Attended and participated in my autocross Solo II event Sunday, driving my Eclipse GT. Autocross is a driving event/competition where you drive a tightly-winding, flat, road-cone-delimited course—aiming to do it in the least time possible and knocking over the least number of cones possible. It’s a fun kind of motorsport because virtually any kind of car—rolling-prone SUVs notwithstanding—can be driven. Obviously some cars are better-suited than others, but otherwise autocross is a test of driving skills, more than car performance.

As I was in a hurry filling out the registration form, the organizers had a hard time reading my scrawled name, and it was listed on the roster sheet as “Victor Lum”. The name “Victor” is somewhat ironic, given my rather mixed results:

• First run: due to arriving late, I didn’t have a chance to walk the course and so drove into it with no foreknowledge. I went into the first turn far too fast and slid right off the course. After doing so, I idled for about 20 seconds, unsure what to do, until I was told to get back on the course and finish my run. The timer kept running—because I re-entered the course at the same point I exited it—and so instead of a DNF (Did Not Finish), I “achieved” the day’s worst time: a bit over 104 seconds. Any fears I’d had of screwing up were thus dispelled—if you fear the worst, and the worst happens, then there’s nothing left to fear.

• Second run: things were going smoothly but about halfway through, I received a red-flag signal—meaning “all stop”—and had to abort the run. Apparently the guy running ahead of me had knocked out the timing sensor at the finish line. So I got to re-do the run.

• Third run: my first complete clean run. Lots of sliding around and I went too fast into a turn or two, requiring handbrake turns to keep from sliding out and losing much momentum in the process. Still, a more reasonable time result: 67.229 seconds.

• Fourth run: a bit less sliding around, and my best run of the day: 64.304 seconds. (In contrast, the best runs of any class were in the low 50s, with a couple runs below 50.)

• Fifth run: essentially a repeat of the third run: 66.466 seconds. A fast learner, I was not.

Had my friend and autocross veteran Jason not been working the course (drivers are expected to take their turns helping out on the course, righting pylons, giving signals, helping out at the trailer, etc.) while I was doing my runs, I would probably have done better for his coaching. Ah well, live and learn…

The only competition I had in mind was against my friend and co-worker Nick, who was driving his Mini Cooper S. He prevailed, beating my best time by around eight hundredths of a second. On a better note, I was able to handily beat a friend of Jason’s who was driving a monstrous 440-horsepower ’67 Corvette.