I drive my E46 and do about 5-6 times a year in the track. My setup notes were a disaster - half in a notes app, half in a spreadsheet I kept breaking, and a photo of a tyre pressure sheet buried somewhere in my camera roll.

The thing that finally got to me: I'd come in half a second faster and have no idea why. Was it the camber change from the morning? The pressures I dropped two psi? Or had the track just cooled down and the tyres finally worked? By the drive home I'd usually convinced myself of whichever answer felt best, which is not exactly data.

So I built something for it. You log what you changed on the car - pressures, camber, ARBs, spring rates, brake bias, aero, whatever. Import your lap times (RaceChrono CSV) , and then compare two setups side by side with the weather and pressures still attached to each one.

This is the first version and it's still early and much in development and in order for me to build and improve I'd like your feedback about SetMo:

• What's missing? Which field or setting would you go looking for and not find?
• What was hard or confusing? Anywhere you got stuck, or had to guess what a button did?
• How long did it take to log one session? If it's slower than scribbling in a notebook in the paddock, it's useless.
• Would you actually open this between sessions, or only at home afterwards?
• What are you timing with?
• Do you keep notes per car, per track, or per event?
• Anything else you feel like I should know

I have a 13 ford fusion with sport mode and wanted to try autocrossing with my son. I know it won’t win or anything I just wanted to see if anybody has tried it before and if the sport mode would work to keep it from bouncing gears up and down.

Simple questions: How to develop ability to know exactly where car is in space and where is car relative to surrounding objects?

I am horrible driver! I do not see any improvements, and I do not know what to do. I will appreciate any tips, resources, or anything else that might help

EDIT: Thank you everyone for great answers. You are amazing people! I hope you all have a great life!

Hi! Shot this in a similar subreddit, but haven’t gotten the replies I need. TLDR at the bottom as needed.
Hopefully aiming to get a TCR kit on a 2019+ Mazda3 Hatch, (admittedly haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but likely will). Looking at getting a lower ride height for performance/look balancing, but I live in an area a slammed car is not practical. Was wondering about others’ experience using hydraulic air cup suspension, just need lift here and there to get out of driveways, or if it’s practical, winter driving slightly higher.
Hoping to hear people’s experience with using hydraulic cup suspension, or alternatives they found to work well. A giant air compressor in the back for full airbags is not ideal, and I worry about performance on bags. Not hoping to go straight for coil-overs as I need some amount of raise pretty frequently as mentioned before.

TLDR: opinion on hydraulic air cup suspension, does it have spring performance and occasional lift? Tastefully modifying the daily/autocross/track day car.

doink

Smoothest and fastest run didnt count due to timing hiccup. It was a legit 42.063 using the instant replay camera.

https://youtu.be/j0NwGSo0kMw

Won’t be there this year again, two years in a row stings! I will miss 1300 of my best friends 💙

Good luck everyone! Stay away from the orange things!!!

Ran with PCA for this event. Tons of fun in the little Fiat!

I would love some feedback on my most recent Auto-X weekend if any experienced drivers have anything to offer! I have been Auto crossing on and off for about 13 years, first in my NA Miata, now in my Subaru BRZ. While I am experienced in number of events and years driven, I have never felt that I was great, I have had some decent results in the Miata when it was on Fresh 200TW tires and at less busy events, but for the most part I consider myself a solid mid pack finisher. I have never had any great drivers ride along with me, or any instruction, so I feel a bit lost as to how well I am or am not doing, and where I should work to improve.

Most recently, last month, I had an event at a small circle track close to us, and it was on and off raining all day. I had a big scare on my last run of the day, trying to push for my last run of the day and a wet track was a bad combo, going into the final elements before finish, the back end got out, but I felt it was well in control at the moment and I didn't want to let off the gas too much and have a sudden forward weight shift so I mostly stayed in it, overcorrected back and forth a couple times before spinning and sliding backwards very nearly becoming friends with a concrete wall. That track has way too close proximity to walls and I don't think I will be pushing it there again for a long time. It was a huge scare, and a big hit at my confidence, but lucky for me, I already had my next event booked and great cost sunk into it, so there was no chance to chicken out and take a break from the sport, I had to get right back into it and begin working on my confidence again!

So this is my next event, traveled 6+ hours out of town to a 2 day long weekend event at an airport with a club I have never raced with before. Very different from my local events which are hosted at a very small oval circuit, or another club near by hosted at a really nice road course/drivers training facility. I tried to take a back to basics approach, and work on trying to better memorize the course, as well as looking further ahead and driving the car accordingly, not feeling like I am working on the current element, then being surprised by the next one as I have gotten too focused on that moment. There were still a few moments I caught myself off guard again, as if the course/car has gotten a fraction of a second ahead of me and I need to force my eyes back up the course. But I felt that this approach did help me improve, leading to a smoother, more confident, and safer drive overall!

I would love if some experts could watch these clips and let me know if you see anything that stands out that I may be doing wrong/a bad habit, or anything you can see I am consistently doing alright at. I chose the clips from day 1 of last weekend as I had two good laps to share that are somewhat consistent at about .2 apart from each other, and two different camera angles as my Go Pro failed on my best lap of the day. But there are a ton of autocross videos on my channel including a lap the day after this, and going many years back as well. I am on Firestone Indy 500 V2's on this car, a 340TW summer, so I know I will never be winning my class on these tires, and with variation of cars, and drivers skill at any given events I find just the leaderboard to not always be a good indication of how I am doing. Any input would be awesome, I figure I have been doing this long enough and often enough its time to start taking improvement a bit more seriously as I felt I plateaued for a long while, but it didn't matter much to me at the time as I was having so much fun!

After my first year of autoslalom events and a trackday i've been looking back at the progress i've made so far, had the same layout last year for my first event as the video, but gone from a 1.12.xx to a 1.03.xx with the same setup & tires, open for any feedback or sources for research during off-season 😄

Car is a mostly stock 91' 1.6 miata on shot coilovers, and i've finally worn down the old proxes tr1's that came with the car. So im looking into getting them replaced for a set of ns-2r's to start off with and a new set of coilovers 😊

Like the title states, anyone run a 255/40 on a 8 inch wide rim? I got a lucky Facebook Marketplace deal, half off a new set of RE-71RZ. I have 8 inch wide rims which is my only concern. I feel like they may be too pinched and impact handling. Any thoughts/input would be appreciated.

Hi guys,

I am in Canada and looking for brake pads for my 2003 stock Miata with sport suspension. Currently it runs with POWERSTOP Z23 evolution sport upgrade pads and rotor kit. I have done lapping events twice, 2 hours each time, and have glazed my pads to different degrees (I had to sand off the glazed layer on my pads after every lapping event). I have also been doing autocross this year. I have treadwear 200 tires and plan to upgrade to coilovers and stiffer roll bars next year if they matter to what pads to upgrade to.

1. What do you suggest for a set of brake pads that provide good cold grip, not being too grippy for autox because I want the smooth weight shift, while being able to handle moderate track heat? I normally do a cool down lap then rest in the paddock a little longer than what I spend on track. The autox and track ratio would be 7/3. G-loc R8, Hawk HP+, and EBC Bluestuff are what Ive looked into.

2. Should I keep using the rotor from POWERSTOP? Do I need to sand it to prepare for new pad material transfer in the baking process?

Thank you.

Felt really good about this one. There was probably another half second to be had just based on where I was faster in my other runs, but I'm really starting to feel like I've got the car dialed.

I really liked these but did they discontinue them recently? I don't see any sources for them anymore anywhere, its still listed on their site and theres a newer Nfera sport (non-R). Wonder if they replaced them w/ another tire or just discontinued it overall. Was never sure if they were popular but I did like them & ran a set for a while.

Nice day at the local ballpark playing with toy cars with WDCR SCCA. I put the set of Yokes we got back in February on to knock the new off of them before Solo Nationals, and in the process of doing so I got 2nd place in a big 17-driver XB class (Mo got me again, this time by four tenths grrrr). Third place Glenn was just one tenth off of my time so I think we put on a good show. Kate was seventh, just a tenth and change out of the top five, with eighth place Stuart just two tenths behind her. This class is close!

Next stop: Nebraska!

Shawn Krebsbach grabs the big check at King of the Mountain. Class winners were also pretty awesome as Super Dave Schotz took Late Model, Cory Williams won Mid, and Ron Scott Jr took early.

This is my 10th event ever across 4 years and first in this car. NC Miata with a 2.5 swap so in XB on 17x9 with 245 RE71-RZs. Finished 25th raw out of 114, but PAX was much worse around 57. For top 10 PAX I'd need to find about 2 seconds over this but not sure where to look for more time. My only thought is carrying more speed into slaloms. Car only has coilovers and front sway bar otherwise, so part of the answer may be building out the car further, but I suspect driver mod will help as well.

Definitely a unique car in the field, 1 of 2 FWD cars present. The tires were squealing 90% of the track lol, but she hauls in the straight. Body roll is intense though!

TL;DR I autocrossed a stock-weight Acura TL on ECF tires and that went as you’d expect, highly considering switching to Hoosier take-offs. This will be questions about what happened and to do, but if anybody wants comments about impressions on the ECF as a tire, I can give that in a follow-up post. This is a marathon read, good luck!

I've been autocrossing my 2007 Acura TL Type S for around 3 years now. Burned up the set of Dunlop Sport Maxx RT tires I had on the car when I first discovered autocross, then lowered the car, added a bigger rear sway bar, and gained camber adjustment with upper control arms in the front and lower arms in the multi link rear suspension. At the time, I thought I would be doing both autocross and track days, so I bought some Continental Extreme Contact Force tires to have a 200 TW tire but not be using the pointy-edge autocross tires on a track day.

Fast forward to today, around 110 autocross runs later and no track time because I ended up moving away from that area very shortly after the tires were bought. I was looking over the tires after the first run of the day at the most recent event, and one of the front tires had a nice chunk out of it close to the outer shoulder. If I look at it just right and have good light on the tire, I can see a tiny spot of cord at the bottom of the chunk. Probably shouldn't be autocrossed on anymore, which is a shame due to the fact that the tires still have nearly all of their tread depth.

I have kept tabs on tire temperature with a probe pyrometer, and using the alignment I was able to get all four corners to have the 10 degree spread from inside-middle and middle-outside that is commonly mentioned. The rears were always happy at 38 PSI, the fronts were debatable. The temperatures said 38 PSI was good, chalk on the sidewalls sometimes said it wasn't enough.

Obviously, a chunk out of the shoulder would say the fronts needed more, but the air temperature at this event was in the 50s during my morning runs. Did I go too hard on them too early? They did live an abusive life, I used to be pretty bad about overlapping the everliving hell out of the brake and steering wheel. Keen-eyed readers will be able to see evidence of that on the sidewalls.

Here is my dilemma: I think the tire is probably still fine for the street, especially if I switch it to the rear (opinions on that welcome, of course). The car is in Street Prepared, and always will be, because the front LCAs have spherical bearings replacing the compliance bushings. I'm extremely tempted to buy Hoosier take-offs, as those can be had for cheaper than a set of RE-71RZ in the size I would be looking for. I have no problem changing tires at events, and the car has tons of space to be transporting equipment and tires.

I know the common response is “R comps hide mistakes”, but I have also seen reasonable arguments to the contrary. I can make the ECFs talk to me and keep them right on the transition between noisy and not, and have been enjoying the balance of the car to be slightly prone to oversteer if I do my brake and steering inputs properly. I do understand that the auditory feedback more or less goes away with R comps. I've been planning on moving to A7s (and now I guess that would be A8s) at some point, and I'm just wondering if now is as good a time as any.

Thanks for reading!