Damn Mike! Nice PAX!
 

http://www.sfrscca.org/solo2/Results...lists.html#pax

Nice driving :)

Vince
92 CSP

Nicely done! (With the bmw nipping at your heels.)
Course description?

Dang it, I was hoping this didn't come up...
Anyhow, thanks for the props, Vince, but as you know a number of SFR's fast (and heavily lowered) mod and prepared cars can't run at that site, because of the bumps!
Still, the car felt awesome and there was more time out there, I'm sure...my first run was my fastest (on warm tires) and I spun on my third run, which was a total flier.
DKNV, below is a rough sketch of the course. It drove much tighter than it looks, particularly the back section. The slalom had 50' spacing, which was interesting with the fat boy tires. The PAX was kind of interesting, I never would have thought you could beat a car by almost two seconds and have it be only .11 off on the index...I guess DS might be a little soft ;)

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/5655/indexcc8.jpg

That IS some good driving..

Only two things faster that day was a street-prepared Impreza (probably WRX) by 1/1000th of a second and a Corvette Z06 by about 1/3 of a second.

Faster than all those EVOs, corvettes, S2000s, Porsches, etc...

Having a car with some suspension travel really helps at Monster Park. I raised my CSP car 3/8" just for the Bay Area courses this year. Even after doing that, at full speeds things get a little scary when the car unweights before a braking/turn zone.
Nice driving Mike!

way to go Woody :)

No, I started autocrossing in 2005 and I think this is my third top PAX in SFR, but it is the first in the RX8. I don't think for many it is a huge deal in a regional (although fun!), we'll see how "fast" I am (or not) later in the year, when the car is finalized and I have Matthew co-driving... :Eyecrazy:

Looks like fun, and IMO the RX8 loves slaloms. Plus, it was (it looks like) a left-turning course, which I prefer - feeling sorry we had to miss it.

Re: the slalom "was interesting with the fat boy tires" - guessing that your comment has to do with responsiveness ... and, did you get a different FSB?

Oh -- and point 0-1-1, not .11. Yeah, pax is interesting alright.

It was a fun course. The slalom comment was regarding turn in/transient response with the big Hoosiers. I can live with it, actually I'm kind of used to that type of response, having run the Z06 on stock shocks and with 295/40 tires mounted on the 9.5" fronts. Matthew wants to try a larger bar and, seeing as I have had no push to speak of, I'm up for the experiment...but, I was on the stock bar yesterday. I figure we can go to the bigger bar and if it picks up a little push, I have a lower camber value alignment marked on the rear eccentrics we can try, before abandoning the bigger bar....maybe pick up a little better 60' too? But, I'm hesitant to change anything, it feels pretty good as is and I don't have much chance to test before SD and El Toro.

My mistake on the time...you're absolutely correct, it was point ZERO one one...ouch, that one could have easily gone the other way! :Freak_ani

I won't be scrubbing in tires the next time we meet :p:

Very nice man.

Good job Mike!

Curse my broken BS machine!

One of these days I'll get out there with you, Mike, one of these days... I really hope I can get the car fixed for El Toro.

I'm sure it won't be long before I find race tires for the Honda though...

Some day I'll get a top 10 PAX in SFR.

Dont give MWood all the credit... some guy in an 8 came in 128th!

Hey, that guy was on mismatched tires with about 150 runs or so...kind of hard to go quick with less grip than oem street tires!

Bryan, do me a favor and get some race tires for your new S2000 and leave the MR2T at home, I don't think my fragile ego can take you crushing me in BS. BTW, the only reason you haven't paxed #1 in SFR is because you never run with us...for some reason, you seem to like having twice as many runs on a better site with Fresno region :cwm27:

LOL. The last time I ran the ES car at an SFR event I had NO grip with old Victoracers on the gravelly lot. It felt like I was driving in a downpour, even though we didn't get a drop of rain. I PAXed 33rd at that event, which I was surprised by given how awful my grip was. I couldn't even breathe on the throttle exiting a tight hairpin low down in 2nd gear, or I'd get instant wheelspin. Good RallyX practice I guess. ;)

Mike, give yourself some credit. I really don't think I could have turned a 64 in my BS MR2 on that course at Candlestick. Won't stop me from trying to keep up with you in the future though. :) Remember the MR2 is stuck with 205/225 tires so there is a huge disadvantage there. And my car is still near 2800lbs. Like I said, I'm shooting for El Toro where I can hopefully get spotted a couple tenths at the tree. :D

I used to run SFR events in 2000/2001. IIRC my highest PAX was 11th, on street tires. I guess I would have PAXed 1st at Slush 6 last year if I wasn't doing fun-runs. And you weren't there either!

The stars just haven't aligned yet. :)

As for your 'fragile ego', you aren't worried about a certain co-driver this year? ;)

Oh my god. I think if I showed up at an autocross with over 200 people in attendance, I'd turn around! :) In my region we typically get 25-45 drivers. We're spoiled with 8-12 runs. A few times they've done as many runs as you can handle.

But I must say ... all that competition would be nice.

We have it pretty good in the Bay Area (CA). If we want to get more runs, we can go to AAS (American Autocross Series) and get up to 10 runs a day with some of the fastest autocrossers in the country, or we can run with Fresno or Sacramento chapter and also get a bunch or runs, or run with any number of local clubs (Lotus, BMW, Porsche etc.) and get seat time or we can stay in the SFR SCCA and practice the National three run format. :)

Now, to be totally spoiled, we just need a site with awesome asphalt to run on consistently. We kind of have only semi-ok asphalt or great concrete...high class problem!

That, and any given weekend from March through November there is almost always at least one autox event going on, thanks to all the clubs involved. Two events per weekend is common. The problem here is, there isn't enough time to participate in all of them! I say we should have 4 day work weeks so we can fit more autoxing into the weekends. :D

I'm trying Progress Technologies larger (hollow) adjustable front bar on my car. Running 245 width Bridgestones RE-01Rs on it all the way around at the moment. The bar has three settings, and I'm on the softest at the moment. I'm not sure what they correspond to, percentage-wise, but I can always ask my guy at Progress if you're interested.

BTW- they made the bar bigger than planned after hearing about TeamRX8's issues last year at the SCCA finals (I told them he was tail-happy).

PM me if you want to know more tomorrow.
Eric

That front bar is way too stiff for a Stock class RX-8. The Stock rules do not allow the rear bar to be changed, only the front bar.

My issues at Nats really don't have anything to do with that, by all accounts I shouldn't even be loose. However I just acquired the PT bars too, but for other reasons. I'm pretty sure I located the problems that were causing my oversteer issues now too. The fixes are underway.

The PT front bar on the softest setting is roughly 2.2x stiffer than the OE front bar. The Racing Beat front bar is 2.1x stiffer than OE front bar and is well proven to be too stiff for a Stock class car that has to retain the OE rear bar. Just for reference, the PT front bar at the max stiff setting is approx. 2.5x stiffer than OE. There is an intermediate setting that is between those two extremes.

Does anyone know anything about the Whiteline front bar? There seems to be conflicting estimates of how much stiffer than stock it really is...it appears, on the softest setting, it may be anywhere from 30-55% stiffer than stock?

the blind man knows ... :D:

He doesn't seem to be saying much...

http://thumbs.photo.net/photo/1413589-sm.jpg