Winter auto-x was solid. Andrew’s driving has come a long way… and he made me really worried. I think he even beat me in the morning. No disrespect to Andrew… but there’s just a huge advantage that comes with all my extra experience, and even though I’m using his daily driver, I feel like I shouldn’t have any problems putting a better time down.
False.
Given that neither of us have done anything competitive in motorsports for almost a year… it was challenge enough just to get into the mindset of going fast. Walking the course seemed more like routine than something useful in the end. We just couldn’t think about the typical dilemmas faced at auto-x. Some guys will say… “competition… at winter auto-x?”
I think… don’t doubt it. I mean… There’s about 20 cars in the AWD class. All of them are running pretty much the same rubber. Pretty much all of them make the same amount of power… they’re all pretty much the same car. LEGACY, Impreza 2.5RS, or WRX… plus the odd Talon Turbo or Audi. Now… maybe I just don’t understand what makes a car fast on the snow and gravel… but minus the amount of power they have… all the cars seem even-ish to me…
And the guy with the least power took FTD yesterday…
But only because I gave up and had fun for my last run. I’m telling you… with four of five runs done… I had a solid two second lead on everybody with an 89.1second time. Andrew was an 89.6. I watched some of the other guys who had been fast in the morning before I took my last run, saw them all in the 91.X range, congratulated myself, and went out on my fifth run without any thought at all.
Ended up pushing to hard and coming back with an 89.7. Whatever…
… except Phillip ran an 89.0 right in front of me.
Oops…
Which… puts this realization into my head right now… about winter auto-x. Maybe it’s just my driving skill… but every run looks different. The course is CHANGING all the time, and there is a A LOT less margin for error. Summer time, except for the occasional puddle, and the swept area of the track everything looks pretty much the same. Winter auto-x… you get off line, brake too late, accelerate to early, you end up in the deepest nastiest stuff ever. Six inches off your line of hardpacked snow, or gravel could be a couple feet of snow. The run before you, someone could have pushed a bunch of that snow into an area that was clear the last time you were on course. Maybe the purists don’t like that fact… but… for me… it’s fun and challenging.
Plus… there’s just something so practical about a car that can hold it’s own at the auto-x. Not like your Miata on 275’s with 800lb springs… marvel of engineering or not…