The American Auto-X event this weekend was the bomb too.. Castle AFB is actually a really cool site even if it is out in the middle of nowhere. It only takes about 1:15 minutes to get there from where I am so it's not too bad, that's closer than the Marina events down in Monterey. It's pretty similar to Marina, a concrete paddock area off to the side of the runways, but it didn't seem to be as abrasive of a surface.
1st day was cool, I was still getting used to the car with the new coil-over setup... the harder I kept pushing it the more the car understeered though, even with the rear swaybar set at full stiff. 2nd day I had Mike Maier co-drive it with me which was awesome, I picked up a lot of driving tips from him cause he's a real good driver and he's been doing this for years. I started out a couple seconds slower than him, and each time we switched and I watched what he was doing I was like "Ohh, wow.. I didn't know my car could do that.. I'm gonna try that next time". One of the biggest things was left-foot braking, I've done that in circle-track cars before but never tried it in my own car in auto-x. That made a huge difference cause I could make real small mid-corner corrections with the brake and gas and get the thing to stick on-line better.. it helped calm down the heavy understeer the car has right now. After my fourth run I actually beat Mike by a tenth, I was pretty stoked. After that I had to shut it down and skip my last run cause the car was real hot and pinging like crazy through every gear, I didn't want to blow up the motor. So anyway, my chassis setup needs some adjustment.. I'm gonna need some stiffer rear springs to try and tune out the understeer.
You guys gotta come down to one of these American events, the courses are awesome.. even if you like small tight SCCA-type courses, it's a blast to try one of these just for the speed. 3rd gear both days, the 2nd day I was over 80mph in 3rd I think.
