Cumberland, MD Autox

[Luke Zyla]

Since my wife's aunt lives in PA, I decided to go to the Autox at the Cumberland Airport while my wife visits. They have a great place to autox except for the fact that the paddock is too small. 98 cars participated and we were afforded 5 runs. The only hitch is that we had to do all five runs in one heat. I got stuck with heat 1 so the pavement was wet from overnight rain. It was like driving on ice with my V-710s. About the time of my 5th run, the pavement was dry in most places, which made for an even more challenging run as I drove from wet to dry and back. All in all, a very frustrating outing.

Do they always run all five runs in one heat? It hardly seems fair.

They did have alot of Cobras there this weekend. It was fun to watch them. I am glad I had my earplugs. One of them got off course and rocketed onto the grass for about 20 yds. Just missed a runway light.

[johnnytavo]

yeah, you always do all five of your runs in one heat, and you will always see tons of cobras and vettes

[SeanB]

You run by heat and not by class and you do all your runs in the same heat. Its fun to go up there and beat up on cars with 5x the power.

[gtfour77]

Luke,
Most other regions have this run order....generally by class though. I think we're just spoiled by our club and Steel cities... Even at BRR they only do 4 runs (sometime 5) back to back and then you're done....

[Luke Zyla]

I wish there was a way to get more practice. I seem to have hit a plateau in my development and find it difficult to improve my technique with only a handful of runs at an autox. Do you guys think that we could have one of those test and tune events in the spring where we could get lots of runs and have time to critique our performance to improve? I have never been to one, so I don't really know how they are run. We could restrict it to members only so we could have enough time to practice. What do you think?

[Jason V]

We may try Luke... but hey last event I had a total of 11 runs in the kart and one run in Martins Car... I pretty much treated it as a test and tune of sorts... One thing you are experiencing is that you are getting out of your "rookie" phase as a driver. It can be frustrating because you stop picking up lots of time and start looking for much smaller imporvements, or pick up a shifter kart and start all over (I am back to improving by seconds per run!!)

Also be carefull about chasing tires that are going off. I have been mislead in the past that my driving was as good as it could get... new tires got me back on course. Be patient and start looking for much smaller improvements... try strange things like NOT walking a course to try to force yourself to look ahead more, or take a new person or friend out for a course walk and tell them how to approach the course... you as a teacher know that teacing is the best way to learn!!

[SeanB]

How in shape are you to race some karts Luke?

The last two times I rented karts at BeaveRun I realized I can translate what I was doing there to autox. You have to be smooth, any sliding and all the momentum is gone. Also, being a fixed course you can focus on each corner at a time and make gradual improvements.