*** Updated with Video ***
It was a long day, but man was it fun. Siguz (my brother), condor888000, and I made the journey to Shannonville Motorsports Park (SMP) to run in their third autocross event of the season. We left condor888000′s driveway at about 7:30am and we meant to take the backroads down to Napanee, but missed a turn, getting us lost and forcing us to retreat to the familiar 401 for the last leg of the journey. Still, we managed to see two turtles waiting to cross the road. This was particulary amusing because my brother noted that despite the “Turtle Crossing” warning signs, he had never seen a turtle on the road. Of course we see two that morning alone.

The last bit of the drive was a little rushed as our getting lost, and condor888000′s sleeping-in, had delayed us a bit, but we arrived at the SMP skid-pad to find a small field of cars (about 1/3 of an MCO event), a really relaxed atmosphere (registration was just starting at 10:20AM and course design was happening on the fly, by committee); and a really friendly bunch of folks (typical for autocrossers). Another cool thing was that unlike our local events at Lot 9 of Scotia Bank Place, SMP is surrounded by other motorsports activties — dirt bikes to the west and Solo I on the maintrack to the north west.

The course was short (2 laps and FTD was under 39 seconds) and while it appeared tight, I actually needed 3rd gear on the approach to the stop box! And what a stop box it was… tons of time to be gained, but real consequences, not only in a lost run, but also the potential to end up in the dirt on the edge of the skid pad.

Several MCO guys were there, probably about 10, and there was tons of car swapping going on between Ralph, Kevin, and Bill. Pierre’s V-dub also got a work-over from Bill and my brother and I were sharing Ginger. condor888000 also took a few fun runs in Ginger managing to kill the ignition with his knee mid-run! My brother managed to get within a tenth or so of my time and condor888000 closed to under a second, but the best part was that I pretty much matched condor888000′s best time when I took his 3 out for a single fun run.

This definitively told me that I haven’t sufficiently switched my approach to reflect Ginger’s traits — RWD, low mass, short wheel-base, hyper reactive to inputs. It was also interesting to see how the Dunlop Star Specs behave on the 3 vs on Ginger. I suspect the Star Spec isn’t well suited to the MX-5 in the autocross context. Can’t wait to see what the Hankook Ventus RS-3 tires will do on July 12.

We managed 6 timed runs and an hour of fun runs, which meant something in the neighbourhood of 18 runs. After the event, dalightskinguy joined us for a nutritious dinner at Wendy’s in Napanee before we split up and took the backroads home. It was sunny at first, but started to get overcast as we got closer to Westport. As it started to rain, rather hard, my brother and I looked at eachother and said, “Faster!”. We managed to get to the shelter of a gas station in Westport as it got really, really heavy and pulled up the top. That was a good thing as the rest of the drive to Perth was horrendously wet. By the time we got back to condor888000′s place, it was dry and the top went back down as we chatted with condor888000′s parents about our day.

What more could you ask for? Gorgeous roads with little traffic on the way there and back, a great event, and great travelling companions. Ginger may have had a different take as she was called upon for 18 hard runs and 500km of twisty highway driving. I think she deserves new oil this week.

If you’re interested, you can see one video of me, my bro, and condor888000.