racing again
(I wrote this a couple of weeks back, with the intent of coming back, polishing it up, and finishing, but I never did. So you'll just get what I had at the time...)
you may want to refer back to this post
If you're not interested in geeking out about cars and racing, you may want to just stop here.
I went racing again yesterday. Last fall, I did it in the Jetta, and earlier this spring I did a "school" in the M3, but this was the first real race in the M3. I was a little scared, it's a more intimidating car than the Jetta, and I was afraid I'd spin out and embarrass myself, but thankfully nothing like that happened. The other thing I was worried about was going horribly slow and having no excuse for it. When you're in a station wagon, and you're slow, you can blame it on the car. When you're in an M3, well, you can't blame the car.
So, anyhow, I was slow, but faster than last time. Last time, I was in last place out of 200 or so people, even correcting for the slowness of my car. This time I was #138 out of 170, and #40 out of 65 novices. (you get to be a novice for 7 or so events.)
One of the fun things to do when you're slow is see who was even slower than you were. I was faster than a 2002 M3, despite the fact that it had 90 or so more horsepower and better tires. I was faster than a 2007 Porsche 911 GT3, which made me a little sad. That car deserves better.
On the other hand, I was slower than a couple of bone stock Honda Civics (not even Civic Si's) and a Mazda Protege. But lets not dwell on this.
One of the challenges of autocrossing is just finding the right way through the course. Those cones come up pretty fast, and it isn't always obvious which side of them you're supposed to be on. I had some trouble last time with going the wrong way, and I was scared it would happen to me again.
It did. I did well for a little bit, then blew past a turn and had to turn around to get back going. I'm pretty sure I got the rest right, but while I was waiting for my second run, a worker came and told me I had gone off course "a couple of times", and did I want someone to ride along with me and show me the way. I was like, umm, yeah. So I got a rider, we went, and the second time was much better. After that, it was smooth sailing, other than nearly losing control near the finish at one point (but I caught it.) I kept on getting faster each run, which was pretty cool. In the end, I was nearly 6 seconds behind the winner of my class, in the same kind of car. In my defense, his car was fully prepped and professionally set up, but still, 6 seconds is a lifetime. I've got some work to do. :)
The other fun part of going to the races was taking pictures of cars. Last time I only had the cellphone camera, and that just won't do. This time, I came armed for bear. DSLR, 200mm zoom lens, big memory card. Set the camera on rapid fire and go. I had 300+ pictures in less than an hour.
three big albums of car pictures
(there was going to be more, but I'll just save it for the next post. stay tuned.)
you may want to refer back to this post
If you're not interested in geeking out about cars and racing, you may want to just stop here.
I went racing again yesterday. Last fall, I did it in the Jetta, and earlier this spring I did a "school" in the M3, but this was the first real race in the M3. I was a little scared, it's a more intimidating car than the Jetta, and I was afraid I'd spin out and embarrass myself, but thankfully nothing like that happened. The other thing I was worried about was going horribly slow and having no excuse for it. When you're in a station wagon, and you're slow, you can blame it on the car. When you're in an M3, well, you can't blame the car.
So, anyhow, I was slow, but faster than last time. Last time, I was in last place out of 200 or so people, even correcting for the slowness of my car. This time I was #138 out of 170, and #40 out of 65 novices. (you get to be a novice for 7 or so events.)
One of the fun things to do when you're slow is see who was even slower than you were. I was faster than a 2002 M3, despite the fact that it had 90 or so more horsepower and better tires. I was faster than a 2007 Porsche 911 GT3, which made me a little sad. That car deserves better.
On the other hand, I was slower than a couple of bone stock Honda Civics (not even Civic Si's) and a Mazda Protege. But lets not dwell on this.
One of the challenges of autocrossing is just finding the right way through the course. Those cones come up pretty fast, and it isn't always obvious which side of them you're supposed to be on. I had some trouble last time with going the wrong way, and I was scared it would happen to me again.
It did. I did well for a little bit, then blew past a turn and had to turn around to get back going. I'm pretty sure I got the rest right, but while I was waiting for my second run, a worker came and told me I had gone off course "a couple of times", and did I want someone to ride along with me and show me the way. I was like, umm, yeah. So I got a rider, we went, and the second time was much better. After that, it was smooth sailing, other than nearly losing control near the finish at one point (but I caught it.) I kept on getting faster each run, which was pretty cool. In the end, I was nearly 6 seconds behind the winner of my class, in the same kind of car. In my defense, his car was fully prepped and professionally set up, but still, 6 seconds is a lifetime. I've got some work to do. :)
The other fun part of going to the races was taking pictures of cars. Last time I only had the cellphone camera, and that just won't do. This time, I came armed for bear. DSLR, 200mm zoom lens, big memory card. Set the camera on rapid fire and go. I had 300+ pictures in less than an hour.
three big albums of car pictures
(there was going to be more, but I'll just save it for the next post. stay tuned.)
posted by Steve
1 Comments:
You have a great eye for photography. Too bad you can't make the car jump for a picture though!:-)
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