Coldiron
New Member
Posts:39
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| 01 Apr 2012 06:02 PM |
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Great event guys. This was my first autox here, and though it was a huge line to get signed up it all seemed well setup and smooth. I loved the course too. I just need more seat time. I saw someone shooting pics with an SLR by the grid, anyone know if those will get posted online? |
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Qwikcodrive
Basic Member
Posts:174
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| 01 Apr 2012 09:19 PM |
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Ditto! Great First event! Way to go for everyone involved in putting on, and keeping it going.
One of the longest StLSolo days in memory and one of the best.
I worked waivers 2nd heat and was surprised at the number of random spectators.
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Seth #3
Basic Member
Posts:226
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| 01 Apr 2012 09:40 PM |
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Good first event. Lots of people and long lines. Simple course and lots of runs. Couple things need to be tweaked, but a solid start to the season. |
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mr_durdan
Basic Member
Posts:129
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| 01 Apr 2012 09:48 PM |
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I had a great time as well. I will admit to being very frustrated at first with the whole registration process, but I enjoyed getting 5 runs in and meeting a lot of new people. Great job! |
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sgreer78
Advanced Member
Posts:536
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| 01 Apr 2012 09:51 PM |
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I liked everything but the heat, and being there 12 hours... It wasn't even that hot, but me and heat aren't friends regardless how hot it actually is. |
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| I have no car. |
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phardy
New Member
Posts:35
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| 01 Apr 2012 10:29 PM |
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sgreer78 wrote:
I liked everything but the heat, and being there 12 hours... It wasn't even that hot, but me and heat aren't friends regardless how hot it actually is.
Yeah, if we could arrange for some cooler weather next time that would be great.
Getting 5 runs with 162 or whatever drivers was quite an accomplishment. I felt that I drove pretty well and had a great time. |
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Bsimmons
New Member
Posts:
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| 01 Apr 2012 11:27 PM |
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I had a blast, will definatly be at the next one. |
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mr_durdan
Basic Member
Posts:129
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| 02 Apr 2012 12:00 AM |
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Here's a little video I made of my fastest run of the day.
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TWN SCW
New Member
Posts:
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| 02 Apr 2012 12:00 AM |
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Coldiron wrote:Great event guys. This was my first autox here, and though it was a huge line to get signed up it all seemed well setup and smooth. I loved the course too. I just need more seat time. I saw someone shooting pics with an SLR by the grid, anyone know if those will get posted online? Possibly me - though there were a couple other cameras around. I made another thread for pictures with a link to an album. There should be some of your car in there. |
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Richbot
Basic Member
Posts:284
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| 02 Apr 2012 09:19 AM |
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One of my favorite Gateway courses ever, it drove a bunch faster than it walked.
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Andy Hohl
Advanced Member
Posts:915
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| 02 Apr 2012 10:06 AM |
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Seth #3 wrote:
Simple course
I would agree it seemed easy on first glance, but to run quick was not simple in my opinion. I thought yesterdays course was a great teaching/competeing course. In working with Carla, we found elements that highlighted patience ( the whole front section and especially the 180 leading into the walloms), line choice ( slalom headed towards bus/grid) and two high speed key cones ( last pointer around tower to slalom and pointer between walloms and finish slalom) and a lot of places that rewarded good pedal/wheel control.
When I had a chance to drive Carla's Corvette, the 2 high speed key cones were very much a high risk/high reward element in that car and great National level preparation. On my 38.249 I did try to run over those 2 cones so I could hit my marks, I wish we would've had cameras on the outsides of the car to see how close I got to that goal. : ) I know we have seen basic iterations of this course before, but with what Carla and I were working on yesterday it worked great in my opinion.
See you all in 2 weeks. |
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| Andy Hohl
Evolution Performance Driving School |
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Richbot
Basic Member
Posts:284
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| 02 Apr 2012 10:58 AM |
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Agree with Andy, it was simple on paper but executing well in the fast parts was worth multiple tenths, and missing cones at the beginning was an exercise in throttle control, very cool. I liked that there weren't any 6+ cone slaloms that end up with 25% of the field in a tank-slapper at the end. I didn't think the slaloms drove like slaloms in a traditional sense, more like chicanes |
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Adam303
Basic Member
Posts:443
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| 02 Apr 2012 11:39 AM |
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Definitely a fun course with some fun elements. The 90 degree turn before the wallom was definitely trickier than I had anticipated. I completely overshot my intended line on the first run and had to take the wallom on the wrong side. |
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Andy Hohl
Advanced Member
Posts:915
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| 02 Apr 2012 11:45 AM |
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Adam,
You weren't alone. I think a lot of people missed that you were brakng ever so slightly up hill for a bit then crested the uphill spot as you were finishing braking/intiating the turn. |
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| Andy Hohl
Evolution Performance Driving School |
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John P
Basic Member
Posts:491
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| 02 Apr 2012 11:46 AM |
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Pre-reg if you can! It helps get the event going (though I doubt we will have close to 70 walk-ups again). Normally we get about 20-30 walk-ups. But do agree the lines we crazy long at times and a couple bugs with the new timing software, loosing a laptop due to network issue, all added to delays in registration and 1st/2nd heat timing. We'll get this sorted out asap.
Anyway, I had a great time and it was near perfect weather for Auto-X. To be honest, I thought it would be freezing cold for the 1st event.... (didn't we have freezing rain/snow last year at an event in Apr?)
The course was a blast to drive in Mike's M3 - thanks again Mike. That car was so well balanced it was easy to take to and get comfortable. By my 5th run I was ready to thrash it though the course with no worries, great job on the setup.
Agree with Andy and Rich about the course, I thought it walked very easy - but on course several areas surprised me. The first part of the course up to the turnaround out toward the tower, if you nailed the exit of the first right hander into the 1st slalom - it was easy to get behind in the slalom, ruining your line into the left hand turnaround. The position of the 3 cone gate right after the high speed left (right before the 2nd slalom) was perfect. If you nailed it, you we right on top of those 3 cones; sliding right up to them, on street tires anyway. The you have to come to a stop for the near 180 to get on the inside of the first wallom, and just a dab on the brakes to get around the last high speed pointer into the final high-speed slalom. It was very easy to not brake enough into the 180 and to brake too much going into the last slalom. |
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Coldiron
New Member
Posts:39
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| 02 Apr 2012 11:57 AM |
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The course was great, I really like how the lanes are traced with the white lines. It made it easier to focus on how to approach the turn instead of, where is the turn. I still kept running into the slaloms from the wrong point which hurt my exits. I think with some more seat time and a few tweaks I can put down some better times. |
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Lethal_427
Basic Member
Posts:353
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| 02 Apr 2012 03:42 PM |
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I also enjoyed the event and thought the course was challenging yet simplistic in design. With driving a completely new car, I really found out quick what I need to work on to be faster through a course of that nature.
It was definitely a little crazy yesterday with the huge attendance, but I think the region did a great job handling all the challenges that were thrown at them yesterday!
I left around 3:30 pm yesterday, about what time did heat 3 finish up? |
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| 17 TDS - 2011 Subaru WRX - 2013 STL Solo Chief of Registration |
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Andy Hohl
Advanced Member
Posts:915
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| 02 Apr 2012 05:54 PM |
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John P wrote:
The position of the 3 cone gate right after the high speed left (right before the 2nd slalom) was perfect. If you nailed it, you we right on top of those 3 cones; sliding right up to them, on street tires anyway.
I forgot how Carla described it when we did it right, but it had me laughing. The trick is to slither, not slide. : ) Slithering is faster. ; ) |
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| Andy Hohl
Evolution Performance Driving School |
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mr_durdan
Basic Member
Posts:129
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| 02 Apr 2012 10:37 PM |
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Lethal_427 wrote:
It was definitely a little crazy yesterday with the huge attendance, but I think the region did a great job handling all the challenges that were thrown at them yesterday!
I left around 3:30 pm yesterday, about what time did heat 3 finish up?
I got there early (6:58am) because I thought with the idea of more seat time they would want everybody showing up a little bit earlier than last year. I tried to register at 7:00am, but was told that registration wouldn't open til 7:30am. Normally I wouldn't have this problem though because I usually pre-reg online. The second problem I noticed was that the "driver's meeting" flyer, that was handed out at the waivers station, said that registration was to be held at the white trailer behind the bus. It didn't mention anything about going to the white tent first to receive your tech card. To my knowledge, the white tent was for new and weekend memberships when it was used last year. So I spent 20 minutes in the registration line just to be told to go to the white tent first (even though I'm already a yearly member and I figured I just needed to pay my money and register). I then spent 15 minutes in that line followed up by 1 hour back in the registration line. So you can see how I must have felt by then. My whole plan of getting there early had completely backfired. I figure this is just a 1st event hiccup, but I worry about the sour taste it might have left in some new peoples' mouthes.
JJ, 3rd heat finished up around 5:30pm and I got out of there around 6:00pm. |
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Bsimmons
New Member
Posts:
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| 02 Apr 2012 11:17 PM |
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Like i have previously said, I had a blast. Definately a big diffrence from Rally X what I did last last year and did well at. I gotta learn to drive more technical and not go so hard. |
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