I know this has been discussed within some thread before, but I couldn't find it. If anyone knows where this thread is, please post the URL.

I'm just wondering what the difference is in driving styles between road courses and autocrosses. I read in this forum (in that thread I can't find) that autocross skills can make you a good road course driver, but road course driving skills don't transfer well to autocross...or maybe it was the other way around.

My short-term goal is to race shifter karts wheel to wheel, and maybe race real cars wheel to wheel at some point. Would HPDEs or autocrosses be more beneficial? I don't really have a desire to become deeply involved in autocross, so I'm just wondering what would be better for learning driving skills/styles.

I do indoor karting frequently right now, but it seems like HPDEs might give me more seat time per dollar. The other problem I find is that there's no way to have someone give me instruction while I'm driving a kart since they can't be in the kart with me while I drive.

Thanks in advance.

 

I have heard the same saying as you, and you got it right

I really wouldn't know the differnce, since I started in HPDE and went straight to road racing, but watching an autoX guy compared to what we do, I would agree that the skills would transfer well. The autoXers spend alot of time sliding around and learning car control. From what I saw, hpde-ers didn't spend as much time doing that, so less of their wheel time was "at-the-limit". for a while, I was not very comfortable with the car on the edge, I could go fast, but if I even got an iota out of shape, I would freak. I imagine a good autocrosser wouldn't think twice about it. I learned car control eventually, but I have actually been thinking about talking the car to an autoX just to learn those skills I may have missed.

 

hrm, another thread that has potential to blow up.

contrary to what many people think, autocrossing requires a driver to be very smooth with throttle application, steering input, and brake use. these same qualities are needed in a fast roadrace driver too. in that regard i don't think there is any sort of a difference in driving "technique" if you limit it to just that.

if you include driving line as part of technique, then you see a much bigger difference in the two forms of racing. a roadracer spends a majority of the time on straights with the loud pedal mashed against the floor. every extra mph the driver can get out of the turn before the straight is crucial, even if the distance traveled has to go up.

in autocross, most of the time on course is spent in slow turns followed by very short "straights". the relative time spent in a turn vs. straight is much larger then for a roadracer. therefore, an autocrosser shaves lap times by balancing the shortest possible distance with the highest speed.

autocrossing does an excellent job of teaching car control skills. the combination of difficult transient elements linked together combined with a "safe" environment in case things go wrong gives drivers a comfortable way to push the limits. it's much harder to push the limits when you know that the first thing to catch you is an aarmco. conversely, its much easier to push the limits when you know that at worst you'll have to rub some cone marks out of your paint.

nate

 

i started off autoxing....wasn't really good but was better than mid pack

then i started HPDE'ing....learning heel-toe...tossing a car around...4 wheel drift


i would say you learn more while hpde'ing because ONLY because you get about 2 hours of track time during a weekend....MUCH MORE SEAT TIME....even though you maybe only going through corners 1/3rd of that time it IS STILL 10000000% more than your 3 minutes of autox fun....

i enjoy autox but i just can't justify more than a 30 minute drive for 3 minutes of driving...so i would say you are going to learn more while HPDE'ing....

just my thunks

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by chad &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i started off autoxing....wasn't really good but was better than mid pack

then i started HPDE'ing....learning heel-toe...tossing a car around...4 wheel drift


i would say you learn more while hpde'ing because ONLY because you get about 2 hours of track time during a weekend....MUCH MORE SEAT TIME....even though you maybe only going through corners 1/3rd of that time it IS STILL 10000000% more than your 3 minutes of autox fun....

i enjoy autox but i just can't justify more than a 30 minute drive for 3 minutes of driving...so i would say you are going to learn more while HPDE'ing....

just my thunks</TD></TR></TABLE>

I agree with Chad here.

Also, while smoothness is rewarded for both Autocross and Course driving. You can tend to develop bad habits at autocross that might go unnoticed for a bit longer But, become extremely apparant quite early in HPDE and need to be relearned to progress further.

My 2 bad habits that I was told of and work on Every time I drive; on the road, at autocross and at HPDE's is, Steering smoothly and looking further ahead. I used to brake early but, that was more of a fear issue and I have learned to trust myself, my car and let my mind overcome this fear.

Also, A good autocross driver does Not always equal to a good road course driver and vice versa. But, learning good car control while autocrossing is extremely valuable and gives you a leg up on other drivers that jump into DE's with no prior experience.

 

I think this is quite true (except I don't know what difficult transient elements linked together means exactly but I get the general idea). Getting out of shape in most road course situations is not terminal for the car but there are still many ways to put yourself (of have yourself put) in harm's way. I have a psychological block of thinking out of shape can wad up the car while auto-xing, which I am slowly finding out is blown out of proportion in my mind.

The factors that I deem important to road racing are starts, comitment to a pass, off-line actions that do not sacrifice time and lastly going fast on an open lap. I came out of the HPDE environment and I can honestly say that only the latter part was I comfortable with**. The rest were all equally my weak suit. I think that what I learned from HPDE was a commonly used line (typically not too far off from what I use now) and to use all the track (which is fine until you add those other elements above, which is pretty much most of the time). Some guys I know that started road racing the same time I did with zero road course experience didn't know the line I _knew_ but they were significantly more adept at passing and starting in races - their ability if you will, in not losing time/pace off-line was something that dumbfounded me. It wasn't that I was "slow" exactly, just that I had a built in tendency to line up the pass whereas they never had a line up to the lead car to begin with. Imagine the difference between a NY cabbie driving through traffic vs. a small city boy - the former doesn't see lanes like the latter, just gaps to speed up their progress. Yeah, its a cheeseball description but all I can come up with at the moment. I don't think they were better at this because they auto-xed, simply they didn't have a notion of how to drive in an HPDE environment which is how we teach and are taught inadvertently. Nowadays, I feel I am a pretty good judge of who just came out of school from an HPDE environment because this whole process of passing and getting passed is much more structured than the racers that I see for the most part. I think the off-line driving ease that auto-xers have comes directly from what it seemingly takes to be good in auto-x, car control. The same if not moreso pans out under starts and outlaps from pit lane. I think its the starting cold from the lights in auto-x/pro solo that makes really good auto-xers have a better shot at coming out cold on starts.

I would not bet my savings on any of this as "truths" but I would say that the more fluid the driver is, wherever they formed that skill, the more easily they will adapt in a road race environment. I have begun auto-xing this year as a means to make myself more adaptable in hopes that it will pay off. It does seem that regardless of how predisposed to this you are, irrespective of your beginnings, you will need to adapt to a very different world of speed differentials, starts, comitment to a pass, off-line actions that do not sacrifice time and lastly going fast on an open lap.

** I might have felt comfortable going fast in an open lap and thought that going faster than the next guy and stuffing it into a corner late braking was quick but I learned over time that a.) I wasn't as fast as I could be, b.) late braking was pretty much universally slow, c.) I had been trained to late apex exiting the paddock and everything else and d.) that what I thought was comfortable and fast before is now simply slow.

 

while going ballz out on a "first lap" is good but i have learned that it can cost you....2 times now i have had problems of going too fast on the first lap...both at cmp....one time i spun going from 3rd to last ....the next time i saved it and gave up no posistion....

while there needs to be caution on the first lap it is still possible to have a fast lap....

 

Auto-x:
Rule 1) Minimize distance traveled.
Rule 2) See rule 1

Track:
Rule 1: Maximize speed at all times, even if this means driving a larger arc.
Rule 2: See rule 1

Totally different approach, but the techniques (smoothness, looking ahead, etc. etc.) are the same.

Some people say that doing track schools hurts your autocrossing. Bullchit. I say that doing track schools takes away from your autocross time and therefore your skills diminish because you don't practice as much. Nothing more.

 

i have some suspension mods on my 92 lude and it handles pretty smoothly. i take my car to different mountain roads in my area to have fun and see what my car is capable of. racing my car is something i would really be interested in, unfortunately i know nothing about auto x, and i dont even know what HPDE is. from what i read on this page it seems like with HPDE u get more time actually driving, i like the sound of that compared to auto x...can someone tell me what HPDE is and how i can start to race my car?

 

Thanks for the responses so far. I should make myself more clear. There's an Evolution school being offered locally and I was unsure whether the money would be better spent on HPDEs, indoor karting or the school. For $450 (the cost of the school) I could do maybe 2 HPDEs or 2/3s of a season of competitive indoor karting. I just don't want to spend my money learning how to autocross better if I'm not really going to be autocrossing much in the future, but instead doing more road course type driving.

 

I think the Evolution school would be a very good investment.

I heard you get TONS of seat time AND you have an instructor with you most/all of the time.
The instructor part is probably the most important because if you're doing your HPDE's and NOT knowing what to improve on...you'll only continue to drive like you currently do.

Evolution + HPDE School =

 

Road racing is faster, so the car acts differently and there are consequences if you mess up. Things like aerodynamics and engine power are much more important too. How nimble the car is is less important.

As far as the line you take goes, it's important to maximize corner exit speeds (ie late apex) when there's a straight after it... Autocross is so much about linking turns that you don't always put much emphasis on that. You'll still want to link turns when appropriate, but I'm just saying that you want to make the most of those straights. If you come out of the corner going faster, you'll be going faster for every inch of that straight.

It's easier to find the line at a road course because of more seat time and the course not changing every time. But it's harder to find the limit of the car, and it takes more guts from both the car and the driver. It's also much more important to be smooth and it takes some practice to learn braking zones, and where to shift into which gear.

 

Ive only been doing autox's for one and a half seasons. However the thought of having an instructor showing me how to drive my own car to its potential sounds pretty good.

A couple guys that run our program here really helped me out this year with instructions by just watching me drive...suspension set-ups, cornerning and braking. Just this little bit of instruction was priceless.

They elevated me from being above mid pack last year to taking first in sm this year, first overall in street tire division and actually enough points to take the race tire division although I never ran r compounds so that didn't count.

So yeah jump all over any kind of instruction you can get.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by TURbb1 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">i have some suspension mods on my 92 lude and it handles pretty smoothly. i take my car to different mountain roads in my area to have fun and see what my car is capable of. racing my car is something i would really be interested in, unfortunately i know nothing about auto x, and i dont even know what HPDE is. from what i read on this page it seems like with HPDE u get more time actually driving, i like the sound of that compared to auto x...can someone tell me what HPDE is and how i can start to race my car?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Well first off,



LOL now that we've gotten the gratuitous Darwin reference out of the way regarding fast street driving, here's what you need to know...

Autocross (autoX) is low-speed time trial racing. Basically it's one-at-a-time against the clock on a course less than a mile long, set up with cones on any reasonable stretch of pavement (parking lot, airstrip, whatever.) You're doing great at an autocross if you see 50mph. Entry fees are typically $15-$30 for as few as three "runs" on the course. This is without a doubt the cheapest, easiest way to learn the limits of your car with relatively low risk, at reasonable speeds.

HPDE is High Performance Driver Education, aka Drivers Ed, aka Track Days, etc. These events are held on dedicated road circuit racetracks across the country, and essentially they allow anyone to take a street car out to learn the basics of high performance driving - usually with an in-car instructor. Speeds depend upon car and track, but 100+ mph every lap is pretty normal. Entry fees are typically $100-$250 per day, for 1-3 hours of actual track time. These events are where you learn higher-speed vehicle dynamics and more advanced driving techniques.

I won't get into the discussion about the difference between the two because I don't have a fair opinion - I learn by repetition, so things I can do on a road course (slide a car around a turn at 100+ mph because I've been around that turn 100+ times already, for example) do not apply to autocross, because the course always changes. I have the utmost respect for fast autocrossers, but my brain doesn't work as well that way.

Anyway, where are you, what part of Cali? I'm sure we can find you some links to nearby road course facilities and/or groups that put on HPDE events...

Hope that helps,

Jon

 

When I read "The Origin of Species," Darwin didn't mention anything about having a green ear. lol.


<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by getfast &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">



</TD></TR></TABLE>

 

Smoothness in auto-x and road course is relative. Going smooth through a series of slaloms, offset gates etc in autox requires a different "level" of smoothness to say, going through some 80mph esses on a course. To an inexperieced eye, watching a good autox driver in action will not appear smooth at all. It all seems like just a random series of violent steering, throttle and brake inputs. However every move is precise and calculated. Watching a good driver take a series of 80mph esses looks almost like a sunday drive...

Probably the most important skill that makes a good autoxer do well on a roadcourse is the ability to adapt quickly and push the car to the limit and keep it there on a variety of never before driven layouts. This skill translates well to a roadcourse.

 

I agree with most of what has been said. Although w2w and autox are two distinct sports, a great many of the skills required to excell in one are required in the other.

IMO, the biggest difference between w2w and autox (aside from the speed thing) is a top-notch autocrosser has to be able to quickly read a course without driving it and then perform flawlessly in a short period of time. A w2w racer (budget allowing) has the luxury of training at a track - most people will try to get at least one practice day in at a track before racing there - and even then it usually takes several seasons to master a track (the guys who consider themselves local can discuss 'the line' in terms of inches).

Car control is car control. At this point in your racing career, anything you do to get practice at the limit will be beneficial. An Evolution school is an excellent choice - low risk, moderate cost, and not too hard on the car (other than tire and possible brake wear).

As noted above, quite a few top autoxers have made a successful transition to w2w and even turned pro. I rarely see it go the other way - but very few w2w racers try (they tend to get addicted to the high speeds and longer sessions), so there is no way to tell if they could. I suspect Schumi could kick my *** at an autox. Jeff Gordon probably can as well. AFAIK, neither has autoxed in a long time or with any regularity.

 

Steering smoothly and looking further ahead
not looking far enough ahead? tisk tisk
i know i had to work on steering smootheness at hpde. and shuffle steer.
-spenc
oh, and u can wad up a car at autox. is not as easy as hpde, but it can be done.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by getfast &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Basically it's one-at-a-time against the clock on a course less than a mile long, set up with cones on any reasonable stretch of pavement (parking lot, airstrip, whatever.) You're doing great at an autocross if you see 50mph. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Never done an HPDE. Will be doing a couple hopefully next year.

However... different regions have longer (or sometimes shorter) courses. This also depends on the club. Up here in New England, at Ft. Devens, top speeds for a street driven car can hit around 60 before the turn, and courses 'are' 1 mile long. Different regions will see different setups... experiences vary.

But that's not really the focus of what I wanted to say. At an auto-x, the course can be and usually is, different every day you run. Sure you get boucoup seat time in HPDEs from what I hear. Not arguing that point. Also going to leave out the costs associated from HPDEs vs. auto-x (do a search... friends become enemies on this one point alone).

What I see as a big difference is that before you do an HPDE, you can get videos, or talk to people who have run the course to give you tips on how to drive it. 'Watch for the bump in the bowl', etc... There are people that have driven the same course year after year. It doesn't change except for the direction, or some tracks offer a slightly different confiuration. But in general... it's going to be the same this year, next year and the year after. So after your seat time at that track, you can visualize the whole course. Sleep on it. Dream about it. You have years to master it, if and when you go back. Talk to others about the line that will be faster in up-hill into big bend.

Auto-x? Every time you go to an auto-x it's a different track. You have about an hour while you walk it that not only do you figure out the course, you're thinking about the line, picking up your visual points/aids and braking and turn-in points. 1 Hour. Then you go do your 3+ runs. You have three shots to see if you 'read the course right'. It's nothing but a puzzle really, where you need to be the fastest to connect the dots on three tries. You need to be fast with your visual references, picking up your visual aids in split seconds, looking left to where the course goes while you're turing right in the sweeper doing about 50. That's why I love autox. It's the challenge of 3 mintues of total immersion and concentration on finding the line, and being smooth.

Two totally different animals. It's almost like comparing football to rugby. The ball is almost shaped the same, the field is an open field of grass and they have rules. After that... the similarity stops.

 

My experience:
I have been autoxing for almost three years and I consider myself slightly better than average. I have done about 5 HPDEs but no road racing.

manveer, did you ever play an instrument in a band/orchestra/etc? If so, did you ever go to a musical competition?

The differences between road-course driving and autoxing are very nearly the difference between the prepared concert pieces and the sightreading part of the competition.

First, there are the prepared pieces that you have been working on for the past 3,4, 6 months (including a "warm up" piece/lap...). We would practice those pieces until we knew them cold, hot, and tepid.

Second, there is sightreading. During the competition, we were all led into a room where we were handed a piece of music that none of us had seen before. We had 10 minutes to look over the piece, during which no instruments were to emit a note. At the end of 10 minutes, we would perform that piece for the judges cold. (We were allowed to use our voices and often we would hum through the piece in time... i.e. a course walk...)

There were two types of people that shined in these competitions. Those that could perform a prepared piece to perfection, time and time again under any conditions because they have practiced it relentessly. But often they would have difficulty sightreading, simply because they required practice to really know a piece.

And then there were the people that I hated... who could pick up any piece at any time and play it nearly perfect the second or third time they saw it. They sometimes suffered from consistency, in that, while they could play the piece perfectly once doesn't mean they could replicate the performance whenever asked.

The practice people are the natural roadracers and the sightreading people are the natural autocrossers. Those that can incorporate the best qualities of both are the ones who excel in both.

Andy

P.S. Take the Evo school... the basic skills there are easily translated to both... and Evo is REALLY cheap compared to the road-course equivalent (Skip Barber, Bondourant, etc.). Starting as a relative novice, you can pick 60% of the skills you need for w2w at 10% of the cost.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 1GreyTeg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">My 2 bad habits that I was told of and work on Every time I drive; on the road, at autocross and at HPDE's is, Steering smoothly and looking further ahead. I used to brake early but, that was more of a fear issue and I have learned to trust myself, my car and let my mind overcome this fear.</TD></TR></TABLE>

how is that a bad habit that you "learned" while autocrossing?? most people have a problem with those two issues to start with. at any rate, a bad habit like that shows up in autocross very well too. simple things like jerking the steering wheel around, stabbing the gas, or braking too much/not enough can combine for huge amounts of time, easily well over 2 seconds, sometimes as high as 4 seconds. (assuming that you are at a minimum driving the right "line")

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Also, A good autocross driver does Not always equal to a good road course driver.....</TD></TR></TABLE>

T.C. Kline is quoted in the latest sportscar as saying that good autocrossers _always_ make good roadracers. that's him saying that, not me. i thought that was a pretty bold statement too, but if you look at the drivers he's had drive for him, they've (iirc) all started out autocrossing. his definition of a good autocrosser probably doesn't include a mere local hotshoe though. he probably means national caliber drivers. oh, btw, kline finished 4th in BSP at nats this year.

nate

 

jeff altenburg, shauna marinus (who, BTW, holds the only open class title, as a lady, at nationals. she won ASP in 97, i think?), bob endicott, the list goes on. all nationally competitive autocrossers who have gone on to have great sucess in professional road racing.

i think the biggest difference is time. autoXer's dont have time to set-up for each element. a whole run can be blown on the first corner. you have to be perfect to be fast.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by carl_aka_carlos &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">jeff altenburg, shauna marinus (who, BTW, holds the only open class title, as a lady, at nationals. she won ASP in 97, i think?), bob endicott, the list goes on. all nationally competitive autocrossers who have gone on to have great sucess in professional road racing.
</TD></TR></TABLE>

Randy Probst too... local CFR member


As for w2w drivers autocrossing, we recently had Barry Bodine, NasTruck driver, and son of the more famous Bodine show up at an autocross. Apparently only the 3rd autocross. STi with s04 hooisers....believe he took FTD, but only a few tenths faster than Kiko Seibt and Mike King in STX WRXs...and Neal Tovsen in his STi on street tires.

So I'd say the good road racers can adapt quite quickly, just as the good autocrossers can.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by phat-S &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

I think this is quite true (except I don't know what difficult transient elements linked together means exactly but I get the general idea). Getting out of shape in most road course situations is not terminal for the car but there are still many ways to put yourself (of have yourself put) in harm's way. I have a psychological block of thinking out of shape can wad up the car while auto-xing, which I am slowly finding out is blown out of proportion in my mind.

The factors that I deem important to road racing are starts, comitment to a pass, off-line actions that do not sacrifice time and lastly going fast on an open lap. I came out of the HPDE environment and I can honestly say that only the latter part was I comfortable with**. The rest were all equally my weak suit. I think that what I learned from HPDE was a commonly used line (typically not too far off from what I use now) and to use all the track (which is fine until you add those other elements above, which is pretty much most of the time). Some guys I know that started road racing the same time I did with zero road course experience didn't know the line I _knew_ but they were significantly more adept at passing and starting in races - their ability if you will, in not losing time/pace off-line was something that dumbfounded me. It wasn't that I was "slow" exactly, just that I had a built in tendency to line up the pass whereas they never had a line up to the lead car to begin with. Imagine the difference between a NY cabbie driving through traffic vs. a small city boy - the former doesn't see lanes like the latter, just gaps to speed up their progress. Yeah, its a cheeseball description but all I can come up with at the moment. I don't think they were better at this because they auto-xed, simply they didn't have a notion of how to drive in an HPDE environment which is how we teach and are taught inadvertently. Nowadays, I feel I am a pretty good judge of who just came out of school from an HPDE environment because this whole process of passing and getting passed is much more structured than the racers that I see for the most part. I think the off-line driving ease that auto-xers have comes directly from what it seemingly takes to be good in auto-x, car control. The same if not moreso pans out under starts and outlaps from pit lane. I think its the starting cold from the lights in auto-x/pro solo that makes really good auto-xers have a better shot at coming out cold on starts.

I would not bet my savings on any of this as "truths" but I would say that the more fluid the driver is, wherever they formed that skill, the more easily they will adapt in a road race environment. I have begun auto-xing this year as a means to make myself more adaptable in hopes that it will pay off. It does seem that regardless of how predisposed to this you are, irrespective of your beginnings, you will need to adapt to a very different world of speed differentials, starts, comitment to a pass, off-line actions that do not sacrifice time and lastly going fast on an open lap.

** I might have felt comfortable going fast in an open lap and thought that going faster than the next guy and stuffing it into a corner late braking was quick but I learned over time that a.) I wasn't as fast as I could be, b.) late braking was pretty much universally slow, c.) I had been trained to late apex exiting the paddock and everything else and d.) that what I thought was comfortable and fast before is now simply slow .</TD></TR></TABLE>

Emphasis added.

 

In terms of auto-x I can see a smoother line and a slightly wider arc helping a honda (or similarly powered FF car) to carry more speed through a sweeper or hairpin, if there is a need for more speed after the turn, and conversely choosing the slower, shorter route if its followed by technical meaneuvers that dont require more speed anyway.

But in auto-x terms, a wider, faster, sweep is probably still slower and tighter than the roadcourse sweep.

The only thing I would like to add is that karts are welcome at most auto-x events, so there's some good cheap seat time to be had there anyway.