SCCA Nationals Style Solo Course at a Local Regional event
Last weekend the Kansas City Region and Kansas Region of the SCCA held a joint Autocross event at Heartland Park Topeka. This change in venue for the majority of the Kansas City Region participants who are used to racing at the Precision Driving Center at MCC in Independence, MO allowed the course designer and National Champion driver Ron Williams to lay out a course very similar to the West Course at the SCCA Nationals in September 2013. The very large and open asphalt parking lot provided a course just under 9/10s of a mile long that was wide open, high speed, but contained several elements that if you hesitated just a second on one, you lost a LOT of time. The racers had to be diligent in studying the course beforehand and recognizing the pinch points if they wanted to put a good lap down. We ran the course counter-clockwise on Saturday and for Sunday’s event the Start and Finish lines were swapped and we ran basically the same course clockwise.
From my standpoint as a relatively new driver, there were several challenges to overcome. Finding my way through a sea of cones on an open lot is different than our runways with grass on each side that we normally race on. Also, the worn asphalt did not have near the grip in the turns that the concrete patches we turn on at MCC. While the overall speed of the course at HPT seemed faster, my high speed on course this weekend was only 53 mph according to my gauges. I routinely hit speeds higher than that at MCC…they are just in shorter spurts. I’ve learned the trick to getting through a Nationals style course is to maintain that higher speed as much as you can without over driving the elements with the pinch points. This is where I had the most trouble.
On Saturday’s runs, I DNF’d run 1 plus spun the car in one of the sweepers. On run 2 I slowed down, figured out the line and made a clean albeit slow run. Runs 3 and 4 were chipping away at that time but never really put a whole complete good lap down. On a course almost a mile long, there are a LOT of places to lose time if you don’t hit every element just right. It’s a lot more work and the experience the veterans have on this type of course showed in the final results for the day.
Sunday went better for me, I still DNF’d run 1 completely blowing a cone on one of the last elements of the course. I didn’t even realize I’d missed the turn until I saw the posted results. I had to review the video to see where it was, that just shows how much is going on during one of the runs on this type of course. I chipped away at my time on run 2, run 3 I took a passenger and basically over drove the whole course and came in a half second slower. Knowing I only had one run left, I pulled my new gloves on tight, cinched down the seat belt and let her rip. Here’s the video of that run.
It felt pretty good, I could tell after about halfway through that I had a good lap going and I concentrated even harder on not blowing it on the second half of the run. I still missed the line on a couple of corners and know that there is probably still a second or so more left out there for me, but I felt good knowing I finally ran a pretty good lap at a place that had dogged me for a couple of days. Here are the results for Sunday.
I now feel like I’ll be better prepared for the SCCA Nationals when we visit there this September. I’ll admit, I wasn’t looking forward to this weekend’s event when I saw it on the schedule, but I realize now that the experience I gained running that course will pay off down the road. Hopefully those of you that have read this this far enjoyed watching the video from this different type of autocross course…I know I enjoyed driving on it.
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SCCA Nationals Style Solo Course at a Local Regional event
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