der Bayerische July/August 2020 - 31

A U T O C R O S S

(Above) SoloStorm - note the accelerometer by the driver's shoulder and the lap map on the top right.

The Habits of Highly Effective Autocrossers
(and Track-Day Drivers): Habit Ten
By Jack Raymond

| Photos by Pat Gaffney (and from the Internet)

If you're like me, you can hardly wait until we're re-engaged in motorsports.
In preparation, let's recap the autocross tips and habits (in the order in which
you should apply them) from the last five articles before moving on:
* Tip: Leave the car unmodified; run what you brung.
* Tip: Go to an autocross school or two and as many events as you can.
- Focus on training the driver, training the driver, and training
the driver.
* Tip: Dial in your tire pressures by chalking the tops of the sidewalls and
experimenting with pressures, judging the results by how much chalk is
rubbed away and, more importantly, by your times on the course.
* Tip: If you're ready to seriously commit to autocross, acquire a set of
extreme-performance summer tires and a set of OEM-size, lighter-weight
wheels on which to put them. (www.tirerack.com is a good source.)
* Tip: Get a competition alignment with a little toe-out in front, and deadneutral toe in the rear (for front-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive cars) or half
the rear toe-in of the factory specification (for rear-wheel-drive cars). Set as
much negative camber as you can get with your stock suspension in front,
then match that in the rear.
* Tip: Arrive at your competition event with just ¼ tank of gas so as not to
carry excess weight.

July I August

Habit 1: LOOK AHEAD, THINK AHEAD
Keep looking and thinking about two seconds in front of the car during the
entire run.
* The car goes where the driver is looking.
* Position the car for what's coming up next.
Habit 2: ENTER WIDE, EXIT TIGHT
Almost all the critical turns in autocross demand a late apex.
* Corollary 2a: Think of the course as being a series of arcs, not a series of
line segments.
Track-day drivers - somewhere in the middle of each corner, on the
inside of your turn, is the apex. The inside apex is your friend. Enter the
corner wide, then drive to the inside curbing (no, don't smack it with your
tires, that'll unbalance the car) and just touch the inside apex with your tires.
Why? As you power out of the corner, lateral forces are going to push your
car to the outside of the turn. You need to take advantage of the track's full
width in order to have room to maximize your acceleration out of the turn. If
you reach the outside of the turn and need to ease off the gas in order to keep
from sliding off the track, then you apexed too early in the corner (you were
"pinched"); try apexing a little later in the corner, when the car's angle of

https://www.nccbmwcca.org/driving-events/autocross/ http://www.tirerack.com

der Bayerische July/August 2020

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