<VV> SCCA Workshop/autocross day

[levair at aol.com]

all,
 
This Saturday we had an SCCA workshop in Indy/ Central Division.
At these workshops we have seminars on tech inspection, course design , safety registration, car prep. Suspension, etc.
   I did the tech inspection portion. 
  I used my race Yenko Stinger for the tech example and also a MIni Cooper, Neon STR4, and an Lotus 7 Clone.
  The students just couldn't get enough of the Corvair. The wanted to sit in in and were fascinated by the engine and it's location. It also looks very Nascaresque racy. This was great publicity for us. 
   Sunday I took it to the Columbus air port for my first autocross of the season.
   The lying weatherman promised 50 deg. and sunshine. 
  It was 40 and dreary, but the racing was great. We got 6 runs on a reasonably fast course.
  I went there to test some theories on autocross gearing setups.
  I took my own advice to students and really went for it on my first run to determine ultimate cornering speeds. I was embarassingly all over the track and very sideways---but I got people's attention---old, cold slicks on a cold track and a very peaky race track engine. 
   But I got successively better until I turned the fastest time of the day!. 
   There were about 20 or so students there from an engineering college with their class project R X7 race car and 5 drivers.
  Again they were simply fascinated by the Corvair. they just couldn't get past the very unusual engine and the cars supposed underdog reputation.
   I had an engineering student passenger ( babes also) on every run. 
   They were astonded by the speed of this car like their grandmothers owned. 
   We now have Corvairs burned into the minds of a great number of young people.
  The only thing better would have been several more Corvairs--you know who you are. 
 
Reminder: there are two autocross schools in this area.
  FortWayne , IN first weekend in April and Columbus IN First weekend in May.
 
Transmission research: If you insist on running a peaky track engine , you must have a gear close to the one you're running in the straight portions to shift down to , to prevent the bog I experienced coming out of slow decreasing radius turns. 
   Whether you want to admit it or not; autocrossing ,unfortunately ,has become very much dragracing out of slow turns. Shouldn't be, but is. 
 
Warren