SCCA CCR Autocross at Statesville Auto Auction
The 1st question, who is Andy Barbee? I am a CPA/consultant by day who has always dreamed of racing. When I was a teenager, I watched my dad’s neighbor (Steve Shelton) race in Formula Ford and Atlantic throughout tracks in Florida and went to see the SCCA Runoffs at Road Atlanta in the late 70’s.
With family obligations, kids, and financial constraints, I have never pursued the opportunity to race. The closest thing to racing is a monthly group of guys that race at Victory Lane Karting center in Charlotte (
Victory Lane Indoor Karting). Approaching my 45th birthday, I decided that I have to start somewhere.
My 18 year old daughter has a 2006 Scion tC that I bought from Scion of Concord (
Scion of Concord - Concord, NC New Scion Car Inventory - tC, xB, xD - Best Prices) and the local SCCA chapter (Central Carolina
CCR-SCCA) has regular Solo/Autocross events. Step 1 – find out what class the car fits into (H Stock Novice). Step 2 – figure out how to get registered and what I need at the event. The chapter website had all the answers for me. They even have a deal where you can get your first event registration for free if you become an SCCA member. Step 3 – get numbers and class letters for the car (I ordered mine at the local Signs Now for about $30). Step 4 – get the car (pictured below) prepared. For the first event, I ran the car exactly as it was, without any modifications, to see where it was at and then report later on the results of modifications. Step 4 – Wait for the day.
August 12th, 6:00 am, I awake and cleaned out the car as my 18 year old daughter left all of her stuff (clothes, shoes, books, etc.) in it, and got all my gear together (SCCA membership application, cooler with drinks & snacks, law chair, GoFastNews signs). I got the directions and headed for the Statesville Auto Auction. On the way, I stopped at the local gas station to add about 15 psi to the tires, as evidently this prevents soft passenger tires from rolling over onto the wheel under heavy cornering.
I arrived at the facility at approximately 7:45 am, and find a parking/pit spot, I happened to park next to a group from the Asheville area. I took everything out of the car, and I mean everything; spare tire, tool kit, floor mats, air freshener, and manuals from the glove box!
Then, I ask my first of many stupid questions of the day to Bill in the Subaru next to me (pictured below). Where is registration? Down near the Porto Potty! So I headed down to get registered. There was no wait at all, but when I got done there were about eight people behind me (I guess I am just slow). The young lady at registration was very helpful and tolerant of all my stupid questions! How do I know if my number is okay? Where is tech inspection? When do I get my SCCA membership information? You have helmets to borrow, how does that work, where do you get them?
So, I headed off to Tech Inspection. Bill told me to pull up, open the hood and the truck/hatch. Tech Inspection lasted all of 5 minutes and I was all set to go. I had planned to sit back and wait for the Drivers’ meeting at 9:30 am. But, that was not the case. Shane (another of the Asheville gang and pictured below) and Bill said I needed to go walk the course. I walked the course with Shane and the 100 or so other drivers. It appeared that everyone had a different approach. Some were walking fast through the course, almost as if driving it. Others would analyze each section to figure out how best to get through it, a couple drivers even took pictures as they went. Sincere thanks to Shane for walking me through the course and helping me with strategy, etc. We walked it together once, and then I walked it by myself. A word of caution, walk the course one more time as close to the start as possible. As it turned out, the course changed between my first two walks and the final walk before the drivers meeting.
At the drivers meeting, the emphasized safety, safety, safety! It was very comforting to hear all the focus on safety, which is especially important at this level. My Novice class was in the first run group so I was up first, the butterflies started immediately! I moved the tC over to the starting grid and parked next to a red Honda Civic who was also in the H Stock Novice class. The Go Karts did their four runs first (safety first, nothing moves while the karts are running) so initially it was a waiting game.
My turn was up , I headed from the grid down to the track, picked up a loaner helmet waited at the starting line (pictured below) for the Civic in front of me to get past the crossover point. My hands were shaking and that first run was very nerve wracking! As mentioned earlier, I added about 10 psi (I dropped it down by five because just driving from the gas station to the track it was tight) to the tires so they wouldn’t roll over on the rims, as most passenger tires are not setup for the stress that an autocross puts on them. As a result, adding the fact that the tC is front wheel drive, the car pushed like a dump truck! My tires squealed and my hands moving the steering wheel as fast as possible left, right, left, straight, left, right, hard left (u-turn), then into the slalom. My first run was a very slow 56.012 seconds. However, I was really just trying the course to see how the car handled.
It was back to the grid to figure out what to do next. I dropped about 5 psi from the tires as 10 over standard was way too much (the car was skating all over the place). Then it was time to go back out for the second run! This time, the plan was to take it deeper into the corners, get on the gas as early as possible, and stay on the gas a little longer. Someone at karting once told me that I should focus on making the course into a group of straights. I had figured out five straight to make the course into. The nerves were gone now. This strategy seemed to work well, but I accidently hit the windshield wipers in the middle of the run which really threw off my concentration. My time still dropped by 2.4 seconds to 53.605. Still slow, but improvement.
All the drivers around me were putting water on their tires, so I started asking questions. Evidently, with all the heat from the heavy driving, the tires get very hot so they used a garden sprayer to put water on the tires to cool them down. (Note to self: Add water sprayer to list of supplies for next event.) I dropped another two pounds of pressure out of the tires, just to see what would happen.
On the third run, I tried to get on the accelerator earlier and on the brake later. My lack of coordination showed as half way through, the windshield wipers are going again! This time, I was able to drop the time by another 1.1 seconds to 52.460. Still no cones knocked over or missed but maybe I was not driving the car hard enough.
While I waited for my next run, I talked to Scott in his 2006 Infinity G35. He was also relatively new and just moved from the Novice class into the Tire class (same as stock, but must use street legal tires). His advice was to get the car slowed down early before you start turning. If you are braking while turning, the tires will slide, which is exactly what I was experiencing. As Jack Cathey from the Karting league says, “sometimes you have to slow down to go fast.”
This time, I dropped another three psi out of the tires so they were just one pound above standard. I really focused on braking the car then turning in to hit the apex. This time, no wipers were harmed on the run! I dropped another 7/10ths of a second, down to 51.727. Thanks to Scott for the tip, I think it really helped me get that last bit out of the car at my first event.
I ended up fifth out of 7 cars in the novice class (for complete results
Final Results - CCR AX #6 Statesville Auto Auction - 2007-08-12). Considering that I ran the car exactly as my daughter uses it each day, and some of the cars in Novice class were running R Compound tires, I am satisfied with the initial results. I had an absolute blast driving the GoFastNews.com Scion tC!
The Continental Tire 24 hours, on September 1st at the Continental Tire plant just off I-77 in Charlotte is my next event. I want to take changes to the car slowly so I can see what effect they have. My first purchase will be new tires to improve grip. The old Potenza 92’s are very worn and needed replacing any way, so I’m off to shop for tires. I think the fact that the old Potenza’s are worn and they are 45’s means they didn’t need as much extra pressure. I will still try the new tires with extra air pressure, as I want to be very safe and check out the difference.
In the next installment, I will talk about what research I did before buying tires and what the results are!
Thanks to everyone I met at the event! Everyone was very patient and answered all my stupid questions without making me feel bad. It appears to be a great group of people and I look forward to meeting more of them!
Slowdown to GoFastNews.com,
Andy
PS - All the pictures are in my members gallery!