Horsepower, handling, or humility?
What’s really the fastest way around your next autocross?
Autocross is an awesome way to try out motorsports for the first time, because it is cheap, easy, super fun, and doesn’t require a full-blown race car to show up and enjoy yourself. Heck, even if you want to get competitive, there are levels to it that will still allow you to run your street car. Stick with it long enough though, and you’ll start wondering how to go faster at the autocross. That’s a thorny subject.
Without good guidance, it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of looking for the fastest autocross car and losing sight of the most important aspect of the whole package: yourself. Instead of focusing on how to make your car go faster, or looking for easy mods for more horsepower, think about how you can improve. After all, sticky tires, forced induction, and aftermarket coilovers don’t amount to a hill of beans with no driver. And without a good driver, mods generally turn into a good way to get into trouble, instead of a step in the right direction.
The short answer, then, is that humility is the quickest way around the autocross track. Recognizing that you aren’t a pro rallycross driver, and therefore do not have any business in a 900-horsepower, all-wheel-drive Ford Focus will save you some embarrassment and a huge amount of money. And often even the pros find it wise to leave their high-horsepower monster in the shed in favor of a light, agile car that rewards momentum, finesse, and skill.
8 tips to autocross
1. Start simple and cheap
If you are looking at how to start autocrossing, go as simple and as cheap as possible. Borrow your parents’ Prius, pick up an inexpensive helmet, grab a buddy, and sign up. The fact is, you don’t even need a remotely fast car to get started, and learning to autocross in a car with weird handling and low grip will teach you skills that will be invaluable when you step into a more suitable car.
2. Learn to use your eyes
Once you have gotten over the idea that having the most powerful car on the property will lead you to greatness, it’s time to evaluate your skills and start chipping away at the weakest points of your game. Start with your eyes. Learning to use your eyes properly is one of the best car performance upgrades out there, and it’s free.
3. Focus ahead
Focus on looking one or two corners ahead and moving your eyes by turning your head. The principle is simple: Your eyes follow your head, your hands follow your eyes, your car follows your hands. The human tendency is to lock our eyes on obstacles, especially when they’re rapidly getting closer. In almost every case, this just guarantees you hit the obstacle. At the autocross, that means a canceled lap thanks to a crushed cone.
4. Set your eyes on the next turns
With your eyes down track and pointed at the next set of turns, you’re setting your brain up to make decisions about throttle input and steering angle ahead of time. That will translate into smoother, more controlled inputs when the corner arrives.
5. Rely on momentum
Smoothness is key to getting around an autocross course quickly. Because the courses tend to be very tight with short, narrow straights, you have to rely on momentum to do a quick lap time. Focus on taking sweeping lines, adjusting your trajectory with the throttle, and turning and braking early.
6. Brake and gas appropriately
On a big road course, where there is plenty of room to accelerate and forgive mistakes, it’s a little easier to brake late and hard before accelerating hard off a corner. On a cone course, you want to focus on giving up only enough speed to complete the corner and getting back on the gas early and progressively. The old adage “slow is smooth and smooth is fast” applies here.
7. Use controlled speed
When we say “slow,” we don’t mean 25 mph. We mean using deliberate, slow, and controlled inputs so that the car transitions from one corner to the next smoothly, and changes direction without upsetting the chassis or blowing past the tires’ limits.
8. Be smooth
By being smooth and letting the lap come to you, it will be easier to progressively get faster over the course of an autocross weekend. Instead of over-driving the car into every corner and trying to make up for it with horsepower, approach the limit of traction slowly and deliberately.
Final thoughts
Eventually, you’ll want to find and exceed the car’s limits so you know exactly how fast you can push before you end up costing yourself time. But by progressively approaching the limit, you’re developing the skills and habits that will allow you to keep your car just this side of a slide, which is the sweet spot for going faster.
