build diary

August 8, 2005: A successful day at the autocross course.
When you bring a Seven to a race like this, classes don't matter. You're gunning for the fastest time of the day. Unfortunately, others think the same way. I knew I'd have some good competition from my coworker Jeremy in his turbocharged Miata. He's a good driver in a quick car. What I hadn't counted on was a Fiat X1/9 with a 13B rotary engine stuffed inside. To make matters worse, he was running on 10" wide slicks and had been driving this monster for 20 years. I also had the Mini with me - you can read about it on its own page. The course designers told me they had taken my driving into account as I have a tendency to think outside the box a little and not just drive from cone to cone. The exits from a few corners were modified to keep me from tracking out too far - spoilsports.

My first run was a bit ugly. As usual, I was driving too fast in the slow parts and too slow in the fast parts. The course had a fairly high speed section but a couple of really tricky and tight corners. On these, I was having all sorts of understeer as I just pushed the front tires too hard. This could have been due to the new handling balance with the sway bars although I'm pretty sure it was just the driver. On a couple of the tightest, I tried pulling the handbrake. That rotated me very nicely and the crowd really liked it. I came into the pits knowing I could go faster. Jeremy was a bit quicker - and the Fiat beat me by 3 seconds. Ouch. Still, the car was running flatter so the sways were working.

For the next run, I softened the front shocks up a notch and told myself to slow down. I continued with the handbrake turns. While the understeer went away, I straightened out on of my slides too fast and hit a huge cone. Nuts. Still, with the penalty I was still faster than Jeremy and two seconds faster than my first run. A video is available. The Fiat knocked another second off his time. It was obvious that he had huge amounts of traction in the corners.

The third run had the crowd pretty excited. The announcer was talking up the rivalry between the three fast cars. Rolling up to the start line, I was debating whether I should continue with my handbrake turns on the entry into the slalom, or if I should take that corner quite slow and see if I could get around on mechanical grip. That's what the Fiat was doing and it was very quick. I decided to go for it. The run started off well. For the first time, I actually used full throttle through the fast turns at the beginning. The Seven tried to walk around at the back a bit and I was getting concerned about the speed in tight quarters, but I stuck with it. Everything was going well until I got to the interesting turn - and the car just whipped around. I came out faster, tidier and on a better line than ever before. At the end of a short slalom was another, tighter turn and a quick tap to toss the car sideways worked perfectly. The ability to see what the front tires were doing helped a lot - I actually walked the front wheel around the base of cone on that one 150 degree corner. On the second lap, it was the same story. I came back into the pits and discovered I'd managed to get 0.2 seconds ahead of the cursed Fiat. I knew that run was close to the fastest I could run the car. The only disappointment was that the video camera had decided not to record the run.

It was a long wait until the Fiat rolled up to the line again. When he did come out, you could see that he was working a bit harder. The car was moving around more. Unfortunately, he didn't make any mistakes and managed to shave 0.5 seconds off his time, putting him almost exactly 0.3 seconds ahead of me. While it hurt not to win, there's no shame in losing to such a good car and driver by such a close margin. We'll meet again in a few months and we're both looking forward to it. Hmm, there are some race tires in the shop...

At the end of the day, there was a draw for a free helmet for everyone who stuck around. My name was pulled, but unfortunately, I was at the other end of the parking lot talking to the Fiat driver and didn't hear it. The helmet went to someone else. Janel was disappointed, she knew that would have been her helmet. Oh well, maybe next time. Janel did get to drive the Seven home from the track as I nursed the Mini back with no brakes.

Overall the Seven did extremely well, competing with a slick-tired monster on a set of 195-60-14 street tires. The car corners much flatter and can be tossed around naturally with the sways and I'm very happy with how it feels. My Revlight was working - I can see it in the video - but I never looked at it. I'll have to try it out a bit more. I also need to do something about the fender stays up front. The fenders are constantly cock-eyed. It looks bad and it's only a matter of time before one escapes.

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