Carl Fisher wrote:
I hope you will be able to give yourself at least a year to just learn the various skills you will need, and not focus on being competitive right away.
Perhaps that's why it's so rare for there to be a Novice trophy available...
When I try to decide whether or not to focus on competition in my first year, the main question is: I only get one chance at the Novice trophy - will it be the best chance I ever get to win any trophy?
I might or might not ever achieve enough skill to run with the leaders, and I might or might not improve faster than average. If I improve faster than average, but never get really good, Novice might be the best, and last, chance I ever have. However, even if that's the case, my chances could be blown if there's someone in Novice this year who has more experience with other sorts of fast driving than I do and/or a car that's better within its PAX class than mine. There's nothing I can do about someone with more experience, but there are things I could do to improve my car within its PAX class - starting with putting on Autocross tires.
That's where my analysis ended previously. Now I need to take into account your point, Carl, that if I focus too much on winning the Novice trophy it could interfere with my ultimately achieving enough skill to win other trophies later. It does seem important to keep gaining skill in general as my top priority.
The main thing still making me hesitate to "give up" on the Novice trophy is that I already know I have the tendency to improve quickly when gaining a new skill. I've been told many times in many activities that I get better amazingly fast. My experience in Autocross so far seems to follow that trend, as far as I can tell: after two events with 14 runs, I ended with a PAX time 9.1 seconds from 1st, 4.7 seconds from the 1st Novice. (Although, the learning curve is too steep at the start to really know if that means anything yet.)
Also, I'm reasonably confident that I won't get discouraged too easily; I certainly won't give up on Autocross just because I don't start winning immediately. At least I'm thinking realistically: I don't
expect to win Novice, no matter how hard I try. I have good reasons to expect that I'll get better faster than most people, starting from the same point in the same amount of time, but that's not enough to win - there are too many other factors involved. So don't worry, I honestly don't think disappointment will drive me away (at least not for many years).
Overall, it sounds like I need to take advantage of the Novice help as much as possible, remember to pay more attention to learning than to winning, and find out whether the less-linear behavior of R-compound tires is or isn't going to give me trouble.
Hmm... it seems like spinning out once, or twice at most, would give me an indication of the limits of my tires - after which I'd have 2-5 more runs to make one fast time. But that's assuming I don't waste other runs on things like being too cautious or picking the wrong line. Also, if I change tires for next season, I'll be throwing away the experience I gained at my first two events - I do feel as though I picked up some skill at moving the rear end around by letting it skid...
Still, a lot of people change tires between seasons - that's what T&T is for. I wonder if I should try to borrow a car with R-compound tires before the first points event, or if one drive (particularly when it's cold) wouldn't tell me enough to make a difference.
(Sorry for rambling on.)
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Gwen kicked my butt all season also. my DSP pax should give you some advantage in TIR this coming season.
