I believe a couple of the reasons for this down turn are the loss of a lot of the Scooby guys that were coming out with their free SCCA memberships, and partially because of the rule in the Street classes. Probably about 80% of the nyspeeders/ubrfers that came out were in STS or SM. With the STS guys there’s not a lot of issue, but I always notice the SM guys complain about getting whooped on, or how bad they’re PAX is, and can get disuaded by that. The rules for SM basically allow for 450hp M3’s and Evo’s with 285 wide tires, and the PAX reflects that, and a new kid that shows up with a carbon fiber hood on their civic who had no idea or care about autocrossing when they did it get’s tossed into that. Getting whooped on that isn’t a lot of fun.
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agreed 100% - I remember when I first started my car was way outclassed for what it ran in. Getting into a class you can be competitive in is what hooked me to show up to every event this year (except for the first OOR event). All though novice should take care of this original issue for newcomers.
all in all, I think autocross is a perfect balance of cost vs. enjoyment. Granted I have not yet been to a track day to get on a road course, so I may change my tune eventually Autocross is much less abuse on the car, in my opinion, and you can do it much more regularly without breaking the bank.
I was just talking about this with someone else. I love track events, and I love autocross. Track days are few and far between for me (and even then, I’m only doing the NYSpeed events because I can’t afford to do a full out REAL track day at this point).
In the meantime, hitting up autocrosses means I still get seat time, within my budget. Seat time is seat time, and if it costs me some tires over a year, and $20 per event, I’d rather do that then getting couch seat time. Sure, I could save up that money and be closer to the goal of getting to a real track day… but that’s one or two days out of a year… it’s not enough to satisfy my driving addiction. I’m not going to snub my nose at autocrossing because it’s not 30-minute at a time seat time.
MCC runs were like 50 seconds last weekend. let’s make this easy and call it one minute. so lets say five runs so you get 5 minutes of seat time. lets say you do 20 events in a summer. that’s like $400 for an 1:40 of seat time…
track days at the glen at like $3xx for two days which will get you like 4:00 of seat time.
and at the autoX you have to work and hang out for 6 hours just to get each 5 minutes of driving.
That’s why i’m doing a bunch of tracks days and maybe a couple autoXs just for fun. yeah i’m spending more, but I’m getting so much more in return. Even in retrospect i’m glad I did like 5 years of autoX before my first track day, it taught me the ability to regain control once I exceed the limits.
anyway… can’t wait for the track day this friday and if I have tires left over maybe the autoX sunday?
Autocross is much less abuse on the car, in my opinion, and you can do it much more regularly without breaking the bank.