| | I went to my first autocross event on Sunday with my friends D & R. It was a blast!
First off, the makeup of the contestants was interesting. There were a couple rare cars: an Elise, a 1960's AC Cobra, and a Caterham. Then you had respectable, contemporary cars like 911's, WRX's, EVo's, RX8's, BMW's, and a VW R32. There were heavily modified cars--a slew of Civic Hatchbacks from the late 80's, CRX's, a Porsche 935 (think Jazz from transformers). Lastly, you had flat-outridiculous cars like a 1970's Toyota Starberk (sp?), stock Mustangs, a dodge Neon, and, most infamous of all, the 1990's era Camy so popular among Bay Area Asian mother. It was just a lot of fun seeing all these very different kind of cars doing laps on the same track.
Secondly, the people are there are pretty cool. Everybody was around my age or older, generally sensible, and pretty good drivers. My friend D is a pretty good driver and he had one of the slowest lap times Granted, that was because his rear tires were failing but I don't think he'd have eked out better than a 72s lap time which still be on the slow end of the distribution. Just to give you an example, the Camry and the Starberk both lapped ~68s.
Most surprising car for me was the RX8. All 3 8's posted good times, one posted a top 5, maybe even top 3 time. Fastest time for the day was 64s, set by the Porsche 935 (which was modified like f*ck. Thing was louder than an airplane). The GT3 followed and then either a Miata or the 8. Go Mazda! The Lotus and Caterham did decent but not as well as I'd hoped. I think it was the drivers.
I didn't get to race. I didn't have a helmet and, b/c my new ECU and boost controller are not installed, so I blew an inlet line into my intercooler. It was a cheap fix (free! haha) but I had to wait til Monday for the replacement part. I'm definitely going again, though. $50 for a day of fun.
I'll post pics of the race and of my FD soon. Just got my 99 spec bumper and wing installed. After I replace the ecu and boost controller, I'm pretty much done. New engine, new turbos, new suspension, new brakes, RE-11 tires, and an updated, modern body. All told, I've probably sunk $30k into this car which is about what I expected. Took longer than I thought but I'm way more happy with it than with any other car I would have got with the same price. Watching the $30k luxury sports cars and the Rx8's run at the track reinforced that. BMW's were D class cars, 8's were B class. FD's are SS class, meaning I'm grouped with Lotuses and C06 vettes and 911 GT3's. Winning that division may be unrealistic, but I think the categorizations tell a lot about what the car is capable of.
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| | Posted 6/10/2009 1:18 AM - 19 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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