Now that individual events have finished I checked the national results and found the following:

There were 21,538 total entrants. Of those, 19,649 were male and 1889 female.

At the time I had 1.5 years worth of autocross experience. My final overall rank based on gender was 147. My wife with less than six months autocross experience had a final rank based on gender of 97.

I know I'm good for a beginner, but I'm still a beginner. I have a hard time believing that few autocrossers showed up at these events, or that they showed up but I did better than them. Therefore my conclusion is while their scoring system was novel, ultimately it was flawed and didn't provide a good way to compare results from one event to the next. Thoughts?
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yeah the scoring system is flawed

but really can't do much about it for a competition with this many contestants *shrug*

those that did make it to the finals are indeed cream of the crop, no doubt about that though.

I disagree. I think autocrossing is a test of not just driver skill, but the driver's familiarity with the car. The reason the pro drivers did so much better than everyone else is not just their experience with racing, but their experience with the Mazda6. They got to become intimate with the race-ready Mazda6's before recording their benchmark times. Also note how scores seemed to fall and fall over the series.

I'd bet most good autocrossers are used to RWD vehicles, of which the Mazda6 was not. The cars were all automatics, and probably had different pedal positions that what the drivers were used to. It was probably an akward drive for a lot of them- I talked to a Miata owner there who certainly felt so.

Originally posted by PUR NRG
I know I'm good for a beginner, but I'm still a beginner. I have a hard time believing that few autocrossers showed up at these events, or that they showed up but I did better than them. Therefore my conclusion is while their scoring system was... flawed.....
Why so glum chum? Don't knock your achievements, here's a little advice from Stuart Smalley, repeat this while looking into the mirror and I'm sure you will cheer right up.
"Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me." :p

I agree that the race drivers probably weren't used to autocross or the street tires on the 6 and got better with more events under their belt. I also think the scoring system had a really funky log curve that exaggerated differences at the top end.

It would have been really neat if they were able to use GPS to map out the exact same course for every event. You'd still have differences due to tire temp but could still have useful comparisions between locations.

I'm not knocking my own ability but there had to be more autocrossers at the events. There were 2706 people who classed themselves as pro.
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Understood, I had some spare time on my hands and that was an ill-attempt at a good humored joke... I'll avoid those in the future. :confused:

For what ever it's worth, the winner of the Atlanta event is a guy I know and have seen repeatedly post FTD in events around the SCCA Buccaneer Region. In his regularly autocrossing, he drives a GS Cavalier Z24 or an FSP Civic, both fwd.