I'm not familiar enough with either organisations or their differences. I wanna put together a spreadsheet or something thats easy to read to compare and contrast them, so i need everyone's help educating me about the two.
a quick trip to wikipedia tells me hpde is High Performance Drivers Education. That says their events are not races or competition?
If you want to do track days then NASA if you want to drive around in a parking lot go to Walmart.....I'm just kidding thats what SCCA is for. LOL
Any timed event usually counts as competition/race if you wreck your car... insurance tends to have clauses against that.
but NASA's S stands for Sport, and the wiki article on HPDE talks about lack of competition. Are NASA events just test & tune type controlled environments with instructors, or is there racing or competing events under NASA? I really don't know, I'm not trying to be facetious.
HPDE High Performance Drivers Education, they word it like that so that insurance companys look at it like a school, some insurance companys will cover it some will not.
HPDE rules include usually passing only in the straight sections and passing by point-by only. Also driving off the line is not really an accepted practice at a HPDE either. So pretty much all the fun of wheel to wheel racing is taken out the event . Also while you might be a decent or should I say reasonable driver, some people go out to a track day or HPDE thinking they are don johnson or something and drive way beyond their limits and spin out in front of you. This is why I nolonger track my car. Also going around the same track all day long gets kind of boring to me (i've been told by the club racing people that this is because I'm not engaging in "wheel to wheel racing" as described above). However I won't sugar-coat autoxing either, it cost money if you want to be compeitive. Two years of autoxing the crap out of my STi and I have gone through: one clutch ($600), one set of motor mounts , three sets of r-comps ($3K) and one set of street tires ($800). For my car I have bought the follow items to fully prep my car: ohlins shocks ($2k), one set of rotas ($600), two sets of bbs wheels ($1400), and a front sway bar. But the beauty of autox is that you can show up in any working car and decide whether or not you like it. I will tell you that the Atlanta Region SOLO II program is one of the best in the whole country, I believe there was five trophy winners this year at nationals from AR. When you want help, there are a TON of national level drivers in the region and most if not all are more than willing to give you advice or help. I guess I'm alittle biased to SCCA In the end it comes down what you want to risk, your daily driver or maybe a track car or maybe just a set of street tires. For the two years I've been autoxing I have never gotten bored with the sport. Frustrated, yes, angry when my r-compounds die, yes but never bored. There is always the option of building up something that you can afford to wreck (I have yet another 85 CRX that used to a G production car waiting for brian to put in an engine). OH here's a PS: there is saying that "autocrossers make good road racers, but road racers don't make good autocrossers"
:rofl: at first all i could picture was a spaceship navigating cones in a parking lot...... ooook ill leave now
I thought they had NASA events at most of the regional tracks ie Road Atlanta, CMP, Roebling etc... Roebling and CMP around 5 hours drive from atlanta. http://www.nasa-southeast.com/hpde.jsp
All the events this year are within 5 hours, cmp being the longest drive, normally vir would be but they canceled it. Edit Mid Ohio is probally a longer drive but its worth it, Ill be running the entire NASA Southeast schedule this year, I'm running Time Trial in TTA Matt
There is going to be a NASA national level autox this Nov. in Virginia. I am planning on attending that. My only downer about SCCA, is the classing. They force you to prep your car towards a class, while NASA classing just penalizes based on specific mod and total accumulated points move you to a tougher class. Not all autox'ing has to be as expensive as previously described. You don't need ohlins and you don't need 710's. There are plently of great parts out there used and in great condition if you are willing to look, and that includes tires. I spent only $100 on my first set of 7 Hoosier tires, and $300 on my last set of 4. I am still running on the 7 that I bought last Feb. It helps also to not run A compound. Just make sure you start out in a stock class or touring class, as the mods are less expensive.
Why not just try out autocrossing without joining the SCCA to see if you like it? Or go do an HPDE and see how you feel before you become a NASA member.
The key is, How competitive do you want to be? Stock Class can be the most expensive class to compete in, there are so many little things you can do to bend the rules. If you make 10 more hp than everyone else then you have a big advantage, on a regional level this probally doesn't happen a whole lot but on a national level it certainly does.
I don't agree with this at all. IMO, stock class is the cheapest class if you want to be competitive. An STi with just a 32mm fsb, alignment and set of hoosiers trophied at nationals last year, and won ProSolo. As for bending the rules, I don't see solo as doing this very much, as compared to club racing, where every advantage is exploited, and you have fully sponsored race teams. If you ran street prepared classes, you will have to spend at least 5x the amount of money to get a nationally competitive car, as compared to stock. For ST, you will still spend almost as much as SP to get your car setup, and the top guys are running Advan Neovas, shaved to 3/32nds, which cost more per tire than V710 R-compounds, and don't last much longer for autoX. Also, I see stock classes being less dependent on car setup than the other classes, meaning that it would take a whole lot more effort in car setup for the upper classes. IMO, this leads to driver ability being more of a dominant factor in the stock class, compared to SP, where you are at a much greater liberty to setup the car to do exactly what you want it to do. I feel that our STi is setup to be nationally competitive (with a fresh set of tires). To copy our setup for another STi, it would cost you around 5k. If you were to copy Joel's BSP setup, it would cost you at least 5 times this. Having a nationally competitive car obviously isn't everyone's goal, but after personally spending 2 seasons autocrossing as many events as possible, I really do feel that a well setup car does make a huge difference. You can be driving at the top of your game, and if your car isn't setup right, you won't get the results that you want. I am quite far from being a top level driver, but it does make me feel good that I can have a nationally ranked driver hop in our car, and place 2nd overall in the event, beating my time by 2 seconds, and provide insight on how I can improve my driving. As for beginning autoX, I feel that you learn more from crappy street tires, as they make it much easier to find the limits of the car. If it is your first season of autoX, I would just get a good autoX alignment, set the tire pressures and go out there with what you have. A stiff front swaybar would also be the most cost effective mod IMO if you are starting out. I still remember our first events in the wrx, hearing the screech of death from the stocker re92s Also, quite often, you won't be able to have your car competitive for the class that you want, as there might be better cars in the class. One such case would be running the 06+ WRX in the street tire class. Since the 06+ wrx moved to the 2.5liter block, it has to run in STU, whereas the 02-05 was able to run in STX due to having the the ej20. With any amount of money, I don't think that an 06 WRX would ever be regionally or nationally competitive in STU, as the STi/EVO are in STU, and are easily dominant. I do think that the 06+ WRX does have a good chance in DS or ESP though. -- Brian
[threadjack]This is great info Brain, especially as I'm leaning towards getting the STi involved in some AutoX-ing this year. Thanks for sharing! Back to threat at hand...[/threadjack]
I should have said showroom stock wheel to wheel racing, I wasn't even thinking about autox when I posted that. I know showroom stock classes are some of the toughest classes
yeah I didn't realize that you were talking about club racing. I have heard similar things about SS, similar to how you have to buy a freaking expensive "stock" motor for spec miata. I have talked to an engine builder, and there are tons of tricks that those guys do that are undetectable by a protest committee. When you have cars prepared to the limits of the spec, every little bit counts. For me, wheel to wheel club racing sounds like the ultimate sport, but once I started looking into the costs, it certainly wasn't affordable. We had originally thought about dropping autocrossing and building up a G-production 1st gen CRX (cheapest semi-competitive car), but even if you only spend $5-6k on building up a car (basically rebuilding someone else's old car), the actual cost of each racing weekend would make me go broke. I do dream about it some day though, if I was to win the lottery, or find a large sum of money somewhere. If you look at the cost of autoX, it is peanuts compared to wheel to wheel. IMO, the only way to race a car like an STi in T2, you would have to be seriously hooked up with sponsors and have a ton of expendable income. On a side note, I feel that I learn a lot more from AutoX, compared to track days, and in turn enjoy them more. With track days, I find that after running the same track for a couple of track days, I get bored with it. I don't get much out of ironing out the perfect lap, going to the same track many times. As for AutoX, I really like that challenge, knowing that each event will be different, and the challenge of walking the course, visualizing the course, then running the course, trying your best to get it done in 4 runs. With events like the BMW events, or other region events, where you get 6-8 runs, I sometimes start to get bored with running it the same way. I do like test and tune events though, where you have the same course for 20 runs or so, as you are able to play with the car setup, and see shock/tire pressure changes effect the overall handling of the car in different elements. I have friends that totally disagree with me on AutoX vs track, and compare racing on a track to shooting at a range, where your goal is to hit a given target with accuracy and consistancy, through repetition upon repetition. Along the same lines, I personally get bored of shooting at shooting ranges, and really only had fun shooting when I was able to go to the middle of no where, and throw out random objects on the side of the mountain and shoot them -- Brian
The good thing is, this will be his first time racing or nearly first time, so nationals don't matter. The shooting analogy is good. Right now, the only thing that matters is seat time, and you can get a whole lot more autox'ing than any other motorsport out there.