NEOhio Event 4

Today was the fourth NEOhio autocross of the 2008 season. With a surprisingly small number of entries (22), it turned out to be a pretty quick day. We got six runs in the morning and got fun runs afterward to help cover the costs of renting the parking lot since the entry fees didn't quite add up. I got in nine runs total and consistently held times between 39.500 and 40.500 seconds. My first event this year I took it easy on the new car, so this time I decided to push things a little more. As a result, I very easily hit more cones than anyone else at the event (maybe 7-8 in my first 6 runs). Since there weren't many people to help work fun runs, I decided to slow down and drive smoothly to save the workers a bit of running to fix cones I might hit. This decision ended up reminding me of the oft saying from veteran autocrossers, "if you want to go faster, slow down". After taking my time and giving myself a chance to line the car up properly to carry more speed through the course, I didn't hit a single cone in my last three runs and got my fastest time of the day at around 39.500 seconds (the official results won't be posted for a while).

Today I also got the opportunity to grab a lot of media to share online. I built a camera mount for my car that secured my digital camera to the headrest of my passenger seat. Overall the setup cost only a few bucks and works fairly well. A friend of mine, Steve Vondruska, who I hadn't seen since high school came out to the event with his very nice Nikon D40 DSLR camera and snapped shots of the event (including the one above). Check out the photo gallery for all of my driving shots throughout the day. I also posted both videos online, so be sure to check out my first and second run videos!