THSCC Forums

300F, 400R, lowered until we got 2.5 degrees negative in the front. Rates were dictated mostly by what was available used. Much stiffer than that and the ride quality will suffer substantially.

Thanks to Miles, Patrice and Ryan (and of course all the other folks who help make it all work).

It's a shame it was a cold and windy day. Made working out on course or just walking around kinda suck. And Kevin is right. That mini was squeeling in an annoying pitch at every turn.

Driving in the morning was quite entertaining. Driving in 1A (course cleaning shift) meant damp to wet ashpalt with cold tires and too much weight and horsepower... Felt like driving in snow all over again. I ended up just deciding that it was really a drifting event and someone put the wrong sign out saying it was an autox

In warmer dry weather that site would be fun. I also agree we need to do a night event there. That would be cool. Not to mention having the guy let us use the building facilities was very nice.

I would trade Rockingham out and keep this site if possible.

Oh and thanks ladies! Hot drinks in the am and hot bugers in the pm was really nice. Thanks for standing there most of the day and bearing the uncomfortable weather.

Probably won't be complaining about the cold weather here this coming weekend. Since I'll be in Maine and undoubtedly freezing my.... eh, I'll be really cold

Graham

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http://www.greywinds.com

In my opinion, it's a close call. Rockingham basically offers the ability to design a better course for overlap and with a less confusing design for novices. The course we ran last weekend (while lots of fun!) wouldn't hold up very well for a regular points event.

Rockingham also has better logistics for grid and pits for a large event, and fewer hard things to hit. Both sites are uber expensive, but G'ville is a little cheaper. Rockingham is also a bit more of a "known quantity" in terms of what will be sitting on or near the lot when we get there.

IMO (and I'm NOT a VP next year!!!) G'ville is only a big asset because of the lights. If we're going to drive that far and spend that much, I think we'd be better off at the much cheaper Laurinburg.

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

For those that were there...

Do you think that we can get 120 drivers there and still have a good time? Would you be willing to pay extra if there are only 80 cars?

Scott

Why not? I have run several autocrosses that were multilap and there was not an overabundance of DNF's or lost people (Im not counting the SCCA New Bern "Figure 8" in this). Every course I have ran with the ODR SCCA crowd in Pungo has been multi lap, hell one was even 3 laps. Seemed to work fine for them.

I realize that I am VERY biased here seeing as I live near the site. I dont think its head and shoulders better than the Rock but it is indeed better. The grip seemed slightly worse in the morning and better in the afternoon compared to the Rock. This was with 40-50 degree temps, I think it will only get better during the summer.

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02 Focus SVT
STF 9

I think we would run in to problems if we ran 120 cars with Novices.

The grid setup worked great for 60 cars, but would not do so well with 120. If we pitted outside the fence and used the pit area as a grid, then it might be able to be pulled off.

I think the site should be limited to non-points events with a slightly higher entry fee, and lots of runs. As a plus, the pavement is easy on tires, so getting 7 or 8 runs there wouldn't eat up a set of tires.

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In need of car.

I've also run multi-lap events with other clubs and don't recall any significant issues. It just needs to marked clearly and there should be a good course map.

Based on season trophies, we have 70-80 members that can be counted on to make a trip regardless of the distance, that means we will need to fill another 40-50 slots with occasional members and non-members. Will the coastal SCCA people want to come out bad enough to fill an event? I'd assume so, but if it's the week before or after one of the events down there, then maybe not?

Scott

Perhaps the biggest problem in running 120 drivers at this site is the difficulty in getting any significant overlap. While multi-lap courses can be driven by novices without major problems, most of the cases where this is done regularly are events with a smaller number of drivers (like ODR).

How many people did we use to run through Morrisville with overlap?

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In need of car.

I measured overlap on that course for a while - 40-50 seconds typically, and there were no places for a worker to stand "inside" the course for cone shagging. That makes for a long day.

Something creative could probably be done to solve the overlap issue. I'm not smart enough to figure it out, though. Every time I think about running there next year, I just keep thinking how much more fun L'burg would be Can you tell I'm biased?

But I'm definitely up for figuring out how to run under the lights there.

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Mike Whitney
whit32@gmail.com, 919-454-5445
V10, V8, V8t, I6, I6, V6, F4t, I4, I4, I4, I4, I2, 1, 1

FYI I learned to autocross at a site near San Francisco (Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton). The site was approximately the size of the Greenville site with fences and light poles. It was common to run 300 cars with the run (note run not runs) consisting of one practice and two timed laps. Each lap would tend to be in the 20 to 30 second range with the official time being the total of the second and third lap. The timers were actually between the start point and the finish point (i.e. one timing line that was crossed multiple times by the cars). Overlap was handled by sending the overlap car out while the finishing car was at an appropriate point on its final lap. A flagman with green and checkered flags to signal a car to start and to let the drivers know when they could continue or needed to finish (the exit lane was after the finish line). The format was neat for cars with slicks because the tires would heat up during the practice lap. Course design always took into account the need to have a safe overlap point, just like we do with our courses. Courses could be designed to run clockwise, counter clockwise, or "figure eight". Note that one traditional event, with limited entry, was run in December and was called the Rubber Chicken Memorial Endurocross. It generally consisted of either 10 or 12 laps or 5 or 6 laps of "nested" courses (i.e. an inner course and an adjacent outer course) so that one time lap included essentially two laps of the parking lot. Great fun but tiring with a Datsun Z with no power steering. Even though the San Francisco folks used one timing line (for whatever reasons), there is no reason that our separated start and finish lines couldn't be used. The only advantage of one line (if the timers can handle it) would be split times. I remember ONCE in many years hearing my split announced when I was being conservative (trying to preserve a lead on a two day event) and realizing I was too slow. Managed to pick up my pace enough to preserve the win.

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Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

In regard to Mike's worker safety comment. At the site I mentioned the worker stations were at safe places inside the course, even when crossover/figure eight designs were used. I'll try to find out what the lot dimensions were if I happen to have an old course map or can get the info from people still out there to verify my memory about relative size.

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Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

I like variety and did really enjoy Coastal's event with the multiple laps. I believe they ran 100 plus cars with four runs that day. There were 5 novices to every experienced driver there

I actually miss Morrisville.

As for Laurinburg..it is not utopia. We run the same course there 90% of the time over the last four years. I am not complaining. Hell, a little 4 banger runs in the top 10 raw times there all the time. But, when many of the club members are faced with sites like VMP, Rockingham, etc they freak because now you really have to use the looking ahead concept. Laurinburg is great in the spring and fall. In the middle of the summer it is hot, sticky and bugs eat you alive. And the last event, Laurinburg smelled a lot worse than Rockingham

One cool thing this club has going for it is the wide variety of sites we have avaialble. We need to work to maintain those sites. Let's not become NASCAR and end up running the same course all the time.

Maybe with a new bus that goes over 55 mph, we can go back to VMP?

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Jim Pastorius
2008 Silverado VortecMax
1992 Camaro CMC#92
2002 BMW R1150R

2009 3rd Place CMC Mid-Atlantic Championship
2009 CMC Hyperfest Winner

First of all I'd like to say thanks for Miles for working to make this site available to us and thanks for Ryan for finding it. I'd also like to thank all those who helped setup in the rainy and cold, good work guys. This was a great event except for the November like weather (imagine that cold weather in November?)

I think it has great potential for future events. The multilap format I don't think will be a problem for novices. It can be confusing but usually most people figure it out pretty quickly. We ran about 60 cars and got 7 runs in even with the 40-45 second overlap. While the overlap time will go up with more novices I am pretty confident that we could run 120 cars there without major issues. This is especially true since we could run into the night if needed. I do think we would have to pit some cars outside the fence to make it work but that isn't a show stopper either.

It does have some safety concerns but I think with intelligent course planning these can be over come. The safety issues I see are: small patches of off camber that lead to drainage grates, finishing towards the building, workers on the edge of the course crossing the course to shag cones in the center.

The grip level was pretty bad early on at this event but I felt it constantly improved throughout the day. I feel that with warmer temperatures the site would have more grip that Rockingham. I also thought the grip level was very consistant once we ran enough runs to clean the course off.

Someone asked about how Morrisville used to work. I think we used to limit that event to 100-110 but that was mostly due to pit space constraints. The courses there were only 25-30 second range if I remember right.

I'm looking forward to using this site again in the future.

Shawn

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OK so I'm back in. Now which tire should I buy??

Regarding the possibility of running 120 cars at the Greenville site, I think we would have to significantly shorten the course to get the launch interval low enough to run that many cars. Keep in mind our launch intervals at other sites are typically ~30 seconds, resulting in 2 or 3 cars on course at a time. At Greenville, we basically had one car on course at a time, resulting in 45-50 second average launch interval. Not a big problem since we had only 55 drivers (w/7 timed runs each). If we had 120 drivers, we would've only gotten 3 runs each in the same amount of time.

While it was an excellent course design and definitely a lot of fun, I agree w/Chuck about some of the "concerns" w/ the Greenville site - slick surface and small area surrounded w/fences and a building (very little runoff area) increases risk of damage. As I walked the course, I had flashbacks of John Kerfoot's "off" at Morrisville a few years back. (For those that weren't there, he lost brakes, jumped a curb and wedged himself "under" a chain link fence.)

It's AWESOME having additional site options and not wanting to be a "wet blanket" either, but if I had to choose and site costs were the same, I'd easily rather drive the 1-1/2 hours to run at the more open Rockingham or Laurinburg sites than at Greenville.

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Keith Q.
2008 Top Gun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmX8XuZ_DCo&NR=1