My First Autocross, Part 2

I was more nervous than I ever expected to be. It wasn’t that I was afraid of wrecking my car or hurting myself. I thought I was going to embarrass myself. As I pulled up to the starting line, I desperately wanted my nerves to calm down so I could have fun.

After watching the first groups times I set a very conservative time goal for myself of one minute. I figured this was a time I could easily get as long as I kept the car on the course. After my first run I was very excited to see a 54.086. I was lucky enough to have driven the course with a much more experienced autocrosser and after my first run he gave me some pointers that I hadn’t seen in any of the “Beginners Guide to Autocross” articles.

In the grid between runs

First, he told me I was holding the wheel wrong. I was driving with my left hand on the wheel at 12 o’ clock, and my right hand on the shifter. He told me that having both hands on the wheel allows you to make much smoother turns and keeps your right hand from accidentally pulling the car out of gear. 

Next, he told me I was using the clutch way to much. A habit I carried over from street driving was pushing in the clutch as I starting braking for a corner, and letting it out when I was ready to accelerate out of the corner. He told me that once I shifted into second gear to put my left leg on the dead pedal and keep it there. 

The next run I tried to put his tips into practice. I have driven many miles on the street with one hand on the steering wheel, so during my second run I caught myself many times with a hand on the shifter, but as soon as I noticed I moved my hand back to the wheel. I didn’t really notice any extra smoothness in my turns from this, but like I said I wasn’t really doing it right the whole time and it was only my first time trying it. In the future I will work to get myself in the habit of keeping both hands on the wheel during an autocross.

The second tip was much easier to remember and I definitely felt an improvement. Leaving the clutch out and the gear engaged allows for some engine braking during the fraction of a second where your foot is moving from the gas pedal to the brake pedal. The obvious benefit from this is that the car starts slowing down sooner, but I think the less obvious, but greater benefit is that it adds some smoothness to your braking. As you begin to brake for a turn, the car is already slowing down because of the engine braking, so when you slam on the brakes it is a little smoother than if you had slammed on the breaks while the car was just coasting in neutral or with the clutch in. Another benefit of this technique is that on corner exit, you don’t have to worry about letting the clutch out. You just roll on the throttle and go. This made the car feel much more responsive, and I believe this is a large part of the reason I cut almost a second off my first time and turned a 53.338 on my second run.

My next four times were 51.510, 51.862, 50.436+1, and 50.545 which allowed me to finish third out of five in my class. I was 40th out of 47 overall, and almost 9 seconds off the fastest time of the day, but I am definitely happy with my performance. 

Next month I want to focus on improving my course walking to make them more valuable. I want to start thinking about where people could get lost on this course, and make sure it doesn’t happen to me. I don’t mean “Do I turn left or right up here?” lost, because I was able to memorize the course enough to know which way to turn. I mean “Is the gate between these two cones or these two cones?” lost. There was a particular gate on this last course where probably ten cars went off course, and I had my car pointed at the wrong set of cones for a short time on every run. Thankfully I didn’t go off course, but I’m sure it cost me a fraction of a second.

Another thing I want to look out for during the course walk are the difficult turns. I spent a lot of time memorizing the locations of the sharp turns – the tight 90 and 180 degree turns. That certainly helped me prepare for those turns, but I was caught off guard by a few turns that seemed very open on the course map and during my course walks. I could have easily cut at least .5 seconds off of my time if I could have remembered where one or two of these tricky turns on the course were in time to prepare for them.

I had a great time autocrossing. My nerves settled down after about the second run, and it was really the most fun I have ever had in a car. I have already ordered a helmet and signed up for the next autocross on June 13.

This is a two part post. If you missed part 1 be sure to go back and check it out. 

• My First Autocross, Part 1