My Boxster Autocross Diary
I'm a rather well-traveled autocrosser. I started competing in 1985 in a 1965 Chevrolet Corvair turbo (Don't laugh! It was all I could afford, it was a lot of fun, and I could beat just about any Mustang or Camaro that showed up... except for one guy who happened to be the current National Champion!). I then moved on to other cars including a Suzuki Swift GT (OK, now you can laugh!) and a Toyota Paseo, and co-drove various cars like Camaros, a Mazda RX-3, a VW Scirroco, and even a Formula Ford. Along the way I won some Divisional and Regional Championships, and in 1992 I finished 6th at the SCCA Solo II National Championships in my "H Stock" Paseo. That was the best I ever did at the Nationals, but I was over two seconds slower than the 1st place finisher who was also driving a Paseo. That was discouraging. I decided I was in over my head, and I felt totally burnt out. Then the competitors in older H Stock cars petitioned the SCCA to move the Paseo into E Stock instead, claiming they were outclassed by these newer cars. The SCCA obliged, whereupon other "unfair" cars started to win instead, like the BMW 318i, Toyota Celica etc. Kind of funny! I was actually kind of happy about my car being moved, since it removed any incentive I might have had to continue competing. I "retired" from the sport, got a life, started my own business, and even got married! When I later bought my RX-7 I decided it would be a good idea to autocross it a few times, just to get a healthy feel for the car if nothing else. I ran it in several autocrosses and had fun, but never did win anything with it.
When I bought my Boxster though, I really got the autocross "bug" again and decided I would compete in it as much as I could without getting burnt out, though I doubt that I'll ever compete at the National level again. So I was very interested in seeing how my Boxster would do.
At the time I first wrote this page, the following info was true, but I haven't updated this for a while. The Boxster ran against lots of other fast cars in its SCCA class, which is called "A Stock" and is the second-fastest "Stock Category" class. Its competition includes the BMW M3 and Z3, pre-'83 Corvettes, Dodge Stealth and Mitsubishi 3000 GT turbos, Ferrari 308s and 328s, pre-'93 Mazda RX-7 turbos, Mercedes-Benz SLK 230, Toyota MR2 turbos, and tons of Porsches of various years and models, including the fast 944/968 and 944/968 turbos, and all 911s except the turbos (the Boxster is also known as the 986 BTW). But a friend had competed in his father's Boxster and won every autocross he entered, including two major events, so I was fairly sure the car would do well, as long as I didn't hold it back too much!
My First Boxster Autocross, PCA, 4/10/99
I took
my Boxster out for the first time to compete in an autocross put on jointly
by the Loma Prieta Region (of which
my wife and I are members) and the Golden
Gate Region of the Porsche Club of America
(PCA) one Saturday morning at the Oakland Coliseum (4/10/99). When that was
over I drove around the building to the other lot and ran a San Francisco
Region SCCA autocross that same afternoon! My PCA runs were in the dry, but
it started raining in the afternoon (lightly) so my SCCA runs were on wet
pavement.
At the PCA event it was a fast top-of-2nd-gear course; very flowing with high-speed transitions, but with three slow turns thrown in for fun. I finished 1st out of two drivers in class "T" which is for totally unmodified Boxsters. I was the only entrant for the morning runs, but another guy in a Boxster showed up for the afternoon runs after I left, while a woman ran in the Ladies class. A new friend "DougO" ran another Boxster in class "Ti" (the class for slightly "improved" Boxsters) because of his sticky BF Goodrich g-Force T/A R1s. Unlike mine, Doug's car has the standard suspension, not the M030 Sport Suspension mine has. He ran well, but spun on his last run which is usually the fastest run (it was for me).
Boxster results: (they only sent the best times):
T Pedersen, Dennis 99 Boxster 37.525
T i Ostler, Doug 97 Boxster 37.723 (sticky tires, hence the "i")
T Campbell, Gary 97 Boxster 41.689 (in the rain?)
T L Lee, Nancy 98 Boxster 44.667 (in the rain? Ladies)
BTW, TTOD (top-time-of-day) was:
Z Provasi, Tom 70 914 35.437 (it was race prepared)
So, given that I finished 11th out of 71 drivers, and only 2.1 seconds behind the fastest car there, I'd have to say that the Boxster is more than competitive. Especially when you consider that the only mod I'd made was to raise the tire pressures, and many of the other cars were race-prepped with roll cages, bigger wheels, etc.
These Boxsters truly are a blast to autocross! The Boxster is very forgiving, even though it initially oversteered a bit more than I expected with the tire pressures I was using. The Boxster was like a dirt-tracker! Wow! Plus the Boxster didn't feel at all underpowered. It felt great exiting turns, and good on the straights. But I still wish it had more power for the street.
As regards tire pressures, the pressures that Porsche recommends are not optimum for autocrossing -- they are chosen for the best compromise between comfort, low wear and handling safety. So I started with my best guess of 36 psi front and 42 psi rear, according to my ancient tire pressure gauge, in my Michelin Pilot SX MXX3s. This made the rear a bit loose (that is, the rear tires slided more than the front tires; also called "oversteer"). So I talked with DougO and he checked my pressures with his gauge and decided that I was actually running 32F and 38R. We verified his reading with someone else's gauge too, so now I think I must have been running excessively low pressures for many years now! Oops! So he leant me some air and we went to 36F and 38R (his gauge). This made the car more neutral, even though it's the opposite of what I expected would happen. Perhaps the extra air reduced the traction of the fronts enough to even out the handling? I think the right decision might have been to lower the rear tire pressures since I wasn't getting enough roll-over on the rears, while the fronts were fine ("roll-over" is a term that describes how a tire distorts in turns so that the tires start to get wear on the rounded "shoulder" of the tire where the tread meets the sidewall -- the extent of that wear is used as a rough guide to determine optimum tire pressures). Maybe 32F and 34R would be best? Time for a tire pyrometer? See my "Boxster Tires and Wheels" page for more tire pressure info.
SCCA, 4/10/99
The SCCA event was a much more challenging course, full of decreasing radius turns and very late apexes, some of which were very difficult to locate. Not quite a "top-of-2nd" course.
I watched
two other Boxsters run while I worked course, one (driven by none other than
Trygve Isaacson
from PPBB)
ran in "Rookie Stock 1" and the other driven by David Colman in
the serious "A Stock" class. It started sprinkling very lightly
during part of their run group. Trygve turned a very nice 47.801 before the
rain started to slow him down which was good enough to earn him 5th out of
18 in class. David in "A Stock" finished 3rd out of 5 in class with
a very fast 44.235 (he uses sticky tires like DougO's). But he's won every
other autocross he's entered in the series
this year, so I suspect that he just had a bad day. Maybe the light rain threw
off his concentration.
By
the time I ran (in the "Street
Tire" class) it was raining lightly, and the ground got progressively
wetter. For a while at least I was fastest in the entire run group... even
against the fast "Super Stock" guys with sticky tires! (Hmmm, could
it be that the rear weight bias helps in the rain?) I ended up with a 48.241.
I was amazed at how easy the Boxster was to drive fast on that wet course.
It felt great. Only one turn was giving me any real trouble... it felt like
glass and the rear of my car was sliding through that turn more than I expected
it would. It actually felt like "trailing-throttle oversteer" which
is a handling problem usually associated more with 911s. That turn had my
name, because I slided sideways to a stop in the middle of it on my last run.
I had the "TC" turned off
on all my runs, and I don't think it would have helped there.
It has since occurred to me that perhaps I could have used the ABS to help me through that turn where I slid sideways (I prefer that to the more lurid term "spun out!"). My first runs I trail-braked heavily into that turn; that is I didn't release the brakes until about halfway through the turn, and only started backing off in later runs when I realized how slippery that turn was. On my last run I braked entirely in a straight line, backed off the brakes, then turned, and slid sideways. Perhaps trail-braking would have allowed the ABS system to use the brakes to load/unload the tires so the rears stayed stuck? Perhaps I should have braked earlier, then applied a small amount of throttle through the entire turn? I'm not sure, but who knows?
In short, I had a total blast! And I have no doubts that this car is meant to win. I'll certainly be competing in this car again, and will post any further thoughts I have on the Boxster's competitiveness in the future. Heck, I even went out and bought a new helmet and tire pressure gauge! BTW, my new gauge also seems to confirm that my old gauge read about 4 psi high.
BTW, the results from the SCCA event are on the SFR SCCA Solo 2 web-site. Interestingly, my Boxster seems to be about as fast as my RX-7 in autocrossing, even though the Boxster's class is supposed to be slower than the RX-7's class. Note the RX-7 results from my last autocross driving in it the compared to the Boxster results. The RX-7 should be faster, and perhaps it is by a very slim margin. But I think it should beat the Boxster rather handily, and that hasn't been the case. Perhaps the high mileage of my RX-7 was to blame, but the engine ran strong, and the suspension was rebuilt with all new bushings and more. Hmmm... either the Boxster's handling is even more awesome than it seemed, or it is simply much more difficult to extract all the RX-7's potential (i.e. I drove the RX-7 poorly!).
Duel at De Anza, 5/16/99
I raced the 31st annual "Duel at De Anza"
autocross and won my third straight event! I won with a 65.971 second run,
but a cone penalty added a second to my time for an official time of 66.971.
But even with the penalty I still beat a Carrera (68.138), another Boxster
(69.275 which also included a one-second cone penalty), various M3s and the
like. All of us were running real street tires -- no sticky tires. I ran 34
psi in all the tires, but the car understeered more than before, and I still
could allow more tire roll-over, so I might be trying 32F/30R next time. The
changed handling may have been due to the different surface or the fact that
I removed the spare wheel and tools, but I'm getting really close to optimum
now. Hmmm... this gets complicated!
SCCA, 6/26/99
My second SCCA autocross. Like the other it was at the Oakland Coliseum, and I finished first in the "Street Tire" class again... undefeated so far! It was fun being congratulated by my competitors, who are great sports. But it is obvious to me that I still have a ways to go to be truly competitive. My fastest run was 51.905 seconds, while David Colman managed 49.150 seconds in his Boxster in "A Stock." Yes, he does run race tires (forgot to ask about any other mods/tweaks), and he did run later in the day, but that can't possibly account for 2.755 seconds I'm very sorry to say. The course, while very fun, was rather confusing to me, and I'm sure that didn't help. I honestly believe that I need lots more practice in the car, as well as lots of car setup before I can reach his level. Trygve was there too, and while his "scratch" time of 52.471 seconds was fastest in "Rookie Stock 1," the "indexing" bumped him back to second place by just 0.049 second. I know how that feels... my last autocross with my RX-7 ended the same way for me. Man, he's right on my tail too -- just 0.566 second back! I wasn't doing nearly that well at that stage of my autocross career! But I did finally determine the optimum tire pressures (for these tires on this course anyway): 33F/31R for the first run (when cold), 34F/32R for subsequent runs (when warmed up). The car felt great on my first run, but the pressures got up to about 35F/33R on my second run (as the tires heated up and I didn't bleed them back down) and the car was somewhat "tail-happy." On my 3rd run I bled them back down to 33F/31R, but I unexpectedly experienced excessive oversteer again. On my fourth run I set them to 34F/32R and all was well again... the handling balance was superb and the tire rollover was just the right amount. This car is very sensitive to even slight changes to the tire pressures! Seems odd that the ideal pressure is higher when the tires are hot, but perhaps the rubber softens and allows greater stick which requires extra pressure. It may also seem strange that the rears are lower than the fronts, since the heavy engine is in the rear, but I suspect the fronts need extra pressure to keep them from distorting since they are mounted on a narrower rim, plus they don't get as much negative camber. The wider rear rims reinforce the tire better and prevent distortion; hence they don't benefit from the extra air pressure. On other courses, or with different tires and alignment, this might be different, but for now 33F/31R will be my starting point.
NASA, 7/3/99
My first NASA autocross was in Marina near Monterey. The competition wasn't too exciting as I was unopposed in AS (they don't have a "Street Tire" class). But the course did have a rather exciting slalom that started out tight and then opened up (the spacing between the cones increased), and was offset from the regular in-line type in favor of making your line straighter than usual. So I'd enter fast to the first cone, brake hard, fling the car to the right, stomp on the gas and just steer through the rest of the slalom. What a blast!!! But on one of my runs the car started getting away from me; the rear snapping a bit more to the sides with each turn, until it finally snapped VERY quickly into a 180 degree spin. Wow! Fastest spin I've ever encountered, except maybe that time I spun an '88 CRX Si... that one had a shorter wheelbase and spun so fast that I was totally disoriented briefly! Moral: If the rear starts getting a mind of it's own, don't just assume everything will be OK. Give up the run and keep the car going straight. BTW, my fastest time was nearly as fast as the fastest race-tired cars there. Only 1 second behind!
PCA, 8/22/99
I entered another PCA autocross, this one was held at Candlestick Park in SF. A beautiful day, and I even managed to persuade my wife to accompany me! But this time I was bested by "DougO" who beat me by .895 second in his afternoon runs. I'd been leading after the morning runs, but I left early so my wife and I could have lunch with a friend, and he got me! Here are the top finishers out of the 70 entrants:
Km Beck, John 72 911T 57.996 20 TTOD
K i Murray, Chris 78 911 60.485 20
B i Nieslony, Steve 73 914 60.609 20
Qm Jones, Dan 97 C4S 60.748 20
Dm Mitchell, Mike 87 944T 60.838 20
Km Beck, Brian 72 911T 61.204 16
T i Ostler, Doug 97 Boxster 61.365 20
Br Dorighi, Gary 74 914 61.723 20
T i Pedersen, Dennis 99 Boxster 62.260 16
I guess Doug just had a better day than I did. I do know that my first run was my fastest, which is usually a sign that my driving isn't up to par. Or maybe it's time to buy some real autocross tires! Or I can remove my Korda exhaust and play in class "T" like I did before I got it, or just not worry about it. Yeah, that's it! The best part of the event was that my wife came along and even seemed to enjoy it. I sure hope I can get her to come along again in the future, and maybe even drive!
SCCA, 11/21/99
The last SCCA autocross of the millenium (at least in the SF Region) was
held in Stockton. Couldn't miss that, now could I? It turned out to be a beautiful,
but chilly, day, with almost no clouds and temperatures in the 50s. I entered
Street Tire
class again and finished
first out of 20 drivers with a time of 37.391 seconds.
Interestingly, a driver entered in the same class as I, driving a Honda
S2000.
He ended up with a 39.051, but not
before a spectacular spin right after the first turn on his first run! It's
still too early to say for sure whether this car will be more competitive
in A Stock than my Boxster, but I'd guess that it's not based on this very
limited sample.
After the regular runs were finished
for the day they offered "fun runs" for anyone interested... that
included me! I improved my time from 37.391 seconds to 36.9.Then I made the
"mistake" of letting my friend Chris Cox drive my Boxster (he's
a frequent SCCA National Championship competitor). He absolutely loves the
car, put in about five runs and managed to get down to only 36.350 seconds!
I drove with him for one of his runs, and got a good idea of where he was
making up time. In one turn I wasn't agressive enough, in another I was too
agressive. That's all it takes, and that may have been enough to cost me those
extra tenths! That's the whole reason for doing something like that, and I
learned (or re-learned!) that it's easy to go too slow in some places and
too fast in others.
SCCA, 5/20/00
My first autocross of the millenium was held at Candlestick Park, San Francisco. What a fun course! Lots of challenging sections that rewarded aggressive driving. It was long too... my best time was 80.229 (though I nicked a few cones it seems). My fastest time without hitting cones was good enough to earn me another victory in Street Tire class! I brought a friend along from my work, and he had lots of fun too. He was my passenger on my last and fastest (scratch) run... interesting how extra weight can speed you up!
New Tires!
So I bought some new "Kumho" autocross tires for my Boxster. It'll be interesting to see how much they help me. I'll need all the help I can get if I'm to do well in the regular AS class, competing against David Colman, Teresa Neidel, Andy McKee etc. Though they often seem to prefer to run in the local "PAX" class... should make things easier for me, unless I decide to tough it out with them in PAX.
PCA, 6/11/00
I went to my first autocross held by the Loma Prieta Region of the PCA. It was at Marina Airport, like many other autocrosses I've attended. I never did see any results from it, but I was TTOD when I left. This also gave me the chance to get the tire pressures set for the new Kumho tires. They turned out to require about the same as the Michelins did... 34F/32R. Odd, given the different sizes of these tires.
NASA, 6/18/00
Another event at Marina Airport. On the Kumhos again. This time I finished 1st in AS, and finished 1st in the "PAX" ratings overall... wow! That's a first for me. NASA uses the same PAX indexing as the SCCA does.
SCCA, 7/2/00
This was my first SCCA autocross with the Kumho tires. I entered A Stock (without the "Street Tire" designation) for the first time, and won first place. It appears that the tires helped save me about 0.5 to 1.5 seconds per minute on course. I base this on comparisons of my runs at this event, and previous events, with those of other drivers who were present at the same events. These tires feel no better, but certainly are faster. If anything, they feel mushy in comparison with the Michelins.
Brief Update (October, 2002)
I ran several events since the SCCA one above. Some were NASA, some PCA. I won all of them, including several 1st-place "PAX" finishes! But the biggest news is that I actually persuaded my wife to go along on two of them!!! The first was a BMWCCA event in which we drove her 540i. We both agreed it was rather frightening due to the awesome power combined with the mediocre handling. She loves her car, but definitely prefers the Boxster's handling. So, the very next day we entered a NASA event with my car. She sure had fun! I haven't autocrossed since NASA events held on October 22nd, 2000, and January 2001 though. I guess I've been busy with other things that seem to be more important. I'll keep this updated as needed. Thanks for visiting!
© Copyright 1999-2007. Dennis Schøler
Pedersen.
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