My '89 Acura Integra rolled over to 230,000 miles exactly when I pulled up into the staging area right before my first pass. My thoughts? "My car has 230 thousand miles on it now. Let's go beat on it." You can't say that about many brands other then Honda, and I'm a DSM guy. [For the rare few that don't know, Honda owns Acura]. [I am dead serious, the car really did hit 230k then, total coincidence. Brings new meaning to the statement "Real life is stranger then fiction."]
*ahem*
Right, details. This is a video of my laps/runs/passes at:
SCCA Autocross event in Verona, Virginia on 03-22-2009.
For those not familiar: Sports Car Club of America [SCCA]:
http://www.scca.com/
This event is in SCCA's "Blue Ridge Region" [BRR]:
http://www.brr-scca.org/
I was in ST [Stock Touring] class.
With the timeframe we had, everyone actually got 5 passes apiece - a generous number for this type of thing [at the Nationals, I'm told you only get 2 or 3]
There was a LOT of pebbles and gravel on the track that day, and a LOT of people were having a hard time with it. The was a nice, large, convenient patch halfway around the wide, sweeping U-turn at the end of the big straightaway, the first time you get to the far end of the big section of the parking lot. You'll notice that twice my tail came out there, and I saw the same thing happen to several other people. Other then that, it was a fun course.
The Cold Air Intake that was on the car when I bought it [which is also the only performance mod] unfortunately stuck me into the "Stock Touring" [ST] class, instead of the completely stock class [I believe it would have been one of the Super Stock [SS] classes, I'm not extremely familiar with SCCA's classes yet]. Anyway, the point is I was stuck with a lot stiffer competition. I was also running on Street tires - some decent tires on the front, and old ridiculously high-mileage [read: hard] tires on the back that were on the car when I bought it, and even now after 20-30k miles that I've driven the car, PLUS 3 or 4 autocrosses, still barely show signs of wear and have almost full tread depth left. The point being, not the soft and sticky competition tires that everyone else in the class was running - as should be expected. I think I did about as good as the car was capable of - epically with those tires - but was unexpectedly last place for my class. The saying is usually that competition tires usually shave about two seconds off of your lap time - which is an eternity in these sorts of things. I'm not complaining - it was TONS of fun, which was the reason I do it in the first place - but it does make me wonder if I would have been competitive with the same level of tires as everyone else. Oh well, I may get to find out some day, but I can't afford to just do out and buy a set a high-dollar tires to use them up in just a few autocross events.
Anyway, if I can find my times for my passes, I'll add them. I'm not 100% I still have them.
But, in short, my first 4 passes I was being careful to NOT hit any cones, not take any chances, etc., and did quite well at that. No cones, and each pass was faster then the previous one. My 3rd and 4th were pretty close, I could tell that was about the best I was going to do while being careful. So, I went all -out on my last pass - and proceeded to eat a cone right at the start, after the first short straightaway. Too bad too, because the rest of that pass was VERY solid, I think I shaved something like another second off my time [which didn't help; hitting a cone adds +2 seconds apiece to your time].
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I was originally intending to Autocross my Eagle Talon this day; I took it to the practice the day before [a.k.a. "test & tune"]. I was delivering Pizza at that time, and I had to work that night. Unfortunately, I had a little mishap that night [only partially my fault] where I ran over a curb at VERY low speeds - and busted a tire, bent a rim and pulled the exhaust apart at a clamp. Thankfully, no damage was done to the engine or suspension, thanks to my skidplate. Even so, it was obviously not going to get fixed in 12 hours, to be ready to go the next day. So, I ended up taking the Integra. It was still lots of fun, but really annoying because I REALLLY wanted to get some video footage of the Talon in action; I didn't take anyone with me to film the first day [when I actually USED the Talon] because I planned to take it the next day, to the actual event, and I had someone coming then [I didn't have a tripod at the time, and didn't want to just leave the camera laying around for an hour].
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Nissan GTR does SCCA autocross!by wdtiger5,544 views
@duinthadope420 GOODNESS yes. If there's one thing about this it is that it is MUCH, MUCH more fun then it looks - and it looks like fun ;) Thanks for the comment!
I _hope_ to have time & money to go autocrossing a few times this year once I'm finished with school in a few months, but we'll have to see how it goes. My talon's running decent at least, so hopefully I'll be able to go a time or two in that - and actually get footage this time!
DreamFanFilms 16 hours ago
Don't be so hard on your skills. That looked fun.
duinthadope420 1 day ago