New Azenis tires + Quaiffe + Rain = WOOOHOOO!!!!
Well that pretty much sums it up.
I got a new set of Azenis tires mounted just before Thanksgiving, and that coupled with the rainy weather made me decide to run my car in the last event of the winter season. Since I had to scrub in my new tires I enlisted the help of a fellow forum member, 96sts-er. Turned out that was a very good idea because I've been driving big AWD pigs so much lately I forgot how to drive my little NX.
So I make Chris go out first, and he kinda cruises his first run since he's never driven my NX before. I can already tell though that the balance is about perfect. Hold the brakes on turn in a tad and then as you transfer to gas the car starts to rotate. Feed in throttle and the car straightens out and goes. You hardly had to steer at all! So I go out and run a slow run also, but we're still in line with everyone else. Not Acceptable.
Then a nicely prepped and hard driven 2.5RS goes out and runs a dirty run that is about 2 seconds below our first runs. I'm a little worried as we get in the car for Chris' second run. Oh and what a run it was! He dropped about 3 seconds off of his first, and scared the hell out me multiple times doing it. I forgot how well a little car brakes and turns! He was charging deep into the corners, late braking and making good use of the car's neutral handling. That inspired me to go out and drive my car like I stole it, and I dropped healthy chunk of time as well.
At this point I'm feeling very satisfied and have a perma-grin on my face. I'm scanning the field and the WRXs have nothin' on us, they're barely within a second. And then this ugly ass, LOUD WRX comes in another 1.5 seconds below us. I had never seen this dude before so I had to investigate. Turns out he's been around a long time, autocrossing various flavors of Suzuki Swifts or Geo Metros. He said the e-brake helped out a lot on that run and was complaining that his AWD car sucked in the rain! That cracked me up.
So I was yet again inspired to go out and drive my car even faster. I figured I had nothing to lose as I hadn't been running the class for points so I went out determined to get a class winning time. Well, by some miracle I dropped nearly another second and beat out the WRX by a tenth or so. After my last two runs I came out of the car shaking with adrenaline.. THAT'S why I love autocross.
Overall it was pretty much an ideal day of autocross. Car handled great, beat all the WRXs, won the class, got home by 1pm. Can't wait for regular season.
