On Sunday I attended my first autocross. Autocross is a contest to see who can run their car fastest through a course defined with traffic cones on an empty parking lot. This one was SCCA’s event #5 in their 2014/15 winter season, held at Front Range Airport.

I’m the autocross event chair for LOG 35. I needed to meet the guys running the event, have them show me around, soak it all in. My mission was observation, so I didn’t sign up to run. I didn’t take my helmet, or the camera and OBD-II dongle. That was silly of me. Clearly I was never a boy scout.

Front Range is a two runway airport a couple miles southeast of DIA. On the east side of the Front Range facility they have a remote apron next to a fire station. We were at this remote apron rather than the main terminal area of the airport. It’s basically a large parking lot with light poles and marked with big T’s indicating the parking places. Around each T are several re-bar rings embedded in the asphalt, used to secure the aircraft. The airport doesn’t close for this event and twice they had to red flag operations to allow planes to taxi through.

Facilities are minimal. There is no paddock as such, and we weren’t allowed to park on the grass. Cars were lined up on the access roads. I was parked a couple hundred yards from the grid. No bathrooms, two porta-potties at the far southern corner. There was a concession trailer, I had a breakfast burrito.

I met with Arnie and Lindsay. We talked business for a bit and they showed me around. Before long they asked what class I was running. “I’m just here to watch.” Don’t be stupid, Dave. So they got me signed up, found me a helmet, assigned a grid spot and sent me on my way.

One hundred twenty one drivers were entered. We ran three heats. I was in the third heat. Cars are divided into classes. I had no idea how many different classes there are. I was assigned to SS (Super Street). I had to pick a number, so I took 1 as it’s the easiest one to make out of painters tape. There was another Elise there. He had Hoosiers, so he was SSR. There was only one other car in SS, a 2014 Corvette Z51. He’s only had his car a couple of weeks, but he’s been autocrossing a couple of years.

So I’m really only competing with one other guy. There were 33 classes. Four classes (Classic American Muscle-C, Street Modified, B-Street, and C-Street) made up about a third of the field, Twelve classes had only one or two cars. Twenty five entrants were novices.

We novices had a meeting where we learned about the cones. The course is made of cones. Some are standing up, some are on their sides. Their positions are marked by chalk outlines. The cones on their sides are pointer cones. Knocking a cone over, or moving it out of its outline is a penalty. If you hit a cone but any part of it is still within the outline, no penalty. One guy managed to flip a cone up in the air and land upright and in position. Driving on the wrong side of a cone is a DNF.

After this lesson, we walked the course. Everybody walks the course, but we novices did it as a group.

The course began with a left turn out of the starting box, then into a 360 to the right. It’s not quite a 360, obviously, but it’s close enough. This is the only place the track crosses itself. After a left turn, we’re heading south along the western edge of the lot into a slalom. We have our choice of which way to enter – we can go either left or right. Then a chicane and a couple of 90 degree left turns, a 45 to the right, and into a second slalom. On this one we must enter on the left. Finally, a tight 180 to the right and across the finish line.

After the course walk, we had the drivers meeting, then the first heat. During the first heat, drivers from the third heat work the course. There are four sectors, each with a crew captain, a radio, and a fire extinguisher. Each crew has a scribe and three or four people to reset cones. I was the scribe for sector 1.

I quickly discovered that the scribe is the busiest of the corner workers. It was my duty to record the penalties – the number of cones hit, or DNF. They come out in no particular order: 14 AS, 33 CAM-C, 101 STU, and so on. The first run, I write them down and record the penalty. The list filled the page in two columns. On subsequent runs, I had to find the car in the list. They didn’t go in the same order each run and once a car leaves our sector another is started, which gives me about ten seconds to find the car on the list before then next one was coming.

Everybody got five runs. Because there are four cars in the course, sometimes a driver will catch up to the car in front. That’s pretty much guaranteed if somebody spins. When that happens, it obviously ruins the following car’s time so they get a re-run.

There was one car that made a DNF right out of the start, but there were very few penalties – not more than ten for the entire heat. So guys shagging cones weren’t that busy. The crew chief worked the radio (“Control, sector 1, car 13 AS plus one.”) and helped me with some of the numbers – “Is that 171 BS or 71BS?”. Many cars had two drivers, 171 BS and 71 BS are the same car, different drivers.

GBS Zero Lotus 7

I grabbed lunch during the second heat then moved my car to the grid. The tech inspectors came by, gave me a quick once-over and put a sticker on my windshield. Then I was free to wander around. These events are as much a social thing as a competition. You meet all sorts of people, all of whom are interested in cars.

As to the cars, most of the usual suspects were represented: Mustangs, Corvettes, Porsches, BMWs, Audis, Minis, Miatas, Subarus, Acuras, Hondas. There was a Factory Five Cobra and a GBS Zero Lotus 7. I saw a little formula car that was basically a snow mobile. There was even a kart; the driver’s helmet had a pink Mohawk.

P-51 Mustang

One of the Mustangs had quite the livery. It took me a couple seconds to get it, but it should have been obvious. It wasn’t just a Mustang, but a P-51 Mustang, complete with bullet holes. I talked with the guy. I told him I always joke about putting an RAF bullseye on my car along with some small German crosses for “killing” Porsches. He said he wanted to do Japanese flags with Subaru logos, but figured it would look too busy.

I was gridded up between a Honda on A6’s with two drivers and a 600+ hp Mustang GT 500. After each run the guys in the Honda sprayed water on their front tires to cool them off. Across from me was the Z51 Vette in my class, the A8 next to him. Behind them were a Hyndai Veloster and a 30 year old Celica.

While heat two was still running I went off in search of an empty passenger seat. I found John in his mini and he welcomed me to join him. I was surprised by the speed. Not just in the sense that we’re going fifty in a parking lot, but that the 48 seconds is over so fast. John didn’t have the greatest run, he hit two cones. Looking at the results I see that was his worst run.

I didn’t hear any announcements about the start of the third heat, but they started sending us to the starting line. When it’s my turn, the starter motions me to the line. The Honda in front of me leaves the first sector. The starter drops his arm and I go. Instantly I’m through the slight left turn and into second gear. At the entry to the 360 there’s a nasty bump that unsettles the car. My tires sing to me and I get the car a bit sideways. I feather the throttle and straighten the car for the gates before the slalom. I have a moment where I nearly forget which way I wanted to enter the slalom but get it together and go left.

Before that first run I hadn’t had the car running long enough so it wasn’t properly warmed up. Going in to the slalom I got the limiter instead of the second cam. In the two turns before the second slalom, a left then a right, I’m sideways again. Through the second slalom and into the tightest turn on the course. I stayed in second gear every time but the car was pushing here and in retrospect I should have tried downshifting. I go through the timing beam and slow down. I finish in 49.394 seconds.

Back in the grid we await our next runs. A few minutes later, the Honda is rolling again. I was about to follow him until the grid worker told me it was time for the second drivers. It was probably fifteen minutes between runs. Gives you a chance to ask your neighbors what sorts of times they’re getting.

On my five runs, I hit no cones but did manage to mess up the second slalom for a DNF. My fastest run was 48.563 seconds and good enough for 847 points and a class win. Woohoo! The big picture tells the real story, though. In the indexed standings, I was 95th of 121 drivers. I was better compared to novices only – 11th of 25. To arrive at the indexed standings, each time is multiplied by a factor. Each class has a different factor which allows some sort of comparison across the whole group.

We were all done by 3:30 or so. That makes for a long day – a full eight hours – to get about four minutes of “track time”. I had a good time, but at this point I think I prefer going to the track. The track costs about three times as much, but I never get less than thirty laps. Measured by the minute, autocross is about 12 or 15 times the price. I look forward to doing it at the LOG, and perhaps occasionally in the future.