Cal Club Autocross Forums

Just wanted to give a shout out to Reed for a very good course design this weekend. With the crossover design he was able to create a fast, fun and challenging turn around that had many different elements to it. The showcase turn showed two different choices for drivers either taking it tight and tidy or being daring by carrying out to the wall and getting a better setup into the decreasing radius turn. The back turn around was all about setup and not being greedy coming out of the high speed sweeper. If you got too much of the yahoo factor exiting the right hander it would punish you on the hairpin turn around but if you were to give it up a little earlier and set up further to the right the turn around became much much easier. In all I felt it was a very good use of the limited space we now have at El Toro.

Steve O'Blenes

Yep, that!

Any course that has be vocally cursing my own mistakes, instead of the course, is a good course in my book!
"sh#$ BLEW THE BRAKING ZONE CRAP TURN TURN TURN AHHH MARBLES AAHHH!"

I concur! Great course in the limited El Toro space and good course speed as well, not wide open and not too tight.

Thanks guys, I definitely put a lot of hard work into coming up with something fresh and it looks like it paid off. I have to share the thanks with Mike Simanyi and the rest of my setup crew who helped it all come together in a such a short time!

What they all said. Major fun factor.... thanks, Reed and the crew.

I too thought it was pretty good, I just wish I'd had more than 1 shot at it. I guess I'm not ready for my Porsche Master Mechanic title just yet...

Also...From now on my first runs will be clean so I have 1 in the bank.

Yes Reed,

good job! And thank you to everyone!

Don't feel bad Sebastian, I spun my Miata 3/4 of my runs too. Yep, that green one was me, if anyone working that corner after the 3 cone slalom sees this, my apologies!

As I told you in person Reed, I too enjoyed the course and thought it was fun. Great way to show that reducing some of the top speeds and mixing things up doesn't mean that you can't still have a fun FLOWING course that appeals to a wide audience.

Only nit is holy DNF's for some folks

Chad-1stGen wrote:As I told you in person Reed, I too enjoyed the course and thought it was fun. Great way to show that reducing some of the top speeds and mixing things up doesn't mean that you can't still have a fun FLOWING course that appeals to a wide audience.

Only nit is holy DNF's for some folks

Yeah the DNF's were an unfortunate oversight for the first group. Adding some additional lay down cones around the gate at the end of the walloms pretty much fixed the issue.

Glad we ended this years El Toro run on a high note. Let's pray we get some more days next year!

I totally agree with all the kudos above. The course seemed so simple on both days, but that just set me up for identifying CLEARLY all the places I was screwing up. Awesome work by you Reed!

I honestly don't know what was causing the DNFs on Sunday, but I watched at least two people DNF on the very first cone on the course, so I laid down a couple extra pointer cones on the apex cone to make it hugely clear where the driving line was supposed to be, and Reed did the same at the gate after the walloms before the final turnaround.

Were there any other common DNF areas? I'd like to know so we can consider those carefully for future courses.

Mike

Mike Simanyi wrote:Were there any other common DNF areas? I'd like to know so we can consider those carefully for future courses.

In the first group, the gate/chute before the last turnaround at the end was probably a third to half of all the DNFs in that group.

Lauren Kane Porta wrote:

Mike Simanyi wrote:Were there any other common DNF areas? I'd like to know so we can consider those carefully for future courses.

In the first group, the gate/chute before the last turnaround at the end was probably a third to half of all the DNFs in that group.

Yeah that gate was the main culprit outside of drivers losing control and opting to DNF. With the extra pointers the number of DNFs was reduced drastically.

Another high note was the success of the crossover. I think I only noticed a handful of people having any missteps. We also did a good job with having our starters watch for a successful crossover before releasing the next car.

Thanks for the course guys! It was a great way to dip my foot into the SMF world with Hoosiers courtesy of Jordan and Matt. What a world it is!

Eyezack87 wrote:Thanks for the course guys! It was a great way to dip my foot into the SMF world with Hoosiers courtesy of Jordan and Matt. What a world it is!

It's never cheaper than that first hit...

As far as DNFs are concerned, In the 4th group there were several that happened in the first turn around at the exit chute. People would either drive around the outside of the chute or if they set up good and early they would actually go to the inside of the chute. There was also an occasional DNF before entering the crossover by missing hte last Pointer cone before the entry. Oh and one of the FSAE guys kept cutting across from the entrance to the slalom all the way to the showcase turn. I have no idea if he was doing that on purpose or just didn't realize it but he did every lap the same way.

I don't believe the DNFs were due to a difficult to read course but more about lack of walking the course. I Almost feel like w need to have a course walk sign off to verify everyone has seen the course before they can run lol. But then I would never be able to run.

Steve

Steve O'Blenes wrote:As far as DNFs are concerned, In the 4th group there were several that happened in the first turn around at the exit chute. People would either drive around the outside of the chute or if they set up good and early they would actually go to the inside of the chute. There was also an occasional DNF before entering the crossover by missing hte last Pointer cone before the entry. Oh and one of the FSAE guys kept cutting across from the entrance to the slalom all the way to the showcase turn. I have no idea if he was doing that on purpose or just didn't realize it but he did every lap the same way.

I don't believe the DNFs were due to a difficult to read course but more about lack of walking the course. I Almost feel like w need to have a course walk sign off to verify everyone has seen the course before they can run lol. But then I would never be able to run.

Steve

We'll keep that in mind as a lessons learned. We can always improve but making a course that's drive-able with no walk....

I know I take a lot of crap for always asking for directional lay-downs, but when I walk a course as SSS I'm not only looking for hazards to cars, I'm looking at readability from a novice point of view. I think I have a pretty good grasp of where to put them so they aren't near the driving line, leave a hole for the intentional DNF (too hot to make the element), and don't add to the visual noise out there. DNFs are a hazard to course workers so they have to be addressed by the SSS. We seem to have a lot of new folks coming out. Look at Leonard's novice walk on Sat. Last weekend's course was absolutely wonderful but yet it had a lot of DNFs. I think circumstances got the better of us. OTOH, we didn't have any off-roading or serious incidents. The showcase turn was a little too close to the start line, we all missed that, but overall it was a very safe course. Going forward I think we just need a little more attention to visuals while keeping in mind the "line" might be for national participants, but the course is for newbies.