[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Grassroots Motorsports
Story by David S. Wallens and Tom Heath
On the surface, autocross looks so easy. All you have to do is drive through the cones quicker than anyone else. In reality, there are so many subtle nuances that it can take years to figure out the …
Between 2001 and 2003, my wife and I took several Evolution courses. We did P1 & 2, then the following year did P1 & 2 again, and the one I liked most, Phase III!
The biggest takeaway from P3 was looking waaay ahead__you had no choice to do otherwise__the lower 2/3rds of your windshield was covered over with masking paper. In actual practice, I scarcely noticed it, as I had already made a conscious effort to look as far ahead as I could (easy to "practice" in everyday driving).
Some of our instructors included Jinx Jordan, Sam Strano, and Mike "Junior" Johnson. Also on site for our first sessions were Jim McKamey and Jean (Kinser Dana).
Our "tool" of choice was an '01 M Rdstr. We only ran regional events, but occasionally a divisional would come to town (hence the TIRE RACK windshield banner instead of Evolution's psyche-out the competition banner ;))
Good times!
I went to the Evolution Performance Driving School before the $2004 Challenge. The Probe I was driving was about two orders of magnitude cheaper than most cars there, and probably a whole order of magnitude cheaper than the second cheapest car. Which was a Cavalier.
I don't think any one mod could have taken as much off an autocross time as those lessons. In addition to looking ahead, I learned how important it was to check tire pressure. Somehow the rear tires were at 15 psi on my first run, which made for an interesting lap. At the Challenge, I kept the pattern of using less rear tire pressure to help the car rotate, but with a more reasonable 40/30 split
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