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I found the course to be very enjoyable, even with the slow start. Good job on the design. The tight sections opened my eyes as to why your car should be loose...I hit the same cones with my rear tires on every run. There was a nice line through these sections but without some rotation you were just slow. Anyway, I enjoyed the layout and had a great time.

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Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

I was a bit apprehensive about the course during the walkthrus, especially the first two offsets out of the gate looked painful, but it ended up driving better than I anticipated. I added an extra pointer cone to the middle cone in the offset slalom just before the finish since I thought it was difficult to recognize as a slalom with the first cone that far offline from the other two without it. No one seemed to object since it stayed that way thru the event.

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SPIN or WIN!
there's no glory for going slow.

Just wanted to thank everybody who helped this weekend. As usual, the list would go on for a couple of pages, so I'll only name a few specific people. Rob Harvey, for blowing the rocks and dirt off the course - he worked hard to get this done, so when you see him, thank him for the grip. He also spent a lot of time trying to help me get the course map copied, and I really appreciate it. I was way past cranky after dealing with that for several hours, so thanks for helping me stay calm. Jim Feinberg, Cosby Wood and "the Wife" for helping set up the course... that tight section you set up at the start was awesome, Cosby! All the instructors & helpers, the novices (for their money ), the people who helped change the course over Saturday evening, etc. - it's good knowing that you can just ask for some help with "______" and it's going to get done. And thanks to Chris Brown for repeatedly telling us we were doing a great job - in addition to all the hard work you were doing, you helped keep us laughing/smiling when we were getting stressed.

Even with all the running around and getting stressed out, this was one of the most fun events I've ever participated in. It doesn't hurt that over the 3 days we were out there, I got around 50 runs through various course configurations in the "on/off switch" hackmobile... mostly countersteering.

Hey Kevin, where are alll the great photos?

Ha ha , just kidding. You were busy all weekend and you did a great job! Thank you very much.

Now, let's see if we can get a rallycross course as long as your course at Laurinburg!

I enjoyed instructing at the Novice School and hope I did some good. One of my students insisted that I drive his STI but I told him I didn't want to take any of his student runs. I did get a chance to "evaluate" his car during an instructor session at lunch

Once again, thanks for a great weekend Kevin.

Simon

I think it was the best use of the taxiway I have seen at Laurinburg. An approach like that would work at Sanford, eliminating the dreaded "walk".

Naturally, I liked the full use of pavement at the end of the runway.

For any novices, don't panic. Laurinburg is a tough site to have your first event.

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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

FWIW, I liked the course a lot. I think Kevin and the other designers did an excellent job of incorporating many different elements into the course! As far as the slow features at the beginning, I liked them a lot and felt they were challenging. Like many of the other course features, priority #1 for me was staying on line. If you got off line in many sections, even by a few inches it really hurt your entry & momentum into the next sections - those are features of a good course design.

This course seemed to place a premium on looking ahead moreso than any one I've driven in a while - you simply could not be quick if you weren't looking at least two features ahead. Even though we drive a low horsepower car, I found myself having to use *a lot* of throttle modulation to get through the early sections, the cross-over, and the P section...hence not being able to "flat foot" everything was a real test of patience and feel. It took me until my 4th run to finally look ahead far enough to be able to "connect" all the features...unfortunately, I caught a cone on that run. Nonetheless, it's very rewarding to make a good run on a really tough course. Running well designed courses, like Sunday's, helps make everyone in the club better and faster drivers.

A few comments about an experience I had yesterday with vision and smoothness. I happened to break a rib or two about 10 days ago, so making my autox runs yesterday was *very* uncomfortable to say the least. The broken ribs are on my left side, hence all the right hand turns on the course made the situation worse. During my first three runs and my early ride along with Chris, the pain was very noticeable during the runs. On my last run of the day, when I felt like I was really looking ahead and driving very smoothly (at least for me) I had very little discomfort. That run seemed uneventful and didn't really "feel" fast, there was little sliding, little rotation, no brake lock-up. So, the morale of the story is that by looking ahead, it smoothed everything out for me, which meant that I wasn't being thrown around in the car and therefore not in any pain. By smooth I specifically mean initiating steering imput early and softly as well as smoothing out brake/throttle imputs to help keep the car balanced. This was a good reminder to me (thanks to my ribs) that you don't always have to be "hanging" the car out over the limit to run decent times. This was a really good learning experience for me.

Sorry for the long post.

Eric

Many thanks to everybody that helped pull this off. Got a student to spin on Saturday so my streak continues.

Course on Sunday was a blast. That start taught a great lesson in throttle control. A lesson I learned too late in the day.

I have some pictures from both days, I'll get 'em posted the next day or so. We'll have some blackmail material on the pres.

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Not spectacular just decent.
I'm not sure what I'm driving.
Maybe an ITR in DS.
Or half-assed STX prepped 330.

that course was fun as hell. it felt like you really had to think and use discipline to make it work.

unfortunately i did neither and it mentally kicked my ass. i just couldnt get slowed down where i needed to i think the pressure of trying to hang w/ everyone else in my class who were kicking my butt really got to me and i couldnt attack it smartly. but i hope i learned my lesson.

but yeh, thanks that was a lot of fun and i learned a lot from it.

great couse, great fun...i think everyone went home happy and tired

stuff i learned this weekend

1. it's hard to hold your breath for 75.6xx seconds
2. ryan and stephen can drink
3. dustin and mike w. can drink more
4. a 1.6l csp miata can put the smack down
5. that i still don't know how to get back to the airport from the hotel without getting lost
6. long courses cannot be memorized, making 'looking ahead' that much more critical
7. shawn w. has skills that will never die (welcome back)
8. worrying about worker changes and crap like that makes concentraing on driving hard

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05 MCS

I had a great time. The course layout was fun once I was able to keep from spinning the M3. If nothing else, I learned that just a small change in your line/control can open up a whole long straightaway where you can keep the pedal down without getting bent outta shape.

Thanks everyone.

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www.ncvw.org
1993 VW Corrado VR6 - DSP15 (RIP)
1986 MB 190E 2.3L 16v - STX (SOLD)
1997 BMW M3 3.2L - BS for now

Great course overall. I had a few nit picky things I might have done differently but doesn't take away from the fact that the course overall was fun to drive and safe as well. Like Eric said it was also very rewarding to staying on the right line and looking ahead as far as possible. I'd like to have about 10 more runs on it.

For the novices who had a hard time with DNF's or cones I'd say not to get discouraged. This was a tough course to remember and with all those elements it really is tough not to pick a cone somewhere.

I'd also like to say thanks to all the folks behind the scenes. I know how much work it takes to make an event with 140 folks on 70 plus second course go so smoothly. My hats off to you all.

See you in Sanford

Shawn

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

Thanks to all for the kind words. It's worth all the work when all this comes to light. Thanks.

I had a great time. I only put on the new tires (Falken 615) Saturday and was not able to attend the T&T, so I had no clue how the car would feel.

First run was a bit interesting as I ended up sideways pretty quickly. Got a chance to meet Emmett Willis for the first time as he was riding along with me when that happened. I am sure he thought I was pretty nuts. Especially after talking in the CRX alignment thread about how much more predictable my car was (less likely to spin) and then I am all over the place right away.

LOVED the turn around at the end of the main runway as I felt you really had to do that right. The sweeper onto the long taxiway shortly after the turn around was fun and had a bit of "pucker factor" as it was very fast through there.

No idea about how many Novice DNFs we had, but I can say that there is that difficulty of running shorter courses (which is good) at the school and then the next day having a 70+ second course. Great for the rest of us, but rough on the novices. No easy solution to that problem.

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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.

Oh, any ETA on results?

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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.

excellent event, well run, especially considering it was the first of the season etc. etc.

looking back to last year and my novice baptism @ L'burg i can testify to the standard three principles. (1) seat time (2) look ahead (3) turn early. (still working on #3)

last year 26th of 27 in class
117th of 119 overall

this year better. BTW anyone know where i got my best time killing cone on my fourth run? knocked me out of trophy contention in TIR, bummer.