Automobile Club de FASRI

Following The Pack - Thompson 5/9/15

A Driver's Education (DE) event with the Porsche Club has become one of my more favorite things to do. But it has been an evolution to get to that place. Despite my normal love of driving and, now, amateur car-control events, I'll admit that my first trip to drive my own car on a real race track in 2013 was a bit nerve-wracking. Everyone thinks they are the world's best driver, especially before they have ever been trained (where we learn we aren't nearly as good as we think we are...). So I at least had that going for me. Yes, I had driven other people's car on a race track before - Skip Barber High Performance Driving School at the historic Lime Rock Park track in CT - so it wasn't that I hadn't been on a track before. Tracks are certainly a bit intimidating, especially New Hampshire Motor Speedway with it's full NASCAR stands around the oval. You really just don't know quite what to expect.

Shifting Our Way Into Spring

As we go from freezing our nuts and bolts off to baking our coolant, it's a good time to look ahead and do some planning. The Formula 1 boys may take a few weeks off, but here in New England we're just getting started. In less than two weeks, ADSI will host it's second school and autocross of the season. The date is Sunday May 17th. My son has a karting event that day so I may catch the late afternoon at best (2-5pm??) or may miss it altogether. My grand plan to hit all the events again this year is being somewhat confounded. But that does not dissuade me from encouraging all of you to take advantage of one of our local natural resources!

Thompson Speedway Member Day - 4/29/15

Some days are truly better than others. Today was special. At the invitation of brother Attilio, a few of us lucky souls got to venture up to Thompson, Connecticut for a bit of fun doing circles around their Speedway road course today. I had been planning to go for some time, as I'm a bit of a "track [woman-of-the-night]", in family-friendly parlance. At the last minute I convinced Christian to make the trip with me and to bring at least one of his siblings along as well. With his brother-in-law, a car nut who makes me look quite tame, in town from California, I was sure it would be him, but instead I met Steve from Boston, his other brother, at the track. And Steve was a phenomenal guy.

Cheap Telemetry - Part 1

Image: http://www.motorward.com/wp-content/images/2013/04/tele3.jpg

This is not exactly what it looks like back at the ranch when I head out on track today. But as most of you know, I subscribe to the philosophy that it is difficult to improve if you don't measure. For most of the amateur events I do, rudimentary timing is often available which, for the most part, is plenty good. It was far more than I needed at the outset since, in retrospect, I was a terrible driver. And I'm still no great shakes, I come to realize. But getting better is the goal and having a way to measure progress is important to me. So here is part 1 in a greater investigation of the measurement tools, otherwise known as telemetry in racing circles, that a fiscally conservative person like me has looked at. I say fiscally conservative because there are tools that are as cheap as free and others that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Without a multi-million dollar F1 contract in hand, I try to tend toward the free end of the equation and see how far I can get before I plunk down more money. Yes, it's for the children. So let's take a look. (Photo from motoward.com)

The ADSI Autocross Experience - 4/26/15

Autocross early in the season can be a mix of frustration and freezing along with joy and elation. When we started up last March (2014), the day was downright inhospitable. Massive soaking rains. Rather cold. Against everyone's better judgement, we pushed hard to have the event anyway. And we were pretty glad at the end. The joy and elation came through despite the tough conditions. This year proved to be drastically different.

ACF Crew, Start Your Engines!

As the ice melts, the tarmac is starting to warm up and the inaugural 2015 ADSI driving school and autocross event is this weekend on Sunday 4/26 8am-5pm. To say that I'm ready to get back into my car is a gross understatement. It was such a long winter that I feel like I'll be spending the first month just re-learning things I knew last year. But if that's the worst problem I face, I'm still a rather lucky bastard. 2015 is looking bright...

Can We Just Drive Already??

It has been a long winter. A very, very, very long winter. Not to say that I didn't have some driving fun on the low traction surface. But getting feet of the white stuff each time converted much playtime into time wasted moving the white stuff around, at least for me. I hope you all had a plow guy doing that instead! But we're starting to see temps in the 50's (F) and the snow is starting to become scarce. And we know what that means! Play time in cars!!

A Visit to Oxford Motorcars

Like many great things in RI, the best are hidden away. Secret treasures that only reveal themselves to the select few who seek them out via their passion and dedication. Oxford Motorcars is one such example.

2015 New England Track Schedule Updates

At long last, we have the dates for the ADSI events to weave into the roster of track days for the coming season. Check out the updates here: http://clientextranet.us/acf/2015/

Inaugural ACF Karting Challenge at F1 Boston Results

The ACF crew finally had a day where it didn't snow a foot to get ourselves up to the F1 Boston facility in Braintree, MA for an afternoon of kart racing. The tensions were high with this being new turf for many of the participants. It was great to see some new faces and meet some new people. Our racers included Andrew E., Karen E., Genevieve E. (the Ellison clan was a dominant group not to be trifled with!), Rob M., Joe A., Peter G., Tom D., Jean-Yves C., Fred C., Michael B., and Sterling V. We lost Louise J. to illness, Alex SdB. to his son not feeling well, and poor Attilio lost a radiator hose or caught on fire or something on his way up route 95. We weren't happy to hear that news. But he and his kids did get home safely. We missed everyone who could not make it and hope to have more events so we can all get in on the action.

As we waited for our fearless leader Jean-Yves to locate the track, we signed our lives away and did some trash talking. Once we were all assembled, we watched a safety and procedural video to teach us all how to behave on track. Not that we ended up following any of those rules. But we did suit up for battle in helmets, full race suits and neck braces.