Autox course design input, please!

series8217 wrote: The course looks pretty good to me based on the space limitations. I can see that one of your goals was to maximize the length of the course. You're making very good use of the small lot that you are on. I kept looking over sections of the course to find places to add more interesting elements like a Chicago box or hairpin or something, but there really isn't any more room to work with. Those poles are pretty close together. I'm sure once you have run a weekend on this lot with this layout you'll have some ideas on how to make improvements. This looks like a great way to start.

Thanks for the input. A couple of the club founders are old road racers from the '50s and '60s - every time I put in a Chicago box, I never hear the end of it, so I've learned to stay away from them for the most part.

Here is Rev 1, based on all the input above. I still need to do some calculations to determine the overall course length, but this seems to make it a little trickier to drive, while improving the safety margin to the light poles. Those circles are 25ft in diameter. The largest turns are 60ft radius, the smallest are 30ft radius, but most are about 50ft in radius.

I know it's a lot of pointers, but we typically get a lot of novices. Also, some of our active members are in their mid-70s, and I really hate scoring them with OCs.

If you right click and select "View Image", it may show you a larger version.

Looks better, here's an idea to make it more interesting: After you exit the 2nd big 90-degree-ish corner, you could have the course turn left inside the light pole (away from the handicapped area) and back out again to meet the entry of the 3rd big corner. You could scale up the 2nd big corner to make this smoother and keep the course away from the safety zone around the light poles.

One thing that kinda sketches me out: from the start there'ss the right turn into the sweeping left turn, then right as you're turning right there's a pole right in front of you. That has a strong potential to be bad. Very bad. What are those red boxes?

Maybe I'm mis-judging the scale (maybe in person there's more room), but I think you need to slow the course down. I just see a lot of places where an inexperienced driver (especially in a RWD car) could find themselves sliding backwards into a pole.

To be honest, if I had showed up with my E30 (which I could manage to keep pointed straight for maybe 50% of my runs) and walked that course, I would have ceeded my entry fee and gone home.

Look at the model of the car at the start for scale...there's plenty of room.

As you pass the timing lights (last gate in that short series of 3, in front of the staged car), the car has been traveling about 20 ft and that pole is a little over 50 ft in front of you, but the course makes an immediate left directly after the timing light, which points you away from the pole. The increasing-radius sweeping right immediately after that initial left stays more than 25 feet from the pole and it edges away as your speed increases and the turn unwinds. There is also room to stage slightly crooked, so that you are not launching aimed directly at the pole anyway.

The staged car is an NB Miata. In the general course, all the straights are under 100 ft long. If a straight was 100 ft or more, I put a kink or an offset near the middle of it. Thanks for your input!

Looks pretty good considering the limitations. I would have liked more elements, but I understand what you're doing with your high novice count.

And as far as your complainers, screw'em. Every club has them and it's usually 1-2 guys that do it every single event. Don't let 1 guy ruin the fun for all the other racers. Autocross is supposed to be challenging, not just sweepers and straights.

Why do the roadracers not like Chicago boxes?

Because they're ()s

Have you figured out the safe spots for the corner workers to stand? That might be a good thing to put on the map too so you can ensure that you have enough safety and course coverage.

I'll do that before I print the course maps. We usually have 4 stations, so I'll put one between the first 2 light poles to cover the opening complex, one out in the middle to cover both of the longer sections, one on the edge in the middle of the turn complex down at the base of the course, and one at the light pole between the second red square and the finish, to handle that whole leg.

Well, we ran this course on Saturday. Following heavy rains on Friday, we had some standing water in the lower left corner. I removed the short straight and tightened up the turn in that location to stay above the lamppost in that corner. Instead of the big esses around those 2 lampposts, we just had a tight left, a little jiggy chicane, and then into the 60d right and the tight 180d left at the bottom right of the course. I also added a slight offset just before the exit lights, to slow the speed a tad.

We didn't get to configure the pointers exactly as shown below, but even so, certain people had a lot of trouble navigating. Most O/Cs occurred in the area around the middle/bottom of the course. Some people had trouble at the end of the slalom. Very few cones got hit, but unfortunately, we had an increase in O/Cs instead. It didn't seem that hard to follow to me, but of course, I was the designer.

I tried starting car #2 when car #1 was going across the base of the course, but that led to a semi-close call when one particular car #1 turned back to the left at the beginning of the slalom for some unknown reason and started heading back to the left. There was no incident, but it was much closer than I like to see. After that, I only started car #2 after car #1 had cleared the slalom and successfully entered the decreasing right at the start of the final leg.

Overall, people seemed to have fun, but there was a lot more confusion about the layout than I expected. FTD was 37.1xx, with most runs being in the low-mid 40s. That was a little quicker than I expected, too, but I'm not sure I can add much length without really restricting the possible overlap.

I marked the key cones on the lot, and I may try to run this layout again next month, with the original configuration in the lower left, and maybe something different instead of the slalom. Thanks for everybody's input!

Just found this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZaEq13fwvU

Like most things you can never plan for the unexpected. you can do your best to minimize potential problems but human nature and bad luck will always find their way into a situation.

I have done quite a few course designs for lots we run on here, always the number one priority in my process is to try to anticipate and map out potential, wildly unlikely situations a driver might get into. Then balance those potential situations with a course that is still fun to drive. It is not easy. Keep at it.