The opinions expressed here are my own, not those of the SCCA or the Dixie Region.
If you have not read my comments about autocrossing or the answers to some common questions, be sure to do that also. The best advice I can give you is to identify yourself as a novice and ask for help walking the course, and then lock your ego in the trunk and take it real easy -- even half speed -- on your first runs. You can always add speed later.
If possible, contact me or someone else with the club. We often set up the course the afternoon before, and helping with that will give you a better idea of what you will be up against when you drive your first course. It can also help to come out one Sunday about noon and watch what happens during an event.
Sunday goes a lot smoother if you get things ready on Saturday. The most important thing you can do is clean the car out. All loose items must be removed from the car and trunk, for safety reasons. Check that all fluid levels are in good shape and that tires are properly inflated. In this case, since you will probably run on your street tires, properly inflated means inflated to the maximum safe pressure for your tires, possibly even a bit higher for the front tires.
Getting yourself ready means having your stuff in order. Bring a light lunch or snack and hot or cold liquids to drink since we will be there most of the day (until 3 pm at least). In summer, a gallon of water may not be too much, and remember sun screen. These are all easier to remember the night before. The checklist on the San Francisco Region website is excellent but has more stuff than I bring to an event.
Drivers are required to be licensed, and you must show your driver's license. Correct change for the registration fee is always a help, and remember to bring your student ID or SCCA membership card if you qualify for discount fees.
Absolutely no alcoholic beverages of any kind, or drugs, are allowed. In addition, drivers must wear a seatbelt during competition and wear a crash helmet. Loaner helmets are available. Only Snell certified helmets can be used. The best price deal for autocross-only use is on an "M" certified one. (An "SA" is better if you plan to run on a track that requires that.)
Even a well-run event looks like organized chaos at the beginning. Most drivers show up an hour or so before the scheduled start time, but some will be there earlier to get the course in shape (sweeping or blowing sand and gravel out of the racing line) and set up the timers and help with other aspects of running the event as well as getting their own car ready to run. Everyone is a volunteer. We put this on for ourselves.
When you show up, you must do two things. Register and sign the insurance waiver at the registration desk, and do final prep on your car to get it ready for tech inspection. Usually that means removing the spare tire and floor mats and any loose items in the car, but it can also mean putting on race tires and adjusting tire pressures. Leave your trunk and hood open with the registration slip under the wiper blade when you are ready, and the friendly volunteer who does "tech" will check your car.
(Most of us will then immediately go walk the course. If you do, check back to see if you car cleared tech. The inspector might want to go over something with you.)
If you have not already done so, identify yourself as a rookie. The registrar or someone else who looks clued in can point you to me or Carl or Michael or another member who will help you get oriented or find someone who can. Don't be shy. Yes, you are taking up some of our valuable time, but we don't care since we were rookies once and someone helped us discover this wonderful sport. That is what the SCCA is all about.
Once it is clear your car is ready, the next thing to do is walk the course. And walk it again. More on that below. At least one of those walks should be with someone who knows you are a rookie, and many times we try to have a novice walk-thru about 15 minutes before the driver's meeting. Walking the course, and doing it with a purpose, is extremely important.
When I run a novice meeting and walkthrough, I start with safety rather than driving. The course is designed to be as safe as possible, so the remaining variable is the people around it. I point out the importance of driving very slow in the pit area where both drivers and pedestrians are often thinking about just about everything except each others presence. I also explain how scoring is done and safe behavior when working a section of the course.
Check out this webpage on some of the things a course-worker should know.
There will then be a mandatory driver's meeting, where features of the course and special safety announcements ("If the throttle sticks .... turn OFF the key: TAKE AWAY the FIRE and the car WILL come to a STOP", speed limit in the pits, safe distances) are made as well as more general announcements. This meeting usually takes place about the time the schedule gives for the start of racing but if there are no late-registration problems it will be about 15 to 30 minutes before the time set for the first run.
Then it is time to Drive, Work, Drive, and Work (or Work, Drive, Work, Drive). Again, we are all volunteers, so half the cars run while the other half of the drivers work the course, run the timers, and handle various safety responsibilities. If you don't work, you don't get credit for your runs. We take 2 or 3 runs in a session, swap, then take 2 or 3 more.
When all is done, we may have some fun runs before cleaning up the course. If you take fun runs, please help clean up. Then put your stuff back in the car, lower the pressure in your tires, and go home. Hopefully with a smile on your face.
For another take on this, read how J.D. Kemp describes a Solo II race-day out in Las Vegas.
As the saying goes, it helps to lock your ego in the trunk the first few times out. There are members who have been racing for decades, and that skill can mean a 10% difference (6 seconds out of 60) or more in the same car. You probably have some learning to do. It is sad to see someone come out in a hot car, run off a string of DNF's because they are going too fast to find the next cone, and leave never to return. Sad, because their car belongs on an autocross course, and they could have years of fun if they took the time to learn how to drive these kinds of courses.
The first step every time is the same. Walk the course, either with a map or someone who knows where it goes if the cones don't tell a clear story. (Once you learn the language of the cones, they usually tell you the course, but there can be exceptions.) Then walk it again, breaking it down into sections and looking for key places where you have to remember where to go. A novice should definitely take this second (or third) walk with an experienced driver who will point out where you need to pay attention and what tactics you might use in a certain section.
My own advice is to forget about tactics, other than getting some idea of what it means to brake late and apex late. You can focus on tactics on your second set of runs, after talking about it with your fellow corner workers while watching the other cars take their runs, based on what you saw and learned on your first runs. If you had a clean set of runs, you will be able to visualize key spots and see how others drive it.
Your entire focus on the first run should be navigating the course correctly. You can't make a DNF (did not finish) any faster. That means driving slower than you might like and making sure you go in the right place. It looks quite a bit different at speed than at walking speed, with things happening faster than you can imagine. Even the slowest driving speed is about ten times faster than you can walk the course.
Learn the course, make your first run slow and correct, then add speed with each subsequent run.
Novice drivers are allowed to have an experienced driver as a navigator on their first run, and this is encouraged because getting around a course at speed is much harder than it looks.
An autocross course is set on a smooth piece of pavement with orange traffic cones as markers. A new course is set every month, designed by whomever volunteers to chair an event. (An event chair must be an SCCA member.) The course itself is always at least 25 feet from any curbs or fixed obstacle for safety reasons. Cars do spin. Only course workers are allowed closer than 75 feet to the course. Course workers must be on their feet and watching the cars at all times.
The cones mark the course, and you get a DNF if you do not follow the course as marked. In addition, there is a 2 second penalty added to your time for every cone you knock down.
The cones are used to set gates, much like they use in ski racing. They can look very confusing the first time out. A pair of cones defines a gate -- and you must drive your car between them. A line of cones defines a slalom -- and you must drive your car around them. The gif image file used to separate sections in this document shows an example.
A pointer cone lying next to a standing cone tells
you to drive your car on the side away from the pointer.
They can be used to force you to drive a slalom in a particular
way, to make a particular gate stand out as a navigational aid,
or to simplify a course by using only a single cone and pointer
instead of a gate. Some course designers use pointers or walls of
cones to help you navigate the course, others do not.
When walking the course, it is fairly easy to pick out the next gate. However, you walk at just a few mph, maybe 4 feet per second, taking perhaps 10 or 12 seconds to get to the next cone. Driving that section at the seemingly sedate speed of 25 mph (which is 37 ft/sec) means you will cover that distance nearly ten times faster and have only a second to deal with what you now have 10 seconds to think about.
Things happen very fast, which is why we advise new drivers to take the first run slow and add speed later.
It helps to learn the course in sections.
(November 98's course:
left at the start with a gate further left, shift, right into an
offset slalom, downshift turnaround with a very late apex,
short open slalom, downshift turnaround with very late apex into
a fast straight disguised as a slalom, brake, hard left, straight,
then smooth left into a slalom with first cone on the passenger side,
tightens up at the end with hard braking and a left thru the lights.
Basically four sections connected by turnarounds, with two of them
very simple but the other two each had a spot where you had to pay
attention to a JK offset gate to avoid a DNF.) Yes, I did that from
memory 3 weeks later, and I can still get psyched by it.
Our courses are short, and the key step is usually to get the car aimed the right way as you come out of a turnaround, and to have the general plan of the course (down and back, loop with a kink in it, figure 8) in your mind. The other thing to remember is that these courses emphasize handling, so if you are not turning or getting ready to turn about every second or two, you might not be doing it right.
There are lots of friendly folks in our club that will gladly help you figure out what to do and give you tips on how to navigate the course safely. As noted above, a novice can have a experienced member ride along as a navigator on an initial non-competitive run, and this is encouraged. If you contact me, it may be possible to arrange for you to help out on a setup day as a way to get familiarized with a course.
Last updated circa August 2000 by Jim Carr, who autocrosses his Miata in C Stock.
