Hey guys, I attended my first autox a few months back and had a blast! While I have attended other HPDE's at actual tracks it was actually extremely difficult to adapt to how quick the turns come at you and how you should be thinking on how to place the car 2 turns ahead. It was an "autox school" hosted by the scca, we had two grids and one course. The first grid ran one section of the course while the other ran the second half, we later switched courses and ran the second half after lunch. At the end of the day they combined both segments into one giant course. Everything was well planned and my instructor was extremely informative in what I should be doing. With all that being said Id like your guys opinion and criticism on what else to improve on when I attend another autox event. I had trouble keeping heat in the tires after the run as it was a very cold day, it had also began to sprinkle on the ground during this run. I am on continental extreme contact DW tires and while these tires are amazing in the rain I feel they are not up to par grip wise when it comes to harder driving, my next set will either be the Dunlop Z2 or the Bridgestone RE11A's. I had my instructor drive my car and it was unbelievable how much quicker he was without even trying, he commented how "neutral" it felt afterwards (feels like an oversteering beast to me lol), but also mentioned that I should practice keeping my foot on the gas during turn in and to be extremely gentle getting off the brake and getting on the gas etc.

At the end of the day I was dumbfounded as to how hard it was lol. With that being said I cannot wait till the next event, Im trying to convince myself to wear these continentals out (about 75% left on the rears/90% in the fronts) so I can justify new tires but I dont think I can justify having another set of wheels to take up more garage space etc. Well, heres the vid!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP5wJ...ature=youtu.be

 

not bad your first time out......I dnf'd all my runs my first time out and didnt return for a few events lol.
3 years later, I havent missed an event.

As far as pointers,....its hard to pin point it unless I go back and tell you exactly wear it was on the course but there are lots of places you should be on the throttle and you are not. The car can handle A LOT more than you were throwing at it there so just continue to push the limit. Get out there and feel what its like to enter a corner too fast and have the front end plow(understeer) and then go out and see how fast you can take a corner and spin it out just to see how it feels.
That is how you will get faster, you need to cross that barrier and then realize how to stay just before it.
Also, that downshift into 1st at the end,..not needed. It was slower than just staying in 2nd. I rarely ever go back to first once I get out, only once out of probably 30 events or so have I ever needed to downshift to 1st and it was a 180 degree turn around a cone to go back and run the section I had just ran backwards.

 

im still learning as well, but work on looking ahead first. im sure they emphasized that. just attend a few more events so that you can get used to the cones and the rapid changes. and just keep an eye on your tires pressures. walk the course at least 3 times and at the next event see if you can have someone drive the car for you or get a ride along with an instructor. i was too scared to see how far the car can go, i gave a local hot shoe a turn at the wheel and it instantly opened up my eyes and i got faster. its hard to go to the limit if you dont know how far it is till you go over the edge. it will help you build more confidence in the car.

 

id disagree with not moving the hands, and in most cases you will def need more steering input that what 9 and 3 will give you. it vastly improved my times after i started learning how to shuffle the wheel.

 

It depends on the radius of the turn. At an autox, the radius is so short that a shuffle is necessary. Atleast IMO, shuffling your hands is better than having your arms crossed up.

 

Makes sense. I haven't done an auto x since my first track day. I should try it out now.

 

Ill read up more on some hand shuffling then, thanks!

 

A good way to think of hand shuffling for tight corners like that is "pre-shuffling" your hands before turn-in. So if it is a tight 180 degree right hand hairpin and your hands are at 9 and 3 normally, shuffle to 7 and 1 before turning in so you can get a lot of steering angle without completely crossing up your arms.

You want to always avoid doing what you were doing at 0:17 with both hands close to each other on one side of the wheel.

 

Actually I think his hand positioning was close to very good, other than probably want to move your hands down a bit to more of a 9 and 3 on a clock as opposed to what you have which is like a 10 and 2. And it seems like you have a death grip on the wheel, I'd relax that a bit.

There are really two different effective techniques for steering.

One is to keep your hands at 9 and 3 as much as possible, pretty much for any turn where you turn the wheel less than maybe 150-170 degrees just leave your hand on there. You can pull your inside hand off if you're turning a bit more than 90 degrees. Where the inside hand ends up doesn't really matter, you're using your outside hand to turn (so I disagree with the previous poster that what happened at 0:17 was really a problem). If you need to turn 180-270 degrees or so, then preshuffle once like andre said. If you need to turn more than 270 degrees, then shuffle once or twice maximum during the turn. If you shuffle at all then as you're unwinding when you're around the 90 degree point or wherever is natural for you use your outside hand to feel out where the 9:00 position is again on the wheel (where the spoke is) and put it there so that you know exactly where straight ahead is without looking at the wheel and continue to unwind using that hand.

This is what I do. It sounds more complicated than it is and you're already very close to doing it. The advantages of it are it really helps ingrain into your muscle memory how much to turn, and makes it much easier to be smooth, and if you have to make a quick correction you know exactly where the wheel is without looking at it.

This is the method that seems more natural to you, so...I'd just keep doing it but work on tweaking it a little like I said.

Here's a video of me at the DC ProSolo to demonstrate generally what I'm talking about. Note the reason I picked this event is because it had some super tight turns in it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOcOehiiKEI

The other technique is shuffling for most turns, where your hands generally stay in the same position but the wheel is shuffled continually. This is much harder to do smoothly and you will find very few top level autocrossers who successfully shuffle most of the time while steering, although there are a few that manage it. The plus side of that is it's harder to get crossed up.

Ultimately do what works for you, and realize that many people have slightly different steering techniques. For example from his post it sounds like andrewhake and I are probably similar except he's more careful about his inside hand. I don't find that to be necessary. Little stuff like that you have to take with a grain of salt when people are critiquing this kind of thing.

 

Post deleted. I was wrong about the steering. Lol

For what it's worth here's an old example of me shuffling like a maniac!

http://youtu.be/r9WAevH7SgI