After autocrossing my car for the last 3 seasons I took some time to try out a few other cars and collect on some IOU's from allowing friends to drive my car. I've drove a vette, couple other s2000s (prepped for both RTR and STR), drove a shifter kart at a friends house (fell in love but me can't run them at 15/20 of the local races), and I also drove a STS CRX. I've got comfortable driving the S2K and maybe a hair bored at times. I have this urge to go faster but the only way to go faster is to spend $$$$ and mod the S2000 into another class or buy a second toy such as a kart but thats not really a smart idea since I can't run it much locally. The plan is to race another season or two in STR, work on my driving skills and try to win some trophies in my high mileage ap1. (highly unlikely, wont go into) Then move up to BSP and have some fun going faster then I am already even though it's alot of $$$$$. In BSP I can get rid of the "ths car is better then the other" by the UDBD rule.

Long story short I ran STS the other day. It was my first time ever driving/racing a front wheel drive car in my life and I got beat by .5 seconds on a 35 second course! The first 4/6 runs I ran within .003 of the owner and the other STS car. Although on run 5 and 6 he figured out something I didn't. As for the reason of this thread. Could someone please analize what I did wrong relative to the owner so that I can know where to improve? To me I thought my line looked good, braking in a non-abs car is weird and may of left time there but I'd rather one of you pros to look over it.

Also anyone thats willing to download and sync theses to runs side by side and email it back to me I'd be very appreciative. I don't know how to do it!

Please no flaming! I'm just looking for analizing help, thats it. Just trying to improve as a driver and fixing and knowing where you made mistakes is the only way to do that.

ME-
https://vimeo.com/53764586

Shawn-
https://vimeo.com/53764585

 

You coasted into elements. brake more deliberately and sooner, then get back on the gas as/after you set up for the turn. Depending on how well the car is setup for trailbraking, you can whip those f@#kers into a frenzy and do 90% of your rotation on entry.

You gave those cones their own area code. get on them.
Your line was way too swoopy. You gave up a bunch on distance.

Your co-driver was more agressive, but gave up a bunch on the deep right hander, and that turned into more mistakes for the next few elements after.

 

Thanks for the input! I would like to believe I drive my S2000 1000x better. Never felt comfortable in the CRX.

 

Camera that filmed that?

 

Gopro hero mounted to the top of the car via a suction mount. I'm excited to see the new black edition gopro recorded in 1080p at 60 fps. It should look amazing!

 

I started running fwd for the first time this year, loved it but still haven't fully adapted to it. The hardest part for me is getting use to giving it throttle during oversteer. All my instincts from over the years won't let me do it!

How prepped is the STS car you drove?

 

Basicly fully prepped but it was prepped by a local that doesn't run nationals. He changed the alignment before this race and changed rear bar settings. So I'm not sure if the car was ideal or not.

The loose, laggy steering, the none abs brakes, and the whole front wheels pulling was really weird to me. I was scared to go to deep into corners on throttle because of the brakes. If I went in and hit them to early then I spent to long braking, if I went in to hot and broke deep they locked up and the car just understeered into the entry. In the s2000 I can just do a quick jab late into a corner and scrub off all the speed I need. I never felt confident to push the limits like I can in my/any S2000.

I love driving the S2000 so much more!

I really want to see side by side video in slow-mo but I don't know how to do it. Lol

 

Wait.. you don't apply throttle when you get loose on the s2k? My instinct is to breathe on the gas to shift the weight to the rear. Am I doing it wrong?

 

It's not been my habit in autocross, no. But maybe I'm the one doing it wrong?

With FWD in my experience you can really nail the throttle when it gets loose to pull you out of it, it's just been a tough habit to get into.

 

I've autocrossed a lot of cars, and the S2000 is possibly the most fun of the bunch (the other candidate being the Elise). It's a personal preference thing to some extent, but I find FWD cars a lot less fun to drive, especially in autocross which exacerbates their natural tendency to understeer.

The right response to oversteer in a RWD car is to modulate the throttle, but as Birdshot pointed out, the right response in a FWD car is to get on the gas hard and let the car pull itself out of the slide.