auto crossing will help develop reaction skills and some car control. It will not provide real time speed and control that is needed or required on the track.

That is like telling a 16 year old that just got his license to take a few laps around the parking lot before you hit the freeway at 9am in the morning when traffic speed is back up around or above the legal limit.

auto cross is about 30-40% of the speed and control that is used on the track.

example this really applied to my experience playing sports, baseball, basket ball, football. Here is goes, when the coach said hey do this drill at 1/2 speed or at 1/2 the normal rate of movement, so that you can learn how to do this manuever or drill that will be used in the game. Auto-x is exactly that, it is like being at 1/2 speed while learning. Once on the track you will have to learn how to do the "drill" when it counts at 100% at a 100% of the time. Other wise you may hurt, kill yourself or other people. Auto-x and track have similar learning charateristics but are NOT the same. Some basic car control skills and becoming familiar with the car can be learned at auto-x's.

I base this on my personal feelings of a novice track driver and a very well accomlished auto-x driver(my experience being less than 1 year).

 

Whether you choose to auto-x or track, you'll learn a lot. Neither one of them is a good substitute for the other or in this case, neither one of them are a replacement for the other.

The most important thing you should learn IMHO is about yourself as a driver. How you drive on a track at very high speeds versus the slower, winding, technical course found during autocross differs a lot, but a lot of the basic fundementals of both still apply, but at differing degrees. You'll also encounter certain unique problems that you won't find in the other.

In Hawaii/Oahu, (assuming a stock S2000) if you track your car 3 laps at your best, your brakes will get incredibly hot resulting in major brake fade caused by the brake fluid boiling over, and the tires will get very greasy. You won't see much of this during autocross... well the tires will get greasy if pushed hard enough.

[QUOTE][I]Originally posted by CMiS2K

 

Too late! Mission accomplished!

 

Muahahahaha!

Listen, hirev, you better sit down in a quiet room and do a little introspection after making a comment like you did. Forgetting the ludicrous insult to Marcus for a moment, consider this: if you're on the road swerving, fishtailing, and blowing around obstacles, then DAYUM man.... That is NOT good behavior, and you are likely to end up with the Darwin Award!

Before you make yourself a statistic, take a deep breath and reconsider your behavior.

I grew up where you live, dude, and there aren't a lot of roads around where you're going to be safe exercising the S2000. Please, trust me on that.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by CMiS2K
[B]auto crossing will help develop reaction skills and some car control. It will not provide real time speed and control that is needed or required on the track.

 

i can't believe this. no one here can honestly say they follow those little yellow signs that warn you how fast you should go around a turn. and not everyone is as perfect as god boy 3ngin33r1 is.

our car is made to handle turns much better than most other cars. i'm not talking about drifting around every turn, but it's alright to go fast around them once in a while.

So xviper, smoke some , chill out, and learn to take a in joke.

 

God boy? What exactly is that supposed to mean? When did I ever indicate that I do not drive my car?

My point was, if you're going to let your 17 year old son drive it and you're worried about the outcome of his high speed driving, teach him to do it at the track properly, not on a road populated with soccer moms and great-grandmas where someone else can get killed. Is the car designed to handle high speeds, you bet, is it designed to handle an old guy in a Buick that pulls out in front of while you're going 100 MPH, nope. You cannot control other drivers on the road. If you're in an area where no one lives and no one is on the road, open it up. If you're on a freeway off ramp, it's a bad move.

 

Um... dont drift. It's not the fastest way to turn (otherwise Formula 1 and other racing classes would use it.

Ok I take it back; it CAN be faster for very specific turns. Regardless; leave even attempting drifting on track.

Also VERY IMPORTANT NOTE s2000's are good cars but not THAT good at drifting. If you look around you'll find a s2000 that was drifting and his passenger side tires bent into the car/under the car.

My advice if you want to have fun in turns, on dry pavement you can go 10-15 mph above the recommended speed.

I've taken turns too hard a few times and powerslid through them, it's NOT something I want to ever do again.

The s2000 (perhaps because of me as driver?) fish tails at the end of a powerslide when you are trying to regain control and go straight. Very high chance of losing control, again something I dont want to try again.

Just enjoy the car and drive. Don't try anything stupid outside of a track. It's a good car, but it's not unbreakable.

 

To completely show my ignorance here, can someone tell me what an autocross event is? I do not know the difference between it and the track experience. I really appreciate the comments on Willow Springs and the Autocross. Now I just have to decide which one to do first.

Bob

 

Autocross is when they set up cones in a big parking lot to simulate a very tight road course. You do runs that take about a minute +/-. Because the course is much tighter than a racetrack the speeds are slower. That's why some people are thinking it's a good starting point. I haven't done autocross but I've heard it's very helpful for learning car control. The downside to autocross is you do a limited number of runs in a day so your total seat time is limited to a few minutes versus a couple of hours at track events.