Dammit, dammit, dammit!

Just got home from the Mazda Rev It Up event in Houston. I had a VIP invite to the dealer/press day on Friday, and entered the actual competition today.

As you may be aware, the competition comprises two separate runs around an autocross course, with your time measured against the"Pro Driver Index," which is the time put down by their own professional driver. As conditions change throughout the day, they send him out again (at least three times per day) to re-establish the Index time.

If you can match his time, you score 1000 points; if you're slower, your score will be lower. The commentator kept talking about "Mazda Nirvana", which would be to equal or beat the Index time. On Friday, I got within a second of the Index time, scoring 690. I don't believe anyone beat that on Friday, but there were no prizes that day.

Today, I went back out for my real competition runs. I drove the practice course a couple of times, and found that the grip was about the same as it had been the day before. So I headed into my first competition run feeling reasonably confident that I could put in a good showing.

Well, was I in for a surprise. The car simply refused to turn in, and washed out everywhere. I took out about 6 cones, all on corner exits, and came back in shaking my head in disbelief. My score was a lowly 145!

I couldn't believe that the available grip had dropped off that much, so I hit the slalom and brake/turn practice courses before my second run. There appeared to be plenty of grip, so I put my abysmal performance down to that particular car being a total "push pig" and decided to attack the course on my second run.

It seems that I was right in attributing it to the car - the one I got for my second run hooked up just as I remembered from Friday and I was able to throw it at the corners with confidence that it was actually going to turn. I came through the finish lights feeling that I had put in a pretty good run, but I thought I may have tagged a cone on the exit of the last slalom. Sure enough, I saw the course worker running that way to reset the cone. Bummer.

But the best (worst) was yet to come. My raw time was a full tenth of a second faster than the current Index time! If only it had been a clean run, I would have achieved Nirvana with a score of over 1000, and almost certainly been on my way to Laguna Seca for the finals later this year. But the two-second penalty for that cone put me way out of contention with a score in the 500's. :(

So that's my tale of woe from the competition side of the event. As for the RX-8 aspect, well, I'll cover that in a separate post in the RX-8 discussion forum.

I guess it's been mentioned somewhere else but what car were you driving?

Originally posted by Lensman
I guess it's been mentioned somewhere else but what car were you driving? The competition cars are all 6-cylinder Mazda 6's with lowered springs, exhausts, and Falken Azenis tires. Actually handled pretty darned well for a near-stocker.

Eccles did you try the vehicles at the Mazda test drive area? It's pretty obvious the Miata would beat the crap out of the 6 in Auto-X.

Originally posted by Toadman
Eccles did you try the vehicles at the Mazda test drive area? It's pretty obvious the Miata would beat the crap out of the 6 in Auto-X. Yeah, I drove the '03 Miata and the '03.5 Mazdaspeed Protege. But the "ride and drive" course is supposed to be a low speed cruise, not a race; if you so much as squeal the wheels, you get a black mark on your pass; two marks and you're asked to leave.

Guess you drew the short stick in the cross-country tour draw. ;)

Originally posted by eccles
My raw time was a full tenth of a second faster than the current Index time! If only it had been a clean run, I would have achieved Nirvana with a score of over 1000

:cool: you da man eccles, you da man :cool:

*applause*

If only it had been a clean run, I would have achieved Nirvana with a score of over 1000, and almost certainly been on my way to Laguna Seca for the finals later this year. But the two-second penalty for that cone put me way out of contention with a score in the 500's.

It's crazy that the difference between over a 1000 and in the 500's is ONE cone. If you were that close, I'd think about going to another RevItUp comp. and try there. So close, so close.

Originally posted by rxtreme
If you were that close, I'd think about going to another RevItUp comp. and try there. So close, so close. You read my mind. The rules allow one entry per person per weekend, so I'm off to Dallas next Sunday for one last try. :)

The guy who was leading at the time I left, wound up beating the Index time by about 0.3sec on his second run, achieving a score of 1205 and a earning a special mention on the Rev It Up homepage (http://www.mazdarevitup.com/f_home.asp). Still, beating the index would almost certainly have put me in line for one of the wildcard spots.

Originally posted by rxtreme
It's crazy that the difference between over a 1000 and in the 500's is ONE cone.The scoring system appears to be heavily weighted, allowing it to show large differences at the pointy end of the field while not discouraging folks who putter around several seconds back. The fact that a 2 secondpenalty gave me a score in the 500's, while 12+ seconds back on my first run gave me a 145, illustrates this. The leading time when I left, which was about 0.3 seconds off the index, was good for low 800's, and the eventual winning time of about 0.3 faster than the index, earned a 1205.

So it seems that 0.3sec rates about a 200 point deduction, 2.0 about 450, and 12.0 850. definitely non-linear. :)

Heh, you ought to see how they calculate the index for wet weather. ;)