Photograph by David S. Wallens
First important turn after the start: A big 180 to the right that exited in a fairly open slalom, meaning a late apex was your friend in order to maximize speed across the lot.
I knew this.
I still screwed it up, carrying way too much speed into that 180. I could feel the left-front grinding away as I pushed out towards the cones.
Somehow, though, I didn’t clobber any.
My time still sucked.
As the temps rose, so did the rest of my runs that day.
Autocross is one of those activities that either goes well or it doesn’t. And this day, let’s say, wasn’t my best. Sloppy driving, missed apexes. Might have also forgotten to turn off the traction control.
Technically I got the win, but only because I was the sole car in the class.
I hosted a photo walk the Sunday prior. Six of us walked around downtown Ocala making pictures. Fun outing. We hit the same candy store three times. (We told ourselves it was to enjoy some a/c.)
I carried my latest purchase, this cool Minolta CLE rangefinder. Love the way it feels but, as I’m finding out, there’s a bit of a learning curve.
My photos from the day? Still on the learning curve.
The positive sides to all of this?
No one died. I didn’t smash the car, didn’t drop my camera into a puddle. I saw friends and had fun. Always beats sitting in front of the computer. Or mowing the lawn.
And, most importantly, these are all learning experiences. Even when all seems to go wrong, take stock of what led to those issues and tuck them away for next time.
You got this.
I once found this magical line on a course.
Only to discover after 3 DNFs that I'd been skipping a gate.
It started when I got my Formula 500 out of shape.......the car basically slide way to the right and since it lined up with the next gate my brain cemented that line into my memory.
In 37 years I've never DNFd without instantly knowing it.
Tom1200 said:I once found this magical line on a course.
Only to discover after 3 DNFs that I'd been skipping a gate.
It started when I got my Formula 500 out of shape.......the car basically slide way to the right and since it lined up with the next gate my brain cemented that line into my memory.
In 37 years I've never DNFd without instantly knowing it.
Sounds like the one event where I kept getting DNFs and could not for the life of me figure out what was going on. I even reviewed on board video to see if I could see it and I had no clue where it was. Luckily I had a buddy who happened to be working that corner and he texted me about it. One cone on a turn around had a really really big spacing and blended into the cone wall behind it.
I missed the same gate at the Challenge autocross 3 runs in a row a few years back. I did not make the course walk and it showed. The course felt unusually fast in that section too.
It all made more sense when I figured out what I was doing wrong.
In reply to stafford1500 :
Yes my missed gate was also magically fast......doh!!
In reply to stafford1500 :
It’s always after your runs where you realize that the course seemed a bit too fast/open/easy, right?
You take the good
You take the bad
You take them both...
Sunday's autocross, I may have DNFd every run, I haven't bothered reading the results. Between the heat and a new location, short course where everything came up super fast vs a decent flow. Meh, I still had fun driving and hanging out with friends, and managed to stay hydrated.
I've been off course for all five runs, more than once, not even making the same mistake each time. All of them were at the same venue as the picture. Fortunately, it's been a few years since then.
Sometimes you win, Sometimes you learn.
I've done the missed gate this. So frustrating. So embarrassing.
It was with a club I'd run with when I started autocrossing but had moved away, long enough ago that I wasn't a familiar face to a lot of people.
Someone from the club wandered over to let me know about the missed gate, saw my low-ish member number and seemed to be doing a bit of course-correction of his own after assuming a mistake like that would be someone new to the sport...
But to the original topic: Yep. Some days are just like that. I try to have a sense of humor about it, and take it as a reminder to refresh some stuff I either ought to know or ought to be able to do ten times out of ten without tripping over my own appendages.
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