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Well since Miles broke the seal I will put forth my take on the event. First let me say I think the chairs and all the people who helped with set up did a great job. That being said I couldn't agree more with Miles about the Laurinburg site. Its huge and usually allows for long, quick courses. Many people look forward to events there just to drive the sweeper in whatever form it takes. Granted I despise turnarounds, probably because I have never done on I felt good about, but that is why I look forward to the Laurinburg events, and why I don't mind the drive. Again I nothing but positive things to say about the workers and event chairs and how smoothly the event went, with 5 runs and all. Just my $.02

Adam

Although I just started autocrossing with the club this year I have to say that even though I enjoyed the course at laurinburg I was dissapointed that it wasnt a longer course like the one at the beginning of the year. I did the novice school at the last laurinburg event which was my introduction to autocross. I was unable to run the event that sunday but was there for part of the day and got some time in as a passenger. I did the school again this past weekend and I was really looking forward to sunday after doing sanford, rocky mount and rockingham, I was anxious to get on the long fast of laurinburg. Just thought I'd give my opinion even though I'm always happy to get out on any course because any autocross is better than no autocross. Also thanks to the organizers of both the school and the event sunday. I thought both went really well.

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'88 bmw 535is
'98 honda civic ex

Dissenting opinion time...

I loved the course, and here's why.

I have trouble with turnarounds, and there were two of them for me to screw up at first, then nail a couple of times.

I have trouble telling how fast a course is going to be when walking it. This one was really deceptive to me, and I realized that it was a lot faster than it looked, after I drove it timidly a few times.

Sometimes I can be impatient in tight slaloms, and there were a couple of tight slaloms, with one being super-tight.

I liked the change to the different location - there are only so many times you can run the same configuration without wanting to see something new. Plus, the guys didn't have to design the course around the craters, like at the other end. And workers didn't have to walk ten miles to get to their stations.

Just my thoughts on the upside...

Truly the reasons for locating the course where it was are:

1. LOTS of people were complaining on Saturday about being bored with the more "normal" Laurinburg course

2. The good pavement didn't extend significantly further in either direction

3. Making the course much longer in either direction would have massively hurt crossover times/event flow. As it was, the crossover was already 35-40 seconds.

Please keep the constructive criticism coming! I like to know what people like and dislike about courses I'm involved with. That's how the next course will improve.

--Kevin H.

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2003 WRX (again!)

I agree with Kevin, I enjoyed the course, it was difficult and challenging. The layout was spectator and competitor friendly.

Now I dont know if the club wants to run a course like this everytime at L' burg. I got to have my high speed sweeper/ "P" section fix at least once in a season, but why not spice it up a bit and use the site to its fullest extent.

If the powers that be decide to continue to run the "new" area I bet the course design will get better and better. Kinda like the RBC, the more events we run there, the better courses get, IMHO.

Just my .02 cents

Ryan Holton

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02 Focus SVT
STF 9

I personally like different and challenging courses, but like Miles I personally prefer more open stuff with more "thrill" aspect than with the
"precision" element.

With that said, I firmly believe that the course did violate several course design principles that I believe our club should strive for:

1. Minimize cone quantities: Making a cone-intensive course like Sunday's causes havoc among workers, red flag situations, and stresses timing out. Why have 5 cones when 2 or 3 will do?

2. Let people "hang themselves with the line" rather than by hitting cones: Good drivers will be fast, bad drivers will be slow. Why make slow drivers hit more cones? See the reasons in #1 above.

3. Course variety: As Miles said, Laurinburg is the only place that allows us to make 1 mile long, fast, safe courses. I believe we should take advantage of that every time we go there.

So, essentially, if Sunday's course was at Sanford, and there were 3/4 the number of cones used (even without making it any more open!), it would have gotten a 9.0/10 from me. (Hey, never seen a 10/10 course )

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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

This is exactly how I feel. I personally end up having a hard time building up speed on a course if I feel like screwing up will give me a high cone count. I think that having cones on my first two runs caused me to not push as hard on my third run (I had to leave early so no 4th and 5th for me). I know that others don't have this problem, but for me I "fear the cones". I would much rather have room to explore and find the correct line.

Regardless, I had a good time on Sunday. I enjoyed something new at Laurinburg (but still missed "The P"). I also have nobody but myself to blame for not doing better than I did.

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Richard Casto
1972 Porsche 914
2013 Honda Fit Sport
2015 Honda Fit EX
http://motorsport.zyyz.com
Money can't buy happiness, but somehow it's more comfortable to cry in a Porsche than a Kia.

I'd also agree that I like going to Laurinburg because I look forward to the bigger courses. The fast sweepers are great and we get to use the boost a lot because of the speed. You can't please everybody all the time and I'm no exception.

I think the "normal" setup allows for three cars on course with not much overlap. The times are around the 50-60 second range like this past weekend but we cycle more cars through at once. However we did get 5 runs this past Sunday so I've no complaints there!

I do agree that mixing it up is good though. Having different course designers do pretty much what they want is the key IMO. Safety is the primary concern of course, but barring that I say let the designers run with it. Why waste your time being an event chair if you can't do it the way you want?

So if the event chairs did Laurinburg the way they wanted I have no problem with it. It wasn't my favorite, but other courses that others disliked I may have loved. The event chairs took their time to design and setup a course for the rest of us to enjoy. If you didn't like it, chair an event and do it the way you want (if the officers approve it).

I do think new ideas from "new blood" would benifit the club at our events. Kind of like when Mike started the night series. For instance I'd like to see us run a two day event in Laurinburg and run the course backwards on day two. Or have day one be an all fun day with the proceeds going to charity and the second run backwards for points. Something a little different is fun every once in a while.

Disclaimer: This message in no way was intended to slight the officers of our club that work very hard so the rest of us can play. I think they all do a great job even when I don't agree with every decision they make. I never been involved in a more professional group of folks.....bar none.

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Vincent Keene
'06 Ford Mustang GT (track rat)
'15 Dodge Charger R/T (yeah, it's got a HEMI!)
'07 Ford Fusion SE (205,000 miles and counting)
'98 Chevy Z-24 (retired)
'93 Acura Integra (Team SWB 24HOL Car)

While I agree *in general*, I think that the occasional course like this is very good. One reason is based on Richard's comment...some people are worried about hitting a cone versus hitting five. They know they shouldn't be, but they are anyway. A course like this gives you the opportunity to work on ignoring that fear as it is baseless. The reason I say that is rarely do you see (at least at larger local events and definitely not divisional or national events) anyone win with "only" one cone. You hit one, that run is blown. So why worry about one versus five? Put the car on the edge. If you go too far, you lose that run. It shouldn't matter if you lose it by one cone or five.

As for worker havoc, well, it didn't look *that* bad to me. Sure, working that cone intensive slalom could be annoying, but I've seen that same kind of thing at national events, too. I don't recall any red flag situations. As for timing, well, I worked raw sheets for a heat (my first time) and didn't see anything about the course that made it stressful over any other course. Of course, had we been launching cars every 20 seconds you would have *definitely* been correct on all the above counts. But we weren't...

So why have five when two will do? Because at any level of this sport you might see that. I'd hate to see this club have "rules" (spoken or otherwise) that dictate these kinds of things.



I guess to me the answer to the above is what makes solo2 different from solo1. Lose the line in solo1? Slow. Lose it in solo2, usually you hit cones. Doesn't have to be, but the occasional highly punishing course isn't a bad thing in itself. Keyword there is "occasional", so we probably aren't really arguing much here.



I've only done Tarheel events at the RBC and Laurinburg, so this "change" wasn't huge to me. It sounds like, however, that the above is the single best reason to stay with the longer course configuration. That said, having helped setup the test and tune a few weeks back at Laurinburg and having helped setup the Intermediate school course this past weekend, I *can* see why some folks were complaining about running the "same" course layout on Saturday as was mentioned previously. While there is a lot of concrete there, there is a lot of it that can't be used, unfortunately. It's heaved very bad in some places causing what would be jumps were we to use it, which strictly limits course variety. So in a sense, I see both sides of the fence, but I do agree that we should probably run the long course most of the time there.

I would hate to see flexibility taken from course designers (though I do agree in sticking with SCCA guidelines). And there will certainly be no perfect course for everyone! (My car pushed like a dump truck if I was even the slightest bit still turning when I hit that asphalt section. Ugh!)


--Donnie

There's the problem. The other unwritten "rule" is - design a course for a MAXIMUM 20 second overlap. This course was 40-45 and I was very worried about that at the beginning of the day.

Short overlap is the best way to build flexibility in the day. Sure, we haven't had any disasters recently that would eat up an hour or two of run time, but we're long overdue for something.

We got lucky that everything went well. Doesn't everyone remember the events where we have had hours of downtime due to timer problems? Or people having heat stroke? We need to always have at least an hour or two of slop in the schedule to accomodate that.



Nah, we're not going to be making any rules any time soon. It's just that we're customer driven, and most of our customers want less cones, both for driving and working purposes. You're very far in the minority if you occasionally want to see 5 cones where 2 will do.

That's the nice thing about being independent -- we can do things the right way instead of how the SCCA does things.

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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

Okay, time for a few follow up comments.

I think Jim and Kevin recognize that this is not a whining session but just a place to air a variety of opinions. And I for one, was very appreciative of the hard work these guys put into this event. Jim's back must still be sore from all that weedeating! My hat's off to both of you.

I have to clarify a few things. The course was not a bad course. I liked all of it except for the section coming back after the first turn around where it just go so busy. And that was because *I* wasn't a good enough driver to figure it out and really see it clearly.

If we took this course and made it an Evolution Phase 2 course, it would be an incredible teaching tool. Why? Because I've not seen a THSCC course in recent memory that required you to look five gates ahead. I'm serious. On the way back, I think you really had to look that far ahead to get it right coming back. The other skill which was emphasized was patience. You had to have patience for that super tight slalom coming back. I got behind one run there and had to just about park the car to unscramble my mistake. Yet another thing that was required was rapid speed adjustments from one section to the next.

The above are all essential skills and I think that course would make a really good intermediate school course. Practice looking ahead, speed changes, patience and early throttle application. That's what it's all about.

I liked the uneven first turnaround. That was a nice touch. It's too bad the weeds on the left side were there, because I would have been tempted to drive out there... but I probably didn't need to. I liked the feel of the crossover. That was kinda neat.

I am glad that Jim and Kevin broke the seal on getting us down there to use that part of the runway. I'm sure we'll be back.

That being said though, I missed the higher speed, more open courses we were used to seeing at Laurinburg, and really only at Laurinburg. We can have open courses as Sanford but it isn't quite the same since grip level is lower.

I think Jim P. should chair the advanced school next year and use a very similar course design.

Miles

I really liked the course. C'mon folks, we've been running Laurinburg for years, and with a little luck we'll continue to for many more years to come. We don't need every course to be a mile of 3rd gear sweepers- let's mix it up a bit! We did still get to run on the concrete, and nicer concrete at that.

I also liked the features. I thought the L-shaped feature was really cool, and I thought making the slalom out of groups of 5 cones was a great idea. Those are the kinds of things you see at National events. And whether or not you think we should try to be like the SCCA or avoid being like the SCCA, anyone who's interested in getting really good at the sport is going to eventually have to start running SCCA National events- that's just the way it is.

Now the 25-cone slalom was too tight, but the event chairs were the first to admit that, and chalked it up to it being so late when they finished laying out the course that they did not get a chance to pre-run it (next time, when you Monday-morning event chairs get the job for real, and work till dark laying out the course, then you can enjoy the criticism of the other Monday-morning event chairs for your hard work!)

Getting back to the course design, one problem I have with our club's designs is they're all made up of the same 5 basic elements put together in different ways: slaloms, offsets, lane changes, turnarounds, and Chicago Boxes. There's only so much creativity possible if that's all you feel you have to work with. So I was really happy to see someone lay out something different for a change.

And I really liked the fact that the section after the 1st turnaround required you to really look ahead. We preach it all the time, but here was a case where you'd know in just an instant whether you were really doing it or not. It was a fast section -- if you could keep your vision up and the hammer down! If not, I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been. But I'm getting a sense from some of the comments I'm reading!

My conclusion? I think it was, overall, my favorite of all the courses I've run this year!

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

I was worried about that at the beginning, too, but we got five runs in and still had time left. *shrug*



Where did I say anything about the SCCA? Yes, you might see that kind of thing at national events, but you might also see it with other local clubs, too. Maybe "level" was poor choice of words, but I was actually thinking more along the lines of the really crappy courses that many of the other "inferior" clubs around will have. Not that this course was in that league (I liked it!), but I've heard stories (and seen one) where there were tons of first gear downshifts and walls of cones to hit everywhere.

I suppose your point could be "who cares, this is THSCC and most of us want it *this* way." Which is fine, I guess. I was just trying to put a positive on the fact that this course wasn't what many may have liked to see.

As a sidenote, the anti-SCCA sentiment within the club is definitely alive and well. I guess I hope I never understand it.


--Donnie

All though i prefer sweepers to tight courses, i liked the challenge. I also want to improve my skills at autocrossing and with the switch up in course design it is helping me further my skills. Everyone wants to get better and by running different styles it builds on what we all ready know and we can then apply that to the overall picture of autocross. There is different aspects of it and when i find all of them and apply them all together then that will make me a good autocrosser.

For the most part I think you'll find that anit-SCCA sentiment is largely tongue in cheek. Mostly I think it's one of those friendly rivalry things.