I've been doing autocross (SCCA solo racing) for about 7 months now. I dove right in and I've done about 10 events now including a national tour event. Yesterday was the first day I did an instructional school (SCCA Starting Line) for performance driving and today was my first autocross after the school. I honestly feel like I learned more in the school than I did in all of other events combined.
I finished 7th today out of 50 in raw time and 13th out of 50 on PAX, which I'm happy with. But I'm most happy with how much more consistent my driving was. My runs today were 48.7, 48.5, 49.7 (that one I made a mistake on), 48.4, 48.2, and finally 48.1. I improved every run and my times were all pretty consistent. In the past, I would occasionally get lucky and pull together a good clean run, but I would almost never be able to repeat it - so this is a big improvement.
I also felt like I was able to read the course better and decide how I should approach elements without having to ask people what to do. Not that asking for advice is bad, but in general I understood the flow of the course better.
MURDERING A FAMILY OF CONES
I still tend to overdrive the car a bit more than I should be and I need to work on braking earlier. I worked on that at SCCA Starting Line school too, and I was better about it today. But before the school I wasn't able to as clearly understand where I was making those mistakes. After my runs today I could look back and identify where I lost time.
Anyways, if you read all this, thanks, and thank you again to Mike King for the instruction yesterday. It made a big difference.
Check out more from Ben in our Street mod autocross series on our YouTube Channel.