The Racing Geek

My prize for the second fastest time of the day at the opening GGLC Autocross of the season.

I ran a 53.139 and was only beaten by a race-prepped Evo running slicks. The prizes did not include the instructors times though I was actually faster than all but 3 (Jason and Alex on RA1s and Rob on slicks) of them as well. My goal for the season is to beat Alex with the added incentive that I will be upgraded to instructor if I do - seeing that I already beat his time in the morning session yesterday I am pretty confident I can do it again. I just feel sorry for my future students

Thanks to norcalturbo for this photo of me from the morning session.

Some in-car video from yesterdays GGLC autocross in Marina.

The first video is my fast lap for the day. I don’t slow enough after the slalom and understeer into a cone. I still end up doing a 40.1 (+1).

Fast lap from rnair on Vimeo.

The second video is from my last run of the day where I am sideways on at least 3 occasions. It was a slow run (41.6), but great fun nonetheless

A very sideways lap from rnair on Vimeo.

The last video is Nithyas best run (46.5) of the day in the GTI. For someone who almost backed out of her first event, she is becoming very good at this. If you have never tried autocrossing you should come down to one of the GGLC events next season and give it a try - it is safe, fun and the best way to learn car control.

Nithya Fast Lap from rnair on Vimeo.

Last weekend Nithya and I took our GTI to the GGLC Autocross at the Marina airport. The performance far exceeded my expectations and at 61.7 seconds I was actually the 3rd fastest driver in very wet morning session (the fastest Elise did a 64.x). Much of this was due to the fact that it had proper wet weather tires on, but the handling was pretty amazing - very predictable with some understeer at the limit. It did of course feel quite a bit heavier than the Elise but the direction changes were quick and chassis was very forgiving. As the track dried out I lost my performance advantage over the elises but as you can see in the photo I did manage to get a wheel off the ground

Photo by norcalturbo

This was also the first Autcross for Nithya as a driver. She started out very slowly with a 130 second lap but by the end of the day she was down 66 seconds - by far the greatest improvement of any driver at the event ans just 6 seconds off my best lap. She had so much fun that she’d decided to attend all future events, we’ve already signed up for the November event. The following video is of her last run - notice the tire squeal in the turns and the cones she destroys near the end

Nithya @ the GGLC AutoX from rnair on Vimeo.