This past Saturday I attended the Mazda's Rev it up (RIU) series of driving skills/auto competiton. I had lots of fun, my first time at a driving instruction school. My only other track experience has been at Thunderhill for a motorcycle track day. The RIU and was my true first time attending any type of performance driving school. I felt the $40 cost was reasonable, you get to race their cars around and with the test drives, vendors came away with a good overall value for the money.

From what I heard this year was much better than last year's. The "Chalk Talk" was a new video use to teach the very basics of driving. The short driving lessons were longer this year and used either the Mazda 6 or the Mazda 3, both with Falken Azenis tires. My only slight complaint is the driving lesions were too short. You just made a short 200m circle and it was done, no feedback from the Mazda team. I know it's hard to give personal feedback but it would be nice if they saw you hitting the cones and said "how about doing this". There were three driving lessons; "Grip" was to drive a Mazda 6 through a boxy tight right turn to left turn then opening to a larger left turn. Second was "Looking forward", you drove a Mazda 3 thought a short set of cones making sure you set up for the next set. Last lesson was running through a practice road course about 1/3 the length of the real course, driving on the Mazda 3.

The actual race course was simple, basically a very large circle, running clockwise. You set up at the timing box, go straight, the two sets of "cone walls" to drive around, followed by a high speed scacane. Then a decreasing radius turn into another higher speed "cone wall" finally to a short straight, end of timing lights. The pro's scoring was :26 for that was the base line scoring. My first try I did half of the track pretty good but over short the decreasing turn, injured about 8 cones and got a :44, this score was later dropped since I took out so many cones. You know it's bad when you hear a "kraaaaa" of a cone under the car. On the second try I took a smoother approach and got a :38 without hitting any cones. I think I could have gone faster but I was happy, I just wished you could take more than two tries.

After being a bit disappointed with my performance I headed to the test drive tent in hopes of driving the RX-8. Well seems like 30 other people had the same idea so I went for the much shorter line of the MazdaSpeed Miata turbo. The test drive course was about 4 times loner than the race course and filled with turns, ABS test, loose gravel and bumps. The little Miata was so much fun to drive, I couldn't tell if there was a turbo or v6 under the hood. My favorite part was driving through the tight turns and without down shifting exiting with plenty of power. This was the best part of the day, also the track was much more fun to drive and more challenging. After lunch I wanted to drive the Miata again but seems like everyone else found out how much fun the car was, so I drove a Mazda 6. Overall the Mazda 6 handles pretty well for a larger car but you can see how much of a difference there was with the larger weight to throw around.

I came expecting to have fun and I did. Even though I didn't place well and destroyed a few cones I felt that I had a slightly better understanding of auto crossing. I'm going to sign with the with SCCA here soon and enter a few to practice some more.



Rob

 

We finished all the Mazda3`s about two weeks ago. Pretty fun for what they are.

Ryan

 

dont feel too bad.. i did pretty horrible as well.. I was in the Club class since I autocross every so often.. the $40 was pretty reasonable but the place were ran more like a theme park than a driving school - u know line up for 15mins then go on a ride that u cant even remember - than a autocross event.. some complaints i have is that we used different cars in the skills clinc than for the competition - the mazda 6 one was wayyy off.. the throttle response and handleing were nothing like the mazda 3 and i felt it was a waste of time.. I ended up doing the pratice course 3 times and came close to beating the top time but ended up plowing into some cones at the end of the track after I understeered.

The actual competition were wher i really f-ed up.. i decided to use their manualmatic mode, downshifting through curves but ended up hitting the rev limiter in the last stright.. ended the day with a 34 second run which was pretty damn horrible..oh well, real autocrosses are more fun anyways.

 

Rev it up? I thought it was the mazda Line it up.

 

I did better this year than last...was in 5th place in club class (559 points) when I left around 10:30. I ran the 'Falken Grip' clinic 4 times, the "Car Control" clinic 3 times, and the "racing line" clinic last...all before my first run just before 10:00. First run was a high 29.xxx and kept the helmet on to run back around for the second run. The second run was messed up since the guy in front of me plowed the course and it was messed up - so I got a third run! yeah! Third run wasn't as smooth as the first one, but faster at a 29.164 seconds. Kinda takes getting used to compensating for the automatic tranny, but it was a lot better than last year - I was completely lost autocrossing with an automatic tranny in last years event. The azenis felt really good in all the cars I had and I didn't have any 'dog of a car' either. It was fun and worth the $40 to me, but I will be having a lot better time this Thursday at the Evolution Autocross School...My Tacoma with 5speed and a sorted suspension really puts those mazdas to shame for autocrossing fun and acceleration ...

 

I went to the one this weekend in dallas. I didn't really like how they didnt let you drive the course once before your first run... my first one was 33.xx and my second run an hour later was 30.xx. I felt it would of been ALOT faster if i could of got the stupid car to go back to first gear for the 2nd half of the course. I drove the turbo miata which was my favorite part of the whole thing... launched it at 7k and all it did was chirp and go, rwd is great. I was scaring my friend with my mad tite drifting skillz and the guy was watching the course was getting pissed LOL. Overall the car is really fun to drive but in the end it still is a gay miata . My only complaint is that they should of gave more runs on the course because 2 is definatly not enough.