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Third Autocross: My first parking lot autocross.

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 On September 22 2024, I had my first parking lot autocross, and it was a great experience. I was a little nervous coming into it because I had never driven a cones-only autocross, and this added a new layer of complexity. Racing on a kart track like Daytona allows you to memorize the corners and the racing line by navigating inside the tarmac. Cones have infinite lines. Since all of my racing experience has been in actual tracks, this was completely new. It was a lot more demanding than expected, but luckily I made it through. Tracking cones is a lot more demanding than I expected, and at least for now, my brain isn’t fast enough for me to think about the line and also look at other sources of feedback, but I am sure as I get more experienced I will get better at this. This race was the debut of the ApexPro data system. I would love to say that it was a spotless debut, but it wasn’t. I had a lot of trouble getting the video and the data to work at the same time. This meant that I had
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Data-Driven: Unlocking Speed Through Analysis

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  In the competitive world of autocross, finding speed isn’t just about raw power—it's about precision and data-driven decision-making. The real secret to becoming faster lies in understanding the subtleties of your driving and the dynamics of your car. As I dive deeper into autocross, I’ve realized that the most crucial investment I can make isn’t in the car itself but in improving the driver—me. By leveraging data, I can fine-tune my performance and make every run count. The Power of Data When you break down a lap, there are several key data channels that can help you understand where you're gaining or losing time. Here’s a closer look at the main channels I focus on and why they matter: Speed: This is the most straightforward metric—how fast you're going at any given point on the track. But speed alone doesn’t tell the whole story. What’s important is understanding where you’re carrying speed and where you’re losing it. Speed data helps you evaluate your braking points a
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August 3, 2024, Second Autocross

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 After trying autocross, I was back. Now, I needed to get better. For this event, I had two goals; the first one was to improve my driving. I wanted to get a video of my hands during a run. I don’t have data to track my steering angle, so this is the next best thing. I invited a passenger to run with me and record me while I drove. The second one was to start trying to understand the tires. For this, I bought a tire pressure gauge and a temperature sensor. Racing sensors were too expensive, so I got a generic one off of Amazon. This one has a probe that you can pinch the tire with, as well as an IR measurement tool. In this event, I used the IR. I also made a change in my driving; by looking at the speeds from the previous event, I realized that through the whole track, I was within the powerband for second gear, so after launching, I shifted into second and completed the runs in second. I am now having doubts about that strategy (based on my Optimum Lap simulations that show that le
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June 23, 2024, my first Autocross event.

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  After being away from participating in motorsport for more than 5 years, I gave myself the purpose to participate in some form of motorsport as a 2024 new year’s resolution. But on a startup entrepreneur’s budget, racing in something where I shared a track with other people, even karting was out of the question. After a lot of research, I found that autocross is a great option to enjoy racing in my daily driver Dodge Challenger. The speeds are not that high, and the spaces are open, so when you screw up, which will eventually happen, there is a lower risk of expensive damage. There are different classes so that you don’t have to have a highly tuned car to compete and honestly, it looks like a good time. That’s why I decided to sign up for the June 23rd Autocross. It was a two-day event, but I could only race on Sunday due to a family commitment. I found that the Central Florida Region has a few events every summer, so this was perfect. To be honest I was scared, I had never been o
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What is the cheapest way to make the car faster??

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  Now that I have my local course and my car on Optimum Lap, I can use a very cool feature that it has called batch run. Basically, you can, keeping all other things equal vary one parameter of the car model through a range of values. This will help us understand where the biggest gains are hidden. You can see the tires hard at work on this photo from the August Daytona SCCA Solo CFR event. The first parameter I decided to vary was the weight of the car. I did a sweep from 3600 to about 4500 lbs. What I found is that reducing the car weight by 400lbs will bring about .2s worth of time. Also, I could answer something that always makes me curious, what is the penalty for carrying a passenger? Let’s say the person is 200lbs, In my car today, this will be a 0.2s penalty. So once I have my technique together and don't need an instructor I will run alone. We can see that below a certain point the improvement from making the car lighter tapers off as we struggle to put the power to the
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Creating the digital SS Conegeek

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  The next step in getting the simulations running is building a digital model of the SS Conegeek, the name to no surprise is because sometimes, on an autocross course, the Challenger SXT will feel more like a boat than a car. For this, if you have scales and actual dyno plots from your car you will get a very accurate model. Since my car is stock, I mainly used the information available online to build this.  Photo of the SS Conegeek in Daytona, taken from CFR SCCA Autocross Facebook group. The first step is obtaining a power curve. Optimum lap allows for multiple unit systems to be used, but in reality, anything other than metric is clunky to use, so get your calculator out. I found this curve online for the 2021 Challenger SXT with the Pentastar V6, which shows a maximum power of 305hp at 6350 rpm and a peak torque of 363Nm at 4800 rpm . You also need the car’s weight, drag coefficient, frontal area, and the size of the tires you’re using.  We estimate the car’s downforce(lift) c
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