SCCA Hawaii Sept. 9th Autocross

Wagon's Rule STS...

Tires must have worked...me up on my tippy-toes on trail breaking...

After not racing this car for almost 6 months or so...this was my first race back with the Bimmer and the first on my new 17's and 225 RE01 rubbers. Originally, I didn't want to race without putting more suspension on (sways, springs, shocks), but since I couldn't bring the Eunos out...I HAD to race my car.

The first couple runs were just TERRIBLE and the car felt like a slug cause I was driving it like my brother's R-comp 2 seater. But after sort of getting back in sync with the slower response, I did a pretty good 3rd run at 35 flatish...BUT!!!, hit the 1st d@mn CONE out of the start chute 35.0ish----->37ish!!! With the pressure on, I luckliy squeezed out a much better 4th run that really felt "gingerly fast" at about 34.5 and change ...I was happy :-)

According to the datalogger, I could generate about 0.90 to 0.93 G's continuous in the sweepers and over 1.0 G peak, especially in the "banked" drainage grate turn. I was really afraid of abusing the new treads, but they held up exceptionally well considering the non-sport suspension on my car. Must be that free camber mod helped a bit, cause I was VERY late on one turn and the car still actually turned instead of just plowing...whew...I could just picture the scrubbed off edges on my front tire with that bit of lousy driving...

My brother's 6 with new coil overs...and still on indestructible mud and snows...

I drove his car the other day and it has NO front end grip, compared to my RE01s. Gotta watch out for him if he ever coughs up the bones and gets some "good" tires cause in the fun runs, he ripped off a 35.2ish run which would have been only about 7/10s off my best run of the day. And considering, I'm on what many say is the "best" STS tires available, good tires for him could easily be worth 1/2 second as his suspension is definitely overworking his tires now...

My friend Erik808's non-wrx-subie generating some G's tippy-toeing through the right hand sweeper into the finishing shot...good for 2nd place in STS...

At this event were the most wagons I've ever seen at SCCA...






Results: http://www.sccahawaii.org/9-9-07.pdf