February 28, 2005

Knife to a gunfight

That pretty much describes me in my class at El Paso.

The drive out was uneventful. I brought along a good selection of cd's, though I knew they wouldn't last me all the way there without some repeats. In no particular order:


It was a cloudy night, which made things weird, as it was always very dark. It really didn't feel like I had been driving that long as I went from Tucson through New Mexico, as nothing changed - it was always just as dark as it was 10 minutes ago, and the road is pretty much the same the whole way there. Doing this for four hours made it that much more interesting when I crested a hill above Las Cruces, and just saw the sea lights that made up the town. Not dense lighting, like in a big city, just lots of little lights across the desert. From there, it was onward to El Paso, which wasn't very far away. Mentally, I tried to make the trip easier by thinking of it in terms of sequential "Tucson" trips, since I've made that drive a number of times. It's about 110 miles to the middle of Tucson, from my place. Then from Tucson, Lordsburg was only 150ish miles - a little more than one Tucson drive. From Lordsburg, Las Cruces was 120 miles away - about equal to one Tucson drive. El Paso was only 45 miles beyond that, and that's only like a drive to Casa Grande. Not bad at all. It really didn't feel like six and a half hours of driving.

The Radisson in El Paso is actually a pretty decent hotel. At the very least, the tv in the room at rear RCA inputs, and some of the better rooms even had them on the front of the tv. Fancy. Two free drinks per night and a free breakfast in the morning made it a pretty good deal. A nearby Applebees and a steakhouse made it that much better. The RCA inputs were used, of course, to connect my PS2, so we could play GT4 during free time. As a result, I only watched the 70+ channels of cable in the room for about 10 minutes. If I ever had to go to El Paso again, I wouldn't mind staying there.

Friday's practice day didn't start out so well. Just as people started making practice runs, it started to rain. Still not having much rain experience, I took my practice runs during the rain to get a feel for tire pressures in case it rained the next day, which was what the forecast called for. After an hour or so, it dried up. I still didn't like the fact that it rained at all, as autocrossing in the rain is my absolute least favorite type of autocrossing. Just incredibly frustrating for me. Oh, and have I mentioned that I don't have any rain gear? That's fun, too. At least I now have a tarp to go above/below my stuff, so it doesn't get all wet when it rains. Overall, I'd say the practice day went ok. At the very least, I got my car tech'd, and came back later to check in for registration, and to walk the course.

Walking the course, it looked like it was going to be fun & fast, and that proved to be true on Saturday. No rain, fortunately, spare a few drops in the morning before we started running. Everything seemed to flow nicely, except for one tricky little turn about 2/3rds of the way through. Average speed was pretty reasonable, and top speed was probably in the upper-60s I'd guess (at least, for my car). I really could have used a lot more power for maybe 3 to 4 sections, but there's not much I can do there. The fast car in the class was so much faster, I wonder why anyone would even try to compete in an Integra. Obviously the driver was far better than me (national champion at least once, I believe), but 5 seconds on a 60-second course is a pretty huge margin to try to overcome. If I ever want to attain that level of ability, I'll need to be driving at least as fast as our local SM drivers in my car, or in other words, top pax by a nice margin at just about every event. Yeah, that's a little ways off. :-P

Sunday's course was just Saturday's course run backwards, with a couple modifications to the start and finish. It definitely had that "course run backwards" feel to it, as I didn't think things flowed quite as smoothly. It was fun, but for me, not as much as the previous day. Maybe that's why I went so slow the second day. ;-) I just didn't drive well. Coned my first run, DNF on my second. The third run I thought I was doing ok, but I hit a stupid cone that just shouldn't be hit. Even worse, the time wasn't all that good. I was still a couple seconds off of where I should have been. I knew I had to have a good clean run on my third attempt, but I'm wondering if that didn't slow me down some. So there you go, my co-driver and I finished last and second-to-last. Hooray.

The drive home was equally uneventful, but driving during the day, I actually got to see what New Mexico looked like, other than the 20ft-wide stretch of asphalt. Turns out I wasn't missing much. It's like Arizona, but with no saguaro. I shouldn't say it was uneventful, really. There was some periods of really hard rain, where I couldn't see more than about 50 feet out of my windshield. Fortunately that only lasted a few minutes. Then I ran over a few massive tumbleweeds, which I'm sure scratched up the paint a bit. :-( Then I ran into some massive traffic in Tucson, where I was pretty much idling along in first gear for about 45 minutes. That was pleasant. >:-O

Overall, I came out of the event a bit discouraged. For one, I knew the fast car in my class would be faster than me, but I didn't expect the margin to be so huge. At this point for me, it's like standing in front of a smooth 20ft wall with no equipment, and having someone tell me to climb it. It feels that insurmountable. I can make up all the excuses I want regarding the fact that I'm so much less experienced, that the car is underprepared, whatever. Even if you account for all of those things that I would fix if I could, there's still that wall that I just don't think I can climb, and it's disappointing. It has kind of made me re-think what I want the car to be, and how I want to spend my money. If the goal is a locally-competitive car that I drive every day, then the high-dollar items are out. ITBs, standalone engine management, maybe even the LSD. I'm wavering on the race-valved shocks, but those will probably happen anyway, as my current springs aren't adequately controlled as it is. Money spent on the expensive items can go to other things, like the cost of traveling to other events, or even non-autox items I'd like to buy. After all, I'll need to buy the next playstation and xbox, and those won't be cheap. Especially if I want to play them in the full glory of a high-definition projector. If I'm ever convinced that my skills are at a level where my car is seriously holding me back, maybe I'll look to get something more competitive. Whatever car that may be is anybody's guess though. I don't really like the lack of modifications in stock, and race tires are too much fun to go back to street tires in STS/STX/STU/STS2. That pretty much just leaves SP classes, which can be expensive to do right, and for a top car, often leaves you with something that's not suitable for street use.

In closing, never attend an autocross without chapstick. Ever.

Posted by Ben at February 28, 2005 11:16 AM