I wasted my time. Autoxing wasn't a big help. Sure it "helps:". Is it significant????????