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Re: South Course was Car, North Course was Driver?

To: Jkinser77@aol.com, cblome@yahoo.com, autox@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: South Course was Car, North Course was Driver?
From: "Arthur Emerson" <vreihen@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 17:05:40 GMT
Jkinser77@aol.com wrote:
>
>Many roadracing people did well on the south course, people
>who were used to high speeds...and if your car was the powert
>car with losts of torque and power, they did well.

In my humble [and humbled] opinion, the reason that the
road racers did so well on the south course was more a
function of the width of the course than anything else.
Many of the key features of that course were so wide
that they might as well have been on a road course, and
the drivers that were used to picking their own race
lines (NOT autocross lines) and using the whole racing
surface were right at home.  Those of us who regularly run
courses with narrow gates "herding" everyone onto the only
possible line were obviously at a disadvantage, because
we weren't accustomed to thinking about our options like that.

On Thursday morning, Mister C-Stock (Ken Frey) and I had
a discussion in the paddock about how our local courses
here in the NY Metro area were a handicap to our drivers
at Nationals.  Looking at our regional autocross clubs
and sites, most run "transition" courses.  The Miata guys in
NNJR have forgotten how to make sweepers at Englishtown, hint
hint.  The only courses that I've seen locally this year that
even remotely resembled the Nationals courses were all at Nassau
Coliseum, and it's unfortunate that NYR's limited number of
events there seemed to conflict with ProSolos or other big events
on this coast.  The course that NYR ran yesterday was really fun,
and an average of the north + south courses from Topeka.  It's
really sad that I just figured out on Tuesday that I don't
know how to drive the entry to a fast sweeper after 6 years,
mostly because we don't see them every week locally. :-(

I'm still at a loss to explain how Katie Elder was clocked on
radar at 64 MPH on the back straight in Grainger's Type-R, my
submarine was on the rev limiter at 46 knots for half that same
straight, yet the U-107 was 0.7 seconds faster on the event
timer despite being 11 MPH slower on the fastest part of the
course.....

-Arthur ("The most photographed car in Topeka" edition.)

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