Automobile Club de FASRI

“Au milieu de l'hiver, j'apprenais enfin qu'il y avait en moi un été invincible.”

Perhaps it's odd to think about school and Fall coming soon, but that always seems to happen to me when I'm getting school supplies and clothes for the kids. But there is always an invincible summer in me when it comes to cars and driving! Albert Camus was spot on.

Despite the lack of posts, its been a busy month in and around cars for me and hopefully for you as well! Since the 7/20 autocross, there was talk of a MassTuning day down at ADSI, but that fell through unfortunately. I was going to help orient the MassTuning folks to the ADSI course and was looking forward to it. But the cancellation kept me from having to take a day away from a nice vacation in Newport with family - so I lived up to my ACF principles! I know you are all very proud of me.

The ADSI Autocross Experience - 7/20/2014

The weather was looking a bit threatening with showers over South County. That made me quite happy since my all-wheel-drive car loves to play in the rain. But I don't need much more than an open runway to be happy in the first place. It looked like it was going to be another beautiful day of learning to drive better and maybe a bit faster. Once again, ADSI did not disappoint.

photo credit: Jessica

Next ADSI autocross is Sunday 7/20!!

Hello again, race fans! I hope the summer has been treating you well and that your air conditioning is working. For those of you who are in RI, this is our best time of year! Except for early Fall when its even better weather and the tourists from the country of CT go back home.

We've got an exciting weekend ahead of autocross at Quonset Point once again. It's been an interesting season so far. Track changes have forced us to look at things from a fresh perspective. The level of instruction has risen to meet our needs. And the cars showing up for the event are numerous, competitive, and pretty amazing. What has been consistent is how nice the people are and how friendly an atmosphere we have down there. If you haven't been yet, what is stopping you?

How to make a Martini

Easy. Chill your vodka or gin with ice. Strain into a martini glass. Look at a bottle of vermouth somewhere across the room, but by all means DO NOT pollute your martini with the stuff. Add some olives on a stick. Enjoy.

Now adding Martini stripes using automotive vinyl wrap (sticker type stuff but looks like paint) to your car may be a tad more involved.

How hard can 4 cones in a row be to master?

At the most recent ADSI high-performance driving school day on June 22, they treated us to a simple yet very effective (and humbling) exercise: drive through four cones laid out in a straight line 60 feet apart as fast as you can. Sounds easy, right?

Get ready race fans - 6/22/2014

Hi folks - unbeknownst to me, we have another ADSI event happening on 6/22 (Sunday). British Car Day is also on at Lars Anderson up in Brookline MA if you are more into show than go. But if you think for some reason that autocross isn't for you, here is a taste of some of the basic short courses we ran on 6/1:

Now that isn't too tough now is it? Some of our populace has been working with Anthony, the proprietor of ADSI, to work on making sure the quality and consistency of the event begins to even out. Its a great time in your car pretty much no matter what, but getting more time on track and some helpful pointers is always nice. We're looking for more metrics to assess progress and more of a focus on development. Hopefully we'll see a good bump on 6/22.

So come one, come all down to our lovely runway in RI while the getting is good. As always, let me know if you're in. Attilio, our club nexis in many ways, is headed off to Italia for a bit. So we'll need a new congregation point unless we just meet up at the runway, which is fine.

School will be out so you have no excuses for not coming out and enjoying the sunshine - or even better the rain if it comes down.

Hope to see you sliding sideways shortly.

Autocrossing Into The Next Level

Hi folks - We had a very sunny and beautiful day for autocross down in Quonset yesterday. There were quite a few participants for both the class in the AM and the full course in the PM. I think we had eight cars for class. And almost forty for the afternoon. There were actually more cars in the afternoon last time, but that's still a huge amount.

The class was almost definitely the best part of the day. We had Jeff in his supercharged FR-S with new AP Racing brakes that were outstanding, Attilio in his monster STi also with a few new go-fast/stop-fast bits, Phil in a Pontiac GTO V8 with CTS-V Cadillac brakes, Christian who lives in Cumberland near me with a 1985 911 Targa in stock condition, Kathy with a $400 VW Passat sedan with another $400 of mods that was damn quick, Jess with a '02 Mark IV GTI 1.8T that was also right quick even on three wheels, and Rich in his M3 that just turned 101,000 miles and looks great! I had a few new bits of dust on the Targa 4 but otherwise it was unchanged from last time out.

Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, Start Your Engines for June 1!

The next ADSI autocross event at Quonset Point is this Sunday!!! The addicts, Attilio and I, are all in doing the full day once again. Attilio is being modest, but he's quite likely to be the Fastest Time of the Day this go-round with a few new go-fast and stop-fast goodies bolted onto his "humble economy car" (as if!!)

Who else is going to join in the fun this time around?? Its looking to be 70 degrees F and sunny for us! Perfect weather.

For those who will be jumping into the fray, I've pulled together a track map for your perusal. It discloses a few secrets about the more optimal "line" through the course that we've learned from the instructors. As some of you may have heard, the cones and painted lines are occasionally arranged to "obfuscate" the fastest way through the course. Click on the small version of the image below to get to the big monster version that will give you all the detail your screen may be able to handle...

Hopefully this will help you plan out your attack on the course. My recent race driving reading has suggested that one should prioritize the corners and start working on the top priority corners first. The most important corner would be the fastest corner going into the longest straight. Any corner right before a straight is important since you spend more time accelerating than braking. The faster you get on the throttle, the higher top speed you can achieve on the straight.

I'm starting to figure out that karting has a special variation of these rules due to the limited top speed of the karts. But at ADSI, we won't get near top speed. So the quicker you can take corners and minimize the need to accelerate, the quicker your times will be. I think I've got a couple corners where I can improve a bit. And hopefully I won't regress on the corners that I was decent at last time out. The fun is in trying to improve so it will certainly be fun no matter how things go.

If you are coming down, let us know so we can coordinate our plans. The gates open briefly at 8am to let in the full day folks. Then they open again at noon to admit the afternoon crowd. Any other times require a phone call to someone there to come let you in.

Keep sliding sideways!

Thanks for some Garage Day fun!

Thanks to everyone who could make it this past Sunday to the first annual (maybe since there were no casualties...) Garage Day! I was expecting to hang out on couches and watch some racing, but the network TV gods were not smiling on me...and the kids were having so much fun that I just had to join them. And drag most of you into it too! Hopefully you enjoyed a day of being relatively carefree and letting kids be kids (of all ages). That was the goal, anyway.

For anyone who couldn't make it this year, hopefully you had a blast wherever you were too! We had some racing on the screen at least with some in-car Indy 500 racing at times, which wasn't so bad really. Just not enough noise as I didn't have the presence of mind to unmute the computer. We had an XBox set up in the barn with its own screen so the kids could bang on that a bit. And three little electric-powered cars. And a minibike that saw much use. And a gas kid racing kart which demanded a little more seriousness - and some fixing when I broke the string for the pull starter! Thanks to Dave S, we got it fixed up and back into the games!

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby!

Alex and I indulged in our first endurance karting event at F1 Boston tonight. We went in knowing that the track was new to us, the format was new to us, and that we're not 22 and 140 pounds anymore. We knew it was going to be a tough one.

Alex takes the checkered flag! Just not the first one to do so!