Coming Clean

Remember last time we had an autocross with a view like this?

"It's gonna happen!"

When Tanya greeted me during the runs at the CSCC event past weekend, this sentence had become my almost constant reply. At an event series famous for its technical tight course, what I had expected to be a battle for low speed handling turned out to be a survival battle for a clean run.

This is the 2018 season opening of CSCC (Chuckanut Sports Car Club) autocross series. Normally located near Bellingham, this is an enjoyable series for its beautiful drive up north from Seattle, great seat time (12+ runs per day), ever changing and challenging course design, and very welcoming environment. We had a great time in the 2017 season and won the season championship in street touring class. It's time to start over.

The new event this year opened in the beautiful Mt. Baker ski resort. It's a parking lot at the White Salmon lodge. After about 90 minutes of scenic mountain drive from Bellingham, we arrived at this venue. Breath-taking view with the snow peak in the back drop and floating clouds. Course was already set up. Warm welcome from the registration and tech was a breeze.

From the get-go of the course walk, we realized today would be tough. The course featured very tight turns with very little room for error. There were a few short sections where the throttle could be opened up a little bit but overcoming the turbo lag wouldn't be easy. One of such sections was the ending "straight" right before the square-right turn box. Staying close to the cones as tight as possible, it may be possible to go through it with little or none steering input WOT, sort of. Another interesting section was the slalom with optional entry direction. It's a choice between a wide but longer sweeper entry following by two tight slalom turns, and an entry after a square left turn into two tightly-spaced cones followed by a longer and more open exit. During the morning runs, the car would understeer a lot at the slalom entry due to the sandy surface there, and as a result most people had chosen the wider entry, not purely by choice.

After walking the course a few more times during lunch time and watching the afternoon run-first group go where almost everyone switched to the tight-entry instead, it seems clear that it was a better option because car would just come out of a tight left turn before entering the slalom at low speed already, perfect for the tight slalom entry, whereas in the other option we need to slow down for the left turn, speed up for the first section of the slalom and then slow down again for the last two cones of the slalom, then speed up again and then slow down for the coming right turn. The key was to stay patient at the entry part. Very patient.

I finished the morning 7 runs with a good raw lap time 36.316, but all with cone penalties. And that's the popular topic of everyone's run too. We were joking that to win this event, all one needs is one clean run because everyone kept clipping cones over and over again. On a course at this length, saving 0.2 seconds during turns just won't make up for a 2-second per cone penalty. And this striving for a clean run became an obsessive nightmare in my afternoon section. With Joe's help letting me know the areas where I hit the cones, I was able to nail the cone-hitting one by one by making conscious mental picture of each cone that could be hit. Coming to run 11 I was still consistently hitting one cone each run even though the raw lap time had come down to 35.762. The desperation to have one clean run to place was real!! That's when I kept telling Tanya and myself "it's gonna happen". With all the effort and luck, the miracle run finally came by in run 12 with a lap time of 35.851, and boy was I thrilled. I think Josiah at the timing box could see me waving hands in celebration as I came through. It was a HUGE relief.

WaveSpec rotors in play

Notice that during this whole time I did not even bother to check other competitor's run time. It would have distracted me and I didn't really need that extra pressure when I was already fighting with myself. And it paid off! The day finished on run 15 ending with my best time of the day 35.172, also on par with Ian's 1st place time, placing me 2nd in C2 class out of 5, and 3rd overall out of 22. Although, seriously I was just happiest for that single clean run. The improvement from 36.xx to 35.xx came from the turn after the slalom. It's a middle length tight right turn. The camber makes it very easy to oversteering on lift. It felt great as a drift, but slow in time. Using the throttle to keep the momentum through the turn close to the cones without drama proved to be much faster. Another improvement came from finding the good shift point. To keep the boost, I ran most of the course in 1st gear, and shifted to 2nd right before the "straight" at the end. The yellow civic was doing the same. Car was hitting 16psi. Still not close to the peak but much more quick and available torque through the course.

In conclusion, it was a fun day. With a heavier car like the STI on such tight course, it takes a lot of mental power to work out the strategies and execution plan. I was exhausted after the event although with much high confidence for low speed corners. It will come useful in later events and it's now time to prepare for the coming rallycross at spirt peaks. Autocross is a fun game if you can win over yourself.

Hats off to the organizer and volunteers for the event, and thanks Josiah for the rides. As I mentioned earlier, this is a great event series with plenty of seat time (15 runs for this time with fun runs), challenging courses, and very welcoming people (novice and first-timer discount available too). Cannot really beat that for $40 a day. Even the drive up the snow peak is well-worth it already. We were also testing WaveSpec rotors in the rear only too. The front is making lots of noise (as you'll hear in the video down below), and will be replaced with WaveSpec soon.

Event Info:

• Event: Mt. Baker Double Header Event #2

• Result: https://scorekeeper.wwscc.org/results/cscc2018/event/26794282-508b-11e8-885f-0242ac120002/tt?counted=0

• Runs: 15 (!!!)

• Lap time: 35-40 seconds

• Distance to Seattle: ~2.5 hours

• Cost: $40

• Placement: 2nd in class, 3rd overall

Video: