So, I have managed to shave a lot off my AX times by no longer signalling all of my turns. The next thing I think I should look at is gear changes. Is there a rule about when you should change gears?

Yea, especially hand signals, they are the worst.

Some will say wind it out to redline, others will say shift just after peak TQ. I say less shifts are better than more. I'll shift 1-2 somewhere between peak TQ and peak HP. The course will help me determine this. I don't want to shift in the middle of a corner, for example. So if its a fast corner, I may short shift to 2nd. 901 boxes generally don't like the 2-1 shift at much above walking speed, so I never make that shift. If I'm at redline in 2nd, and its a couple car lengths to the next turn/course element, I'm not going to shift to 3 and back down to 2. Waste of time being off the gas for the shifts. Watch and listen to the runs made by the fast guys in your club. You'll figure it out.

Great. Someone left the door to the shitbox open again and you gotta come over here to the one place I find peace and quiet and fuch it up.

Stop calling it the shitbox Woody. I don't like it when you do that.

I asked a good question, with a bit of fun added in. You have a pretty torquey engine, I don't see you shifting too much in your AX videos. Did you build that motor for AX?

Oh, and for future reference you haven't changed your location yet. Drag a piece of toilet peper out of the bathroom and see who notices.

I used a smiley

It's a 2056 with a webcam 86a if I remember correctly. I balanced everything from the fan to the pressure plate. 11 pound flywheel. I also opened up the heads a little. It has the Empi 44s and a Kerry Hunter header into a flowmaster. It will make power till it floats the valves at around 6700rpm. I try to keep it at 6000 or lower but that never seems to happen. Shifting depends on the course and venue. Our last few AXs had me going between 2nd and 3rd quite a bit. The pca AXs are on an extremely tight parking lot and ill use 1,2, and sometimes 3. This is from last weekend going between 2nd and 3rd.

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

Since the comments are trending to shifting, I'll start there...

Unless you can snatch gears faster than a shifter kart (and in a 914, I'd be SHOCKED), you'll find fewer shifts are better in every case. Get outta 1st gear as soon as you reasonably can. Only go for 3rd if you can hold it there. Grabbing 3rd, only to downshift again in a second or two is not a good use of time as you'll loose more time changing gears than you would gain accelerating in a higher gear. That being said, don't rely too much on the rev-limiter either. I'm speaking from personal experience on this one... I held it to the rev limiter just a wee bit too long once... once. As I like to say, I sat on the electronic rev-limiter too long and the mechanical one kicked in. Blamo!

But that's just mechanical stuff. What's gonna really shave time is driving.

Hint 1) Go fast in the fast sections, and slow in the slow sections. Simple enough, but once the red mist descends, we all want to go fast everywhere. And over-driving a slow section will hurt you just as bad, if not worse, than under-driving a fast section.

Hint 2) Apex - Apex - Apex! I'll use two quotes from the master himself (John Ames). The first was "Late apex as early as possible". When he meant in that was to set yourself up as far ahead of time as possible to brake and apply gas as early as you can. And his other great comment was this "When walking the course, find the slowest corner on the course and figure out how you can spend the least amount of time there.". It sounds simple, but it makes a huge difference. If you have a big ol' increasing radius sweeper followed by a short straight to a tight turn, you will be better served by giving up a little bit to enable you to set up the tight turn better. A poor entry in a tight turn will wind up forcing you to park it in order to stay off the cones. And that time spent in the turn will feel like an eternity.

Hint 3) Oh yeah... APEX. Six inches off even one apex can add as much as a tenth to your time. If you're six inches off every cone on a typical course, you potentially have SECONDS in wasted time. "If you step on their toes, they can't go anywhere." - Hank Watts, about running over the bases of the cones on nearly every run. Get as close to the apex as you possibly can, on every apex.

-Josh

Thanks Josh for the great tips. I still have lots to learn and any little bit helps. I will try to stay on the cones next time out. As for the shifting to third, on this particular course it was needed and I shaved time doing it. Thanks for the pointers.

Glad to know this is a real tip by someone who knows what they're doing.
This has probably been the main thing I work on most. I'm never driving
in a straight line unless 2 walls of cones make me. The cones are not there
to be the apex in most of the places.

I haven't Auto-Xed in a long time but I was on track this weekend doing some instructing and I noticed all of my students had a few things in common:
1. Hand position. Get both hands back on the wheel as quick as you can without rushing a shift. Pull the wheel and use the opposite hand to guide you. It takes twice as many muscles to push than it does to pull.
2. Eyes Up. Look down the course and through the corners. So many drivers get fixated on finding the apex that they look at it the whole way through the corner and then check the mirror to confirm they hit it. If you missed the apex find the next one. It's not worth missing all of them worrying about the one just missed by 1/2".
Just my $.02

One thing that helped me in a slolom was to aim for the back of the cone

That's a good way of thinking of it. When I would walk the course, I would imagine a line drawn down the slalom through the cones, and I made it a point to set up my entry to the slalom so that when I was crossing from the left side to the right side (over that invisible line), I was already starting my transition to the left turn.

I still think the most important two pieces of advice are this:

Walk the course. Walk it 'till your shoes melt to the pavement. Walk it 'till your feet hurt. Don't walk-n-talk with friends, walk it as if you're driving it. Look for your entry points, and where you want to be and in what orientation you want the car to be in.

Don't be afraid to ask for advice, help, rides, co-drives, etc. This is, after all, a social sport. People don't spend scads of money and effort, standing out in the hot sun all day for three or four minutes of seat time without something else to draw them there. Talk to experienced drivers, ask (nicely) if you can ride passenger with them. Ask if they might ride with you. If you're really brave, ask 'em to drive your car. This can be a humbling experience though, as they will very likely crush your own times with ease. Take it as a sign that your car is capable, and you just need to tighten the steering nut to get more out of the car. (borrowed cars are faster, it's a rule ).

Whoops, forgot the most important one...

LOOK AHEAD. LOOK AHEAD. LOOK AHEAD. How far? Ideally, you should be looking something like two or three turns ahead. And if that sounds far in an autox course, it is. It takes a long time, lots of practice, and lots of sunscreen to get to the point where you can reliably look ahead that far in a course, or to be able to drive the course in its entirety in your head before the first green flag falls (that's a sign you're walking the course enough).

-Josh

all good stuff........and dont be afraid to kneel down while walking the course to sitting in the car height to get the prespective you will see through the windscreen.. unless your only 4foot tall it will change when you sit in the car thats were they become a sea of cone`s..and look where you wanna go not where your going ...and did anyone mention walk the course drive it in your mind while sitting in grid,hands on the wheel and everything ,feet on the proper pedals ,go through the motions of the intire course,shifts,pedals and steering input ....if you cant get all they way through without opening your eyes and looking at the map...you just saved yourself a second or better ....have fun

...... 2011 PNWR..PCA autocross Champion GTU

Great advice here! Thanks to everyone for sharing.

I was autocrossing this weekend and thought I was doing OK on my first three runs. Then one of the other participants caught me and told me I could shave off some time if I entered one of the slaloms on the other side of the first cone. Over the next three runs I dropped two second off my earlier fastest time.

Good job opening your ears. It is a very humbling experience when you first get started. A lot of people have a hard time listening to others criticism and instruction. A lot of us are A Type personalities and are used to doing things our way. CEO or Janitor, we're all equal when you put the helmet on.

I used to get a lot of funny looks when i would stand outside the car in grid and stretch my muscles in my arms and legs !kinda get n warmed up ,warm muscles react faster

A lot of this is already beyond me, but terrific to file for future use, I am still learning how to drive the car, let alone a course. Fortunately there are not many 914s up here and therefore I have not been held up to the standard of you gentlemen.

Something that you dont see mentioned much dont over brake. Focus on carrying as much corner speed as possible. Thats harder than it sounds and feels a lot slower when youre in the car. You will often hear people say in slow out fast. Really it should be "in smooth and fast, out even faster". Dont drive road track lines. Drive shortest distances when it can be done without compromising speed too much. Always try to minimize turn radius's.

Co drive the car with someone. Some of the fastest drivers put ego aside and let faster drivers in their cars. I offered seat to host of national level guys in our region and learned a ton from them. They will also give you tips on how to make better time on tricky parts of the course. Give feedback to tire pressure or setup issues that you might miss. I also spent 3 days at Nationals with 3 national champion drivers and learned a ton from them as well. I was very lucky as they let me drive the car I had sold to them and put me in as co-driver with another national level driver. Wow learning opportunity was incredible! And then I hit a point where knowledge and just pure ax talent comes into play. I can pretty much get within 2 seconds of any driver in same car but bridging that 2 second gap to a true top notch AX driver is very hard. Im not a natural at AX at all. Its never been intuitive to me and I depend on my car handling skill's and being smooth to get around AX courses most of the time. For me im always dangerous if there are more than 3 runs as I start to figure stuff out. A good AX driver has everything figured out before their first run. My brain doesn't work that way so Im in the whole from the start.

Find the fastest driver you can and hand him or her your keys. I did that with Steve Neislony a few years back. They will probably hand you your ass but if you watch what they are doing with your car, you can mimic it. The slowest corner on the course is probably the place you will leave the most time. Study the heck out of it and watch the fast cars. Although the advice about the fast cars doesn't always apply. (You drive a 911 much differently than you drive a 914).