ARIZONA REGION – The Steering Committee has had a busy time, finalizing a spring schedule and re-adapting to the skidpad at Firebird International Raceway. And a good job they did, too! The February 11 event ran smoothly, while accomodating a record number of entrants. Good execution, a fun course, and nice weather. But ... no special feature!
Fear not. The Braking Committee, your hard-working shadow government, has held an emergency meeting and prepared a slate of suggested special features for the remaining events of the Spring 2006 Series. They are all mildly competitive, with separate winners in each run group. The common theme is enhancement of the learning opportunities already inherent to autocrossing. So, with the expectation that the additional skills acquired will carry over to your daily driving, we proudly present:
Unfortunately, the very nature of Solo 2 – one car at a time – prevents special features that would allow practice in other important aspects of daily driving. Aspects like freeway access control: increasing your speed so as to prevent a driver in the enter/exit lane from taking your lane ahead of you, even though you'll need to change lanes yourself, as soon as he pulls in behind you, in order to make your exit. (Experience indicates that this is an important skill, although its purpose remains obscure.) Or civilian drafting: tailgating closely enough that the driver ahead of you can't see your headlights in her rearview mirrors, and thus won't be blinded by them.
You can't learn everything on an autocross course.