THSCC Forums

Jim, I generally agree with the point you are trying to make, I just don't think your example above is a strong argument. While the ST* drivers have tires that are closer to what is happening at national/divisional, nobody I know is buying new ones in the middle of the season or shaving them before they use them.

I think that a better example is that you first have to have an "it" car for your class and then you need to prep it to the max for your class. A handfull in the club are at that level, but most everyone else doesn't have the right car and/or it is totally underprepared for the class. So PAX results at a local level is not the best yardstick.

Still, I am happy when I do well in PAX 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.

Raw results from the last 10 THSCC autocross. Starting with the latest one going backward

RWD first 6
RWD first 7
RWD first 6
AWD 1st RWD 2nd and 3th
RWD first 3
RWD first 5
RWD first 3
RWD first 7
RWD 1st AWD 2nd

Patrice

I run Event #1 this year on last years NCAC tires, two of which I bought used (were run by Brian Priebe and co-driver on an MR2 at one Pro Solo). Those tires sat all winter in my garage (heated only by whatever radiates from the house). The tires were good for 1st and 14th PAX there.

Event #3 I ran the same tires and they were good for 2nd and 7th PAX (seemingly a better performance with extra runs).

Of course, when the tires were brand new (2005 NCAC) they were only good for 3rd PAX.

I'm inclined to agree with Richard, it's more a matter of having a well prepped car with pretty good tires than it is having really good tires - and also a function of who else is driving what and hits what cones.

I agree at the local level PAX isn't quite what it should be, but IMHO, tires aren't a majority of the equation, driver experience/talent and car prep factor in just as much (if not more).


Scott

I will acknowledge that most of Jim's assertions about PAX are true. I started doing this to track my own progress and because everybody kept stressing that "seat time" was so important, I developed the "experience percentile" to at least minimize that effect. I chose PAX rather than Raw because it didn't seem fair to compare my S2000 times against many of the low power cars (although for the first year or so most of those cars beat me too).

The tire effect shouldn't be here, because this data is from every THSCC event from 2002 through May 2006 (except the first Rockingham event, where for some reason we didn't record car types in the results).

In answer to Michael's question , it shouldn't be too hard if you just want to replace the "PAX percentile" with a "Raw percentile".

So when did the AWD's burst onto the scene? We can toss into the equation the sample size. What would be interesting and out of scope of this discussion would be to take the last 2 years of results at the divisional and national level's. Select only the top 10 of each driveline type and compare their overall PAX results.

Funny thing about tires, everyone that did well will tell you how crappy their tires are and everyone that stunk that day will tell you how bad their tires are I will have no excuses at Sanford....except for a bad hair day, work stress, dogs mad at me, 14 year old Camaro, wearing unlucky shirt....I need to work on the excuses in prep for the DC Pro!

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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

Definately the shirt!

I don't think that any of this data says anything about what drive configuration provides the best results in the hands of a skilled driver. what I do think it shows, is that on average rear wheel drive performance significantly lags 4WD performance.


The raw data that Michael asked for is posted. It shows FWD performance dropping some relative to RWD. 4WD average performance is still significantly better than either RWD or FWD. It can be found at:
http://home.nc.rr.com/rbutters/THSCC%20Raw%20Performance.mht

Rick, by the way, my hat's off to you for recording and analyzing so much data. That's truly remarkable!

Can you do a non-linear curve fit? Like a 2nd or 3rd order curve fit?

I want to see exactly what the "learning curve" is for AWD. If we're going to postulate that an AWD car is easier to drive fast "out of the box" and that at high experience levels the differentiation is minimized, I would expect to see a 2nd order curve fit showing the lines converging as we near 100% experience percentile.

Unfortunately those scatter plots obscure some of the blue dots, so it's hard to tell how well RWD is doing with the experienced drivers. But your top-time list above tells me that RWD may be an advantage at very high experience levels.

Would be interesting to see!

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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

Different sample sizes. With large enough sample sizes and AWD cars in a larger variety of classes, I think the data would skew to average everything out.

- dow

For what it may be worth:

Most THSCC sites are very traction limited compared to most "national event" sites I've run on. 4WD has more tires to apply the power to the ground.

Most THSCC sites force sticky tires to start runs with grit stuck to the tires. This hurts slicks and R tires more than ST tires. May hurt 2WD more than 4WD.

L'burg is not exactly "smooth" compared to even Forbes Field. This tends to hurt low, stiff cars.

The real test is how well our local hot shots in any class do (or would do if they went to the events) at National level events. How do the 4WD guys/gals do at that level compared to the 2WD folks? There are several examples of successful 2WD folk. Any 4WD other than Tom Hoppe?

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Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT

Cool, with all that talk about PAX really helping the slower cars (FWD cars) I expected FWD to do even worse than the data shows. Thanks Rick.

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2001 Honda S2000 - SOLD
2012 Boss 302
2003 BMW 330i

Original link updated.

Mike Whitney said

Done, with a 2nd order trend line. Almost no change to either FWD or RWD lines, but 4WD shows a definite flattening with more experience.

I also took a look at the percentages (by drive configuration) that end up in the top half versus the bottom. I removed all "first four event" data to remove the noob factor.