>In the optional direction slalom, what line do you feel was fastest ?
They were both optional. I believe inside on both was best. The rest of my
remarks assume that you meant the first slalom.
>It seemed to me, taking the inside line on the first cone allowed you to
>eliminate an extra turn, but required a tight inside line on the next
>sweeper.
That line wasn't really tight due to the corner opening up quite a bit. See
below.
>I noticed some people were taking the outside line, maybe because
>they were wide around the corner leading to it, or maybe because they
>planned to take that line.
I think you're right, and wouldn't care to guess at the relative
percentages. If you didn't plan ahead, I can see how it would be awkward to
set up inside. And I saw a number of people automatically walk the outside
slalom line because that's the "typical" way to do them.
>This would allow you to late apex the sweeper, but was it worth
>the extra effort going around the last slalom cone?
Why do we late apex turns? In order to get better acceleration and higher
exit speed. Where did that sweeper lead? Directly into another slalom
which most cars had to brake for.
My answer was "no". I planned (after the second course walk) to set up
inside coming off the tight right/left esses. Accomplishing this let me go
to the inside of the first slalom easily and under full acceleration. It
turned the first slalom into a one-cone pivot, from which I set a tight
inside (short) line around the sweeper. In turn this set up perfectly the
entrance to the second slalom (on the inside as well).
The one time I didn't handle the esses properly and got wide, I wasn't able
to accelerate hard to the outside of the first slalom's first cone anyway
due to surface conditions, and because I couldn't carry enough speed out of
those turns there was no need to be out there.
BTW, this whole sequence was an EXCELLENT example of how you often have to
"work backwards" in figuring out what you need to do to get to where you
need to be!
I know there's a strong contingent that disapproves of optional slaloms -
the most common expression I hear is "guessing game". I never looked at it
that way - to me one of the more interesting parts of autox is line
selection, and picking your slalom line doesn't seem any different than the
other choices we have to make...
KeS
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