October 11, 2010 - The local Corvette club had an autocross yesterday.
I haven't run through the cones for a while, but it was just a few minutes from my house so I figured I'd go out and have some fun. Brandon brought out his bike-engined Seven so I had someone to play with.
The car is set up exactly the same way it was at High Plains Raceway. Heck, it hadn't even been out of the trailer yet. I did put a bit more pressure in the tires, as the cooler weather had dropped them down a few pounds. I also wanted higher pressure for the short autocross runs instead of 20-30 minute track sessions.
The car felt pretty good. The first run was a scrabble for traction, but this particular lot is always slippery at first due to a lot of dust. I softened up the shocks a bit (two clicks in front, one in the rear) to help it grip the rough surface and because it felt a bit too stiff to me anyhow, and that helped. The car would grip well at the front up to a certain point, but I still spent a fair bit of time trying to manage my front grip. A large part of that could have been my driving, as I suspect I was sawing away at the wheel too quickly and breaking traction. It's an easy bad habit to get into.
More interesting was the fact that I seemed to have too much front brake bias. Now, the lot was fairly slippery so that means less weight transfer and thus less (relative) front traction - but even with the rear brakes turned up all the way I couldn't get the back to rotate properly. I found the same thing the last time I was at our local track. I did recently replace the front pads, and I suspect the front brakes are simply working too well. I'll try swapping in some new rear pads and see if that solves things.
While I wasn't completely happy with my driving, the results were pretty good. Brandon walked away with the event because nothing can touch a Seven in the autocross, and we left before the final runs of the fastest drivers. But at that point, I was around 2.5 seconds ahead of the next car, giving me a solid second place. Can't complain there!
tags: autox, brakes |
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