First autox coming up. Tips?

[CJK440]

Next week I get to try my hand at autocross with my '04 GT. The car is a go-cart on the street and look forward to seeing how it handles thru the cones. Its got some real good suspension upgrades but plenty of room for improvement in other areas.

It basically has the full Maximum Motorsports Max Grip box with torque arm rear and MM coilovers at all corners. The only things it doesn't have that comes as part of the Max Grip box is a Steeda front sway bar and stock rear sway bar. I love it. But the downsides are it also has stock GT brakes and 18" Sumitomo HTRZ 2 tires which I think suck. The engine and drivetrain are pretty much stock too but that doesn't concern me.

Being my first time out should I just air up the front tires and give it a go? Whats a good starting PSI for an 18" tire? Or should I go further and add some negative camber and or other changes from street to track? Is traction control my friend or do I turn it off? Anything else I should consider?

 

[Hendo741]

I would try 5-8 psi above stock and see how it feels. You can also get some white shoe polish or chalk to put on the shoulder of your tire and see how much flex you're getting and try to dial it in.

 

[ACMUSTANG]

negative camber is a help on turn in. whats you caster set at right now as well? had a 01 gt that was very competitive autocross car. ran -2.5 camber and 5 and 5.25 caster. hendo has it on airing up and using chalk etc on the edge to dial it in. if your running standard brake fluid, upgrade it. watch for brake fade if you run back to back runs. have fun, talk to the other drivers, watch them or take an instructor if you can.

where are you going to auto-x? one of the events at devens?

 

[CJK440]

It was down by the shoreline here in CT and it was a blast. Very humbling.

I aired up to 40psi on all corners and chalked the shoulder, looked good. The car seemed to have a lot of understeer and I am wondering if that is a result of the big steeda sway bar up front a stocker out back. The car has pretty much 90% of what comes in the MM max grip box but the previous owner opted out of a couple of things. I need to get under and ID everything to be sure the mismatch isn't working against me, but more than likely I lack the driver mod.

 

[MFE]

Nothing makes a car faster than modding the nut behind the wheel

I used to autocross 16+ events a year, and I instructed for several years. By far, the four most common and persistent problems are these, and even veterans need to constantly work on the second one:

1) Focusing on the parts on the car, and failing to recognize the difference the driver makes. I think your head's in the right place here, so no need to dwell on it any further, but it's an incredibly common mistake.

2) Look farther ahead of the car. Farther. No, more. farther. Several years of driving cars in anger and I still have to work on this, as do almost all drivers but the best pro's. Bottom line is, once you're confident the car is getting to your apex, and while still several car lengths away from it, pick your eyes up and look all the way through the course element to its exit. Once you're sure you've nailed the exit, but before you get to it, look to the next element's entry point. Before you get there, check your apex. Before you hit the apex, look through the exit. And so on. Always have your eyes 2 steps ahead of the car.

The reason for this is, it takes almost one full second for the brain to see, process, and react. What happens in 1 full second on an autocross course? Even at only 40 mph, what happens in one second is, you travel almost 60 feet. So if you travel 60 feet before your brain can even do anything about what it saw at foot 1, you're wasting valuable time and bandwidth by even trying to do anything about anything closer than 60 feet away. That's several car lengths. If you're sailing along at 60 mph, it's almost 90 feet per second. There's nothing you can do about anything within that distance, so quit trying! Yet the single most common mistake, especially when things start getting a little nutty, is to focus over the hood of your car, instead of down the track. And that messes up your inputs and makes you drive harder, slower. Looking farther ahead slows things down for your brain, gives it extra bandwidth to think and react, smooths you out, and speeds you up.

3) Look where you want to go, not at where you're afraid you're going. Human beings have a response to fear that causes us to focus our vision on what's scaring us. It's called Target Fixation, and it's caused many a motorcyclist to run off the road, and many a car driver to skid straight into the only telephone pole within 500 yards.

The problem is, your hands follow your eyes, and the car follows your hands. If you're scared because the car isn't going where you want it, you'll tend to focus on where you think it's going, and guess what? You'll go there. So always, always, always, focus your eyes on where you want to go, no matter where it is you're actually going. If you do this, the car will respond in almost magical ways. But you can't do it if you haven't first taken care of problem #1, which is not looking far enough ahead. Bottom line, when SHTF: Don't look at the trees, look at the space between the trees.

4) Lastly, remember, the gas pedal is a dimmer switch, not an on/off switch. People have a tendency to mash the gas, come off it completely, mash it, come off it completely, all in the span of 1 or 2 seconds. Every time you do that, the balance of the car gets thrown forward and back, and relative grip goes along with it. Cars don't like to be kicked any more than horses do. It upsets the balance, overloads tires, throws things off line. Like horses, give cars nice smooth input and they'll make you fly. In slaloms, try picking a nice mildly aggressive throttle setting and stick with it through the whole slalom. You will fly.