The autocross season is winding down. Today the Capital Driving Club held their next to last scheduled event at Harry Grove Stadium in Frederick. It was an interesting course with a figure-eight and a decreasingly spaced slalom leading to a hard right turn into the finish. I did surprisingly well, especially given the fact I was hopelessly lost on my first run.

On a day when the mean time was 46.63, I turned in a blistering (for me) 44.38. Not up there with the leaders (FTD 41.6), but still a respectable 15th out of 63. It was a long day though — I was in the fourth heat again. With tech inspections at 8, “morning” runs for my heat at 1, and afternoon runs after 4, I was beat by the end of the day. Still, I managed to turn in a couple of 45s in the afternoon, even with a passenger!

I took the MINI in to Frederick Motorsports on Friday for a track-day inspection for my upcoming event at Summit Point, and to get Scott to look at my alignment. I’ve had the Texas Speedwerks springs for about six months now. They’ve settled quite nicely, but I wanted to see if I could pick up some more negative camber in the front end. Scott was able to get almost a half a degree, for -1.6 degrees in the front and -1.7 degrees in the rear.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve done a couple of CDC events and a CCA event (7 of 24 in X Class) as well a lot of work on the Garage-mahal. Summer is officially over and today was the next to last autocross of the season. This time it was at Baysox Stadium in Bowie, Maryland. The course was unusual in that it featured a figure-eight at the start and a decreasing radius loop at the finish. Many people were off course on multiple runs. My time was 49.81 seconds which should put me in the top third again. Many photos posted over on flickr.

Catching up on the last few weeks — I posted a bunch of photos from the CDC event on September 1, 2007.

This event was down in Manassas, Virginia. I was the quickest of the four MINIs that turned out and I think I finished in the top third overall. Not bad considering this was the course design:

And finally an update to the garage-mahal: I had to reinforce the floor so after I cross-braced everything and put down an extra layer of plywood, I finished it off with some tile and edging. I trimmed down the rubber mat and it’s starting to look like a real garage. You can see where I still need to work on the ceiling, but it’s more or less finished now and should retain heat in the winter.