The Results - Part 1

In the last post I talked about how I had a great time at the Evo School, and how discovered that I had a serious error in the way I was thinking about looking ahead. I'm very lucky that the Evo School was immediately followed the next week by two races. School is great, epiphanies are wonderful, but the proof is in the pudding. Can I translate what I learned into actual results at a real race?

In this post I'll look at the first event with the Renegade Miata Club: Their events are scored by averaging two fastest runs, then paxing the result and dividing the fastest pax in your category by your pax and multiplying that by 100. This makes the maximum score possible 100 points, which you only get if  you have top pax across two runs for your category.

Summary of Renegade Season thus far:

1. May 3 2014 - 96.310 points, 10th place for Non Mazdas, 13th over all. but Neither Grant Reeve, nor Steven Stephen Lefebvre were there to set the pace
2. May 24 2014 - 88.916 points, 19th place for Non-Mazdas, 33rd over all. Only had one clean run, if I had matched my best run I would have had about 93 points. Grant had Fastest Non-Mazda with 63.854 vs my 66.902 (3 sec off grant)
3. June 21 2014 - 94.464 points, 8th place for Non-Mazdas, 14th over all. My best, 72.2 - Ben sets a low 67 while giving me a ride in my car during fun runs. Grant had FTD with 69.987 (My best in fun runs was 71.1, 1.1 sec off Grant)
4. July 19 2014 - 97.571 points, 8th place for Non-Mazdas, 11th over all. Grant not there, Scruffy FTD @ 64.461, I had 65.097 or about 0.6 second from Fastest Non Mazda. 

So Did Evo School help? Yes I think it did, a little bit. I was close than ever before to  FTD *within* the regular times. Grant Reeve wasn't there, but On the next day I ran 1.3 sec behind him, and if we transplant that differential here, I would have had 95.062 points.

So I was a little faster. The difference is not stunning, but I did hand my car to Ben again, and this time he got a 62.3... only 2.7 seconds faster than my best time (instead of the almost 4 seconds in the previous event). We also had some added Hot Shoes in the class, including Ben in an STS CRX, and Bob Lang, and a totally new face in an STX Acura. So if I place that 95 points into the prior event, I gain 2 places in the Non-Mazdas and would have given me a time for about to 10th overall pax. So non-mazdas, and the field in general might be slightly stronger in this event than the last.

Statistics in racing events are dodgy due to course dependency and mechanical changes/failures etc, and in events with variable attendance it's double dodgy, but I certainly didn't do worse by any measure, and better by some. Another encouraging thing is that this club requires 2 good runs to do well, and one hero run won't do it. I was able to back up my fastest time with another reasonably close time on the preceding run.

As for looking ahead without following specific cones, I think I did better about that in the stuff on the main runway, My eyes did still tend to come down for the tight turns. It's hard to break old habits. It will take some time I think, but I know what it is I'm trying to improve now.

Anyway, here's the video for my the fastest run of the day.