[clyde]

First big event in Oscar was this past weekend and it was awesome, but also kind fo a mixed bag. The car is really loose whenever we touch the brakes. Just wants to instantly swap ends. Add a low grip sealed asphalt surface and a little bit of rain under regular Hoosier A7s and it was like driving on ice Saturday for my first run. It dried out a little by Kevin's first run and both our second runs, so that helped. Rain started again right before my third run that made it almost as bad as my first run, but dried up enough that it was much less of an issue for Kevin's third run.

On my first run Saturday, I spun twice. There's no excuse for that, but it easily could have been four times. Kinda sucked because the course really looked amazing. Great mix of tight and technical with open and flowing and lots of transitions all along the way. In addition to the spins on the first run, I collected a bunch of cones on my second and third runs.

My driving was tentative and cautious. Mostly trying to just hang on. With the weather, I'm not sure how much my head was in it.

When all the times of all 53 drivers in the first heat were adjusted to indexed times (an overly simplified way to compare/rank different cars at different prep levels that is very, very flawed, but provides for endless bench racing), I was in last place. When the second heat which drove in nearly fully dry conditions for much of the heat finished, I was last of 206. It rained solid through the third heat and it was quite wet for the fourth and final heat, so I was able to move up relative to the bottom…but not by much.

After Saturday's competition, we started looking at and under the car. Visually, it looks like the right rear has a lot more camber than the left rear. The eccentrics that control toe and camber in the rear were marked and it looked like they had slipped. After putting a wrench to them, we found the washer was moving and the marks were not indexed to the bolts. So, maybe they moved, maybe they didn't. The stock eccentrics on the NB Miatas do not hold up to autocross driving with sticky tires for very long at the factory torque spec. The common practice is to way over torque them and hope stay in place longer than if torqued less. When they do eventually slip, realign and start over. We found some locking eccentrics that we're going to try, but none of that helped our immediate problem. We tightened it back up and planned to just ride it out on Sunday.

We also started talking through what else could be causing the looseness and identified a few checks and potential fixes.

Sunday was dry, but kinda cool so we weren't able to get a lot of heat into the tires, but it kind of went better for me. My first run was a DNF because I went off course while saving myself from a spin and I collected multiple cones on my second and third runs. It was also the first time I got to try shifting to third. If every generation of Miata has an Achilles heel in autocross, it's short gearing. Different generations and transmissions have different top speeds, but the NB tops out around 61 or 62mph in second gear which is not enough for courses like we had this weekend. In trying to go to third, I either went to fifth or didn't get past neutral in four attempts. Kevin also had similar issues. Part of the problem is the shifter which has a really tall arm and makes it pretty tough to feel what's going on quickly without a lot of movement. A new shifter will be in shortly.

Missing those shifts cost me a lot of time on each run. Even so, my third run was the first time this year I've been close to Kevin. According to the data, he picked up about a 0.5 second lead through the first few elements, I made it all back up over the next few, we were equal for the few after that and then I had a bigger missed shift issue than him and I feel back a bit, made it back up and then fell back a few more tenths in the last few elements.

This was the first run I've had in the car where I didn't feel so tentative. I think I am so calibrated to bigger cars that weigh 60-70% more with two to three times the power on street tires that it's been tough to make the adjustment. This time, I starting to throw it and it was mostly working.

I still have an issue with using all the throttle, though. There are a couple things I think may be going on. The exhaust note of the car is like a swarm of angry bees. It sounds much more furious than it is, but I think 80% or 90% throttle tells my brain that it's at full throttle until I consciously tell my right foot to push harder…which takes time. I also remembered reading something from early on in the Miata days about Mazda making the throttle pedal travel longer than other cars to make it more satisfying for the driver. I am wondering if when my brain sends the "full throttle" signal to my foot, my ankle is bending to where it thinks full throttle is. I had a similar issue in the RX-8 a long time ago and found that if I reprogrammed the "full throttle" signal to "push the pedal until it won't go any further" the problem went away. So, I'll be trying that again.

What's also been interesting is how people have come out of the woodwork to offer their unsolicitied thoughts, advice, and assistance. There is something about this car and the autocross community that knew Mike. There's something very cool about it.

Kevin had the car up on stands as soon as he got it home after dropping me off. Today, he confirmed that there's no bind. The brake proportioning valve is set to almost all the way forward which means the rear brakes are only getting about half the pressure as stock. That could be a factor. The shocks are 5 years old and have never been rebuilt, so something could be going on there. One of the rear brakes could be slow to apply or release. Spring rates may be off where they should be. Like I said, alignment could be the problem. Kevin is running through things and has ordered some parts and lined up borrowing (or buying?) some special tools. I wish I lived close to make it easier to help in the evenings. Meanwhile, people keep texting us.

We're hoping to get as much as we can to a known baseline level before we head to Lincoln in a couple weeks where we have to Tour events over four days and a test and tune course going on the whole time on the surfaces of the National Championship event.

We'll see.