GGCBMWCCA April AutoX

Mileage: 91540
Excuse: rain, tires, suspension

I headed down to Marina for my first bimmer autox. It was a nice day when I departed Mountain View but as soon as I made it around the mountains the sky was full of clouds. Of course I left my semi waterproof jacket at home.

I helped setup the course (link to the map). It turned out to be more challenging than I initially expected. There were fast straightaways punctuated with wide turns that gave me just enough rope to hang myself picking my own line. There was some debate about the finish as we were laying it out. The finish of the course is always tricky to find the right compromise between wide open throttle fun and extra turns. Extra turns are fun too, but they take away from runway for a high speed finish. The slightly modified finish ended up as a tight right hand turn almost straight into a wall of cones across the finish line. I wasn't a big fan of the cone wall since I end up trying to carry as much speed as possible across the finish and came really close to plowing through the cones every time.

Prior to the autox I was concerned about the wear on my tires. The rear right one is getting pretty worn and is just about done. This is the same tire that had the bizarro inner wear when I first bought the car. I believe it's worn rear trailing arm bushings responsible for the excessive tire wear. So the plan is for new tires (probably Hankook z212's or Falken Azeni RT615's) and new RTABs.

Speaking of tires, there was a guy whose 325i had some horrible front tires that looked like slicks but upon close inspection were completely worn kumho MX's. They made me feel good about my tires. He had the misfortune of having a coolant hose blow off in the middle of a run, ending his day. I gave him a gallon of coolant that I lug around in my trunk just in case.

So back to autox. The bmw cca gives you 6 runs, which seems luxurious in comparison to the 3 runs at SCCA events. The crowd is more chill too. There is a much higher percentage of novice drivers with faster cars than they can handle. Yes, that's me too. I'm happy to say I was a little faster than a much better prepared m3 in the gonzo class. I progressively improved through the 6 runs, but still couldn't pull off a flawless one. I'd usually end up blowing a turn at the end of a fast section, understeering a ton, and slowing way down. The intermittent mist didn't help either. The course stayed relatively dry, but I could feel a difference on the runs when it was sprinkling.

After driving I grabbed my grub (they include lunch if you preregister) and hustled back home. I had to make it back in time to go up to SF for the beer festival.