On grid during Round 2 of the '02 SFR Solo 2 season at 3COM. Of course, the weather wouldn't decide
between continuous rain or dry conditions, so traction wasn't very consistent throughout the day.
Except for one car, Corollas filled up FSP that day. Ut Chau wasn't there, so I was the only FWD
Corolla in FSP. But, if you saw how often my car's tail hung out, you'd say that it was a RWD'er. =)
And, yes, that's a Porsche 996 Turbo on the left of my car. You should see the size of the Hoosiers on that bad boy. =)
TJ managed to grab a shot of my car when the back end was sliding out to the right. =) That's a bunch of
tire smoke you see at the back end. If you look at the front wheel, you'll see that I'm in the middle
of countersteering to keep it in check. Oh, the joys of an oversteering FWD car...
A bunch of my friends were students as well as instructors at this year's autocross driving school. If
anything, the extended, continuous seat time was of immense help. This first pic is at the shutdown area
at the finish line. You can see a little bit of front end brake dive. I was prob'ly going around 35 mph
and the shutdown area was barely long enough to have to brake hard w/out locking up the wheels on some
cars. =)
I think this is at the RH medium speed sweeper before the finish line. I swear, I didn't DNF in
the long afternoon course! =) Notice how far ahead I'm looking--you should be doing the same. At the end
of the day, the instructors set up a long-ish course w/ an average time of in the 63-second range on race
tires.
After 5 complete runs, my fastest time was 67.7xx seconds on some tires I hadn't used in almost 2 years. Then, my buddy Randy (2001 Solo 2 Rookie of Year) got into the driver's seat and chopped off a good 2 seconds for a 65.xxx! Ouch! While he was driving, I made it a point to see where he was pushing harder than me... So what did I find out? I need to push harder all around AND know where to give it up and be more patient. I tried to mimic Randy's run as close as I possibly could and whittled my time down to a 66.3xx. It's still about 7 tenths off of Randy's time, but I was happy w/ the fairly large drop.
It's really nice to know that my car's capable of running competitive times. Unfortunately, I need to learn how to push my limits higher and learn how to trust the car for the last 5%.
The usual gaggle of Corollas at the San Francisco Region autox events. Going towards the left of my car is
Jeff, Herman, then Jojo's AE86s. Jojo's car was featured in the Dec '01 issue of GRM. The car directly behind
mine is Alan's Blue Bomber AE92 S/C sedan.
In the pit area at a Marina autox event. We barely made it in time to change wheels and prep the small things
on the car (like the strut valving, harness, etc.).
There's The Blue Bomber. You can also see Peter's Nerves of Teal SW21
in the background; I thought I framed the shot just right so that his car wouldn't be cut off. Doh.