Many years ago as a teen I attended my first SCCA Solo event, a.k.a. Autocross (or AutoX for the cool kids), and was so overcome with excitement that my quivering hands could hardly grip the wheel. I was about to be turned loose onto a race-prepped surface with full authority to put it to the wood however hard I may. It was the most incredible thing I had ever experienced in a car, rivaling even my first solo drive, sans license, in a Chevy Lumina minivan at dusk on a deer-strewn road.
The car was a euro-spec 16 valve-equipped Golf GTi with nothing more than 45-series Yokohama rubber and a “turbo muffler” in addition to that wonderful, happy-as-a-lark-at-7k 1.8 liter mill. A light, tossable car with respectable acceleration and adequate grip, it was the perfect steed with which to cut my teeth on competitive driving in a controlled environment. Although not a spec-built car per se, I felt my mid-pack finish was pretty good considering inexperience, even if the tires may or may not have been too wide to be class legal.
Fast-forward to my college days and I had in several steps graduated to more power and handling. Upon purchasing a decently prepped WRX sedan from an avid autocrosser, I felt it necessary to try my hand at some cone racing with the car. Again, mid-pack finish piloting a non-spec example — far too many mods to fit into any class in which me or the car would be competitive. But that’s part of what is so great about Solo, that you have the option to run what you brung and have a good time. For that fact alone (plus others), autocross is awesome.
But then I got to unleash on a road course…
Rumor began to circulate that an SCCA chapter down the road was hosting outlaw track sessions under the guise of Solo events. If you’re familiar with SCCA’s regs on Solo, for safety & liability reasons speeds were to be limited to no greater than “highway speeds” or per SCCA’s website:
“…For most cars, that means staying in 2nd gear, and topping out around 55–60mph.”
As rumor had it, these track events were arguably not being limited in speed to the degree some of the locals-to-me thought they should be. Mumbling rants of such-and-such chapter breaking the rules abound. Well, that sounded like opportunity to me so at next chance myself and a friend went to further prepping our cars and hit the road to go see what trouble we could get into. And that marked the end (so far) to my autocross days.
Repeat the first paragraph of this article but with a different car and a different setting. Same quivering excitement, same disbelief in regard to what I was about to be allowed to do. The day commenced with 60 mph Scandinavian Flicks and 110 mph cannonballs on the back straight of a 2.5-mile road course. Heel-toe shifts, trail-braking, full-lock countersteer… absolute exhilaration. These were all antics far too dangerous to attempt on public roads that now seemed like a requirement.
What was so amazing about the road course experience went far beyond triple-digit speedometer readings, however. It could be broken down to something quite fundamental:
Oversteer vs. Understeer.
To define the difference, oversteer is the need for the driver to manage traction at the rear axle during a turn while understeer involves managing traction at the front axle. Put simply, an oversteer situation involves risk of spinning pirouettes while an understeer situation means going straight when you wish the pig would turn. Which one sounds more fun to you?
In autocross, while there is a tremendous amount of fun to be had, even if the car is set up loose as a goose so as to coax some tail wagging out of it around the cones, understeer remains a dominant and formidable villain to be conquered. On a track at track speeds, while understeer can still be found, oversteer becomes the more dominant battle. Why is this?
Vehicle prep aside, the speeds achieved in your typical parking-lot cone bash simply do not generate enough lateral loads while cornering to break that tail end loose. The higher the speed, the more potential there is to generate the lateral force needed to break the rear tires’ adhesion and thus induce the delicate dance of controlled-oversteer. And that to me and many others is where the magic lies.
Autocross will always hold a place in my heart as my first, and I genuinely hope it continues to thrive long into the future. Someday I may even try my hand again. But for now, oversteer is king and it is those opportunities where I can dance with the pedals and wheel to ride the ragged edge that will occupy my finite cash and time budget in the motorsports arena.
