Congratulations to Scott Fisher on his trophy! Scott pried himself off
his plateau a few months ago and started getting faster by leaps and
bounds, and it's nice to see that recognized ... Between Scott, Josh and
Lisa the rec.autos.sport.sfr.es race next year in SFR should be exciting.
Paul Brown writes:
> I don't know why they don't just allow Hoosiers in Stock classes - there
> doesn't seem to be any performance advantage there over the latest radials.
Considering how well the radials do in SP classes, and how many SP competitors
prefer them to Hoosiers, I can't imagine why SCCA doesn't lift the ban on
Hoosiers in stock class. Maybe nobody's suggested it to them? (I would
think that Hoosier would suggest it even if nobody else did.) The only
argument I can see against allowing Hoosiers is that they're so short-lived
that they definitely increase the costs of racing.
> The discount was something that everyone said was necessary. I think there
> was supposed to be a discount for one-time-only entries, but maybe they
A discount for course workers is a great idea! I don't mind working,
personally, and it really helps the pain of those high Pro Solo entry fees.
I guess I will be running Pro Solos next year after all.
> Anyone had any racing-related activity lately? Traffic on this list has been
> pretty thin... Akkana and Tim - report on your school? Lisa and Josh might
> want to rebut anything said about it :-) Or maybe I have that backwards?
Well, I'll give a brief report -- from my point of view it was a disaster.
In most cases they assigned only one student per instructor; unfortunately,
my student didn't show up. Josh's student didn't show up either, so the
event organizer wanted to pair us up. I didn't think that was fair to
Josh, since he knows about as much about driving as I do (in fact, when he
went for a ride with me during the lunch break he pointed out a serious
mistake in my line) and it was only by chance that I was an instructor
and he was a student. Eventually an instructor was found for Josh, and I
was assigned to a student in a Lotus Super 7 (oh, joy -- I've been wanting
for years to ride in one!) which didn't have passenger seatbelts (so I
couldn't ride in it :-( ). I spent the entire day standing around watching
his runs trying to figure out what he was doing wrong, except for two fun
runs which I was able to make during the (late) lunch break. (Oddly enough,
my student definitely did improve by the end of the day, whether or not I was
instrumental in this improvement.)
I was unimpressed with the organization of the school. They had fewer
students, more instructors and as large a lot as the Lotus West school
(now a semi-annual event in the LA area, because demand is so high)
and yet the students in the SFR school got about a quarter of the
track time that the Lotus West students got in one day (and the Lotus
West school was two days). There was no published schedule, the lunch
was late, they used the NCSCC format of several laps per course so that
most of the day there was only one car running at a time (the Lotus West
school had 5 small exercises the first day, and a one-lap autocross which
allowed for overlapping cars the second day, which worked much better).
I'm surprised that an organization as famed for being able to run a large
number of cars in a small amount of time as SFR would put on such a
disorganized school.
There also was no braking exercise. Now, I know braking exercises are
boring, especially for people who already know how to use their brakes.
Nevertheless, most of the students in an autocross school have never learned
to brake at the limit of their car, and need to learn this. My student
was taking at least three times the distance that he should have needed
to slow down because nobody had ever taught him how to brake. I'm told that
during the lecture which was part of the school (which the instructors
didn't attend) the students were told that the fastest way to stop a car
is to lock up all four wheels!! Sheesh.
Many students obviously enjoyed the school, and learned a lot from it
(this was heavily dependant on instructor, of course -- if you have a
good instructor then the format of the school doesn't matter much.)
Perhaps my opinion of the school is colored by my own bad experience,
but I certainly feel that the people running the SFR school could have
learned a lot from seeing something like the Lotus West school.
--
...Akkana akkana@eeg.com
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