Day 1 afternoon was more driving, and better driving. A different freaking-fast-instructor working with us. More non-cone-counting-chasing during our work groups.

At the end of Day 1, which ended around 6pm I think, we were given a full-day segment report, shared our learnings, and packed up our gear. Had dinner at a pizza place with the instructors/out-of-towners. I think I went looking for motor oil after that. I think I slept. All of the sudden, its Day 2.

The orange sea of cones shows up. These will be used for the weekend's event.

Re: Evo School
 

You did not invent the 2x4 or the hammer Mr. Gore.... :lol: :lol:

Jerry and Michael are M3 drivers. Jerry uses hand controls on the steering wheel, which you might think could slow you down. None of that! He's also got great upper body strength, and impressive biceps!

Evolution Phase 1
 

To paraphrase Debbie's description. Phase 1 is about nailing the basics time after time with some vision stuff thrown in.

A small tight 30 or so second course with most of the elements you will encounter is setup with each element/segment being mostly timed separately so you can see where you need to focus, and can see how one element affects the next. The instructors drive your car at times to provide examples, and insight, and ride with you most of the time.

Segment times are really useful, and I think with the exception of the Chicago box which I think I only did well once or twice, I was faster than both instructors in my car both Pase1, and Phase 3.

I would recommend Phase 1 to anyone who has done at least 1 autocross, and we had a guy or two who had never done any. Even veterans of 100s of autocross runs will learn, including me... :D And you have to have had Phase 1 to take Phase 2

That guy friggin rules. Props to him. 8)

Day 2 - no segment times. But that didn't matter. I didn't even realize until Dean mentioned it sometime that night, but, we drove the day 2 exercises, including 2 or 3 variations, with only 1 course walk first thing in the morning. Of greater importance was visualization and eyes-up exercises. Day 2 had pivot cone exercises. I liked that one.

Here comes Sue & her instructor doing a download right after a run.

Evolution Phase 2
 

Well, this is simply about vision, and the hands follow the eyes, and the car follows the hands...

No timers in Phase 2 for good reason. It isn't about time, it is about vision...

Not much more to say about Phase 2 except it is very enlightening.

I would recommend it for anyone who has a half to a whole season of autocrossing under their belt. Again, there was a guy who had never autocrossed that took all 3 phases, but I think it was overload, and not sure he got as much out of them as he could with more seat time in beforehand.

Day 3. Dean and I started off a little tired, since we were out Wed. night on the Dave-the-Man and Subiegal adventures in Kent, returning around 11:30p. And school started around 8am (w/car ready to go).

Phase 3 focuses on course analysis. We had one new instructor, Andy Hollis, and Ron Bauer returning to us from Phase 1. Andy is like a scientist when it comes to analyzing the pavement! The first thing we did was a course walk with analysis, and I was mind-boggled before leaving the start line! :shock:

After course walk, Dean plays with rear pressures to compensate for the missing rear DMS's.

I'm not sure I would say this was a classic pivot cone that we are used to, and was definitely part of Phase 3.

This element in Phase 2 was more of a tool to force you to use your eyes in a certian way rather than something you might see in a real course. But stop talking about Phase 2, can't give away all the secrets...

Good point.

Evolution Phase 3
 

It is funny with Debbie and I typing in parallel...

I would challange that Phase 3 is about a bunch of things including course/surface analysis, but ends up being about RUN strategy, planning, execution, and analysis more than course analysis.

The morning course walk is incrediably detailed and will overwhelm all but the most technical, but I beleive that is it's purpose. There are nuggets of truth intersperessed that after being reinforced all day by the exercises force you to look at courses differently.

The remainder of the day is not about walking, but about convincing the students what is the fast way around the course in their cars despite what preconceived notions they may have. They do this again with multiple segment times, and other tools.

I would reccomend this phase only for the hard core autocrosser. If it is about being social, you don't need this course. If you are serious about it, and have a season or so under your belt, go for it. Our newbie got something out of it, but since he was not fast, and could not lay down consistantly good runs, his segment times were probably not meaningful at his level, but he got a taste...

Evolution Schools summary...
 

All very good classes that I would reccomend as well worth the $225 per day....

The only minor complaint I have with Phase 1-3 has to do with a slight lack of organization that does not allow for quite as much seat time as I would have liked. A tweek or two probably could have allowed for 5 or more additional runs per student IMHO. I will be mentioning that in my evaluations and hopefully they can do something about it for the future...

The instructors are also a little frazzled by day 3, so if you are only going for Phase 1, signup for a day early in the week...

I really want to do the Challenge and Dial-In next eyar, or before if I can find them somewhere...

Evolution School Funnay...
 

Probably the funniest thing about the week was that I appear to like my car looser than all 4 of the instructors as they all had a bit of an issue controlling the back end at times while driving the car. :twisted:

One of them had a really nice high speed spin that she is unlikely to soon forget...

The most insightful comment was that I may have it set that way to compensate for overdriving the entrance to corners to turn the push into drift...

While I agree with that to an extent, and am now being wary of my entry speed, I also think it has to do with how to properly drive an AWD car. (Or anything with viscous or torque based drive lines) Where they would often lift, I would go a bit deeper, and brake, or left foot brake.

At least with many AWD power trains, lifting is very bad as it allows all the viscous or torque based differentials/couplings to "unlock", whereas under power or braking that is much less liklely to happen IMHO.

I should probably make this a seperate thread and see if I can lure Gary into the discussion by saying somethig really wrong and stupid. :lol:

awesome thread!

Wow, I didn't know we had a seal of approval... I feel so honored that I could contribute to such a worthy cause...

Re: Evolution Phase 3
 

Back on topic...
ok, ok, 'Applied Course Analysis'. Good point, though, one of the main messages on the afternoon of Phase 3, is, 'what is your Plan'? Followed by, 'how did your Plan work?'. A discipline that many winning competitors are using, not rocket science, just good common sense for working towards improvement.

In a couple of exercises we were forced to drive a line that was uncomfortable and one we would not have picked ourselves. The results were very surprising to me and a number of others (though I don't think I heard Dean say he was surprised.).

Ann Hollis was one of our instructors (if you look in the back of the SCCA Rulebook, you'll see her name all over the place, she holds several national championships). She was a kick, and she held her ground with Dean's provocation very well. Despite the high-speed screeching spin :D

At least I didn't move th Camera on this one... Or did I take this one? Maybe not...

But that doesn't look like an SUV story... Come on, Fess up...

SUV Story
 

Good Lord.


There once was a red car and blue car,
And the blue car pissed off SUV
The SUV sped, and
Made blue car see red
And the end is that I am not dead.

Re: SUV Story
 

More detail por favor

Re: SUV Story
 

Clever! ;)

...but we want the gory details. Did you throw any change at them, you know, lesson 26 at the JC school of driving? OR you could have thrown a buritto at 'em, I hear that works good too.

Re: SUV Story
 

It has to be a taco Bell Bean Burrito.

Good Lord, road rage prevents one from thinking rationally. At the time, I was breaking my cardinal rule & eating an icecream drumstick in the car - if I had not been in fight or flight mode, I would've thrown that sucker out the window when they were 15 ft. off my rear bumper at 80mph on a downhill curve. I would've had a good chance of landing it splat on their windshield.

Causing them to have an accident would have been a very very bad thing, though. :cry:

At 80mph in a long sweeper that close, you could have just tapped the brakes and watched them roll off the freeway... no ice cream needed. Sounds like there was a genius behind the wheel of that SUV. :roll:

Oh, I did a brake tap alright. He was 20+ ft. off of me before I did that. At that point, Dean, with the voice-of-reason, who is watching this happen from behind, came over the gmrs to beg me to get away from the SUV. But I digress, this is not a good story being all out of sequence.

My point was, unless they were intentionally trying to hit you, if you braked at from 80 to 65mph at 9/10ths the limit of your car, the SUV would have probably rolled attempting to avoid you. An extra 2000lbs, balanced on the top of an SUV doesn't exactly allow it to handle well during trail-braking manuvers.

...and, you *are* going to have to tell us the whole story sooner or later, so you might as well that 15 minutes at lunch today to write up a nice entertaining version of the events. :twisted: