Running in the rain

Looks like tomorrow has a 70 % chance of being my first autocross in wet weather. Any tips? I'm running FS, RE71R's, strano rear bar on full stiff, '16 GT PP.

Tire pressure suggestions? Nannies on or off?

In general, you want to bump the air pressure a little, and soften the suspension as much as possible. You have an adjustable bar, I'd start with it full soft. My experience is all road racing, but the fundamentals should transfer to AX also. And no ideas on the nannies; my race car doesn't have any, although I really want ABS for the wet races...

On your course walk, look for areas where the pavement is worn smooth from traffic, for painted lines, and areas where cars park and drip oil and antifreeze. Those will be the slickest areas. On a dedicated race course, the fastest line is often off the racing line. The race line is worn slick and has rubber and oil and whatnot on it. In the wet, you want unmolested pavement, to the point where the "classic" line is often the slowest. Not sure how that carries over to a parking lot AX course, though. Maybe you'll have enough runs to get some trial and error.

The tires wont heat up much in the wet so running them a little higher starting psi makes sense. Last weekend in the wet I still ran my rear bar on stiff and shocks at their usual settings although conventional wisdom does say to soften them.

I'd say keep the AdvanceTrac off if you can handle it. The car is going to slide in the wet, no way around that. Learn to embrace it while still getting close to those cones.

Soften everything up you can and run street tire pressures.

Somehow we ended up not getting wet! There were a few sprinkles, but not much of a problem.

Of course, I really wish it had rained. I laid down a good first run (my best ever driving actually) with a 27.968, and was ahead in FS by a good bit.

Because of the high possibility of rain, we switched the order up a bit. We had 2 heats, and each heat ran 3 runs in the morning to be sure everyone got a dry run in, then we ran another 3 in the afternoon. After 3 runs I was still leading my class. If it had rained my time would have most likely stood. But, on the 4th run GuardDog came back and ran a 27.060.

He's running crazy good this year, and I was amazed that I made him work for it this time around!


#GuardDog

John you had a great run right out of the gate! I admitted defeat thinking it would for sure rain before the second heat. You are seriously improving quickly! #6 pax overall is great