June 23, 2024, my first Autocross event.

August 20, 2024

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 on an autocross and had never pushed hard on my challenger beyond the odd green light launch and kicking out the tail on some turns. So the first event, the focus was on understanding the mechanics of AutoX and how I could improve my driving.

The night before the event, I packed a lawn chair and a beach canopy and cut some numbers out of vinyl to stick on a white magnetic background I had bought on Amazon. I signed up for the novice class and thought Pax was in case I wanted to have any passengers ride along. So, I had made the NS (Novice Street) class stickers but held off from sticking them in the car in case I got re-classed. I also packed some electrical tape, my helmet, some racing gloves I use for sim racing, and a suction cup to make a video. I didn’t have a pressure gauge, so I stopped at a 7-11 on the way to the track and set my pressures to 40psi in the front and 38psi in the rear.

Ready to go!!

I got to the track, signed up, and decided last minute to make my car lighter. So I removed the mats and the flat tire kit from the back.

I walked the track with the novices and got awesome instruction that was super useful and then decided I needed to download an app to try and get data from the run. I downloaded the free version of Track Addict and, even though I managed to get a video of my first run, it was a bust. I was limited to one run, and then by testing I wasted all my free runs to record, so in the end I only got one run recorded, my first and worst. What I did do was take notes of every run, which I later transcribed to a setup sheet I created to keep track of my runs. My target was going below 50s in time.

Here’s a quick summary and a link to my notes from the event.

Run1:

In this run, my time was 52.573. You can sort of see it in the video but I was overdriving the car. I was struggling to turn it in, so I was trying to get the car to rotate by accelerating. This meant the open diff from the car was wasting a lot of power on the corner exit. Basically, I sucked, but you know what, I loved it.

Run 2:

This time, I drove with an instructor, Alex, and he was great. He told me my target of going below the 50s was reasonable so that was exciting. He also showed me how to look on the live timing on the SCCA CFR Autocross website. My time was 50.373 so I was close, but I got a 2s penalty because a cone got in my way. Alex mentioned that I had good car control but that I was overdriving, he mentioned my steering inputs were too harsh. He also mentioned that I needed a harder launch. This last thing is one of my big things to work on to be faster in my car. I can launch a stick, but am still finding the sweet spot to launch an Auto.

Run 3:

This runs a cone also got in my way, on the previous run I was super aware of where I hit the cone, this time I was less aware. The only thing I was thinking was, the people working track this shift must be hating me. The good thing is the time was a 49,997 so even with the cones my time kept improving.

Run 4:

I had to do run 4 twice because the car in front of me took out the timing, and I had a red flag. This time I ran alone and hit no cones, but I drove like I was my grandma. My time was 50.488 so I wasn’t at my target yet.

Run 5:

For run 5, I just focused on putting it all together. I also focused on letting the car coast a little more and making my input smoother. I ended the run with a 49.691, so I ended the day on a positive note. I still have a ton to improve, but I left with a smile from ear to ear.

In the end, the last group couldn’t run due to lightning, so it was deemed a practice event, but I ended up having the 5th time amongst the novices that ran. It’s not a blistering pace, but I was there in the mix. The novice class allows every car to run as long as they’re on street tires, so it’s hard to measure competitivity, but looking at the classes where I can eventually end up, one of which is G street, I am about 2.5 seconds off the pace.