PCA Winter Driving Skills Day - Warning: long-winded, rambling, and a little horn tooting

[Avant-agedS4]

I had an absolute blast at the track day this past weekend! The instructors were all really cool and am looking forward to the next one now. I gotta say the little A3 held some serious ground in a pretty fearsome pack (icy/wet conditions may have helped). Given it was a Porsche event, you can imagine the talent was quite high - a few GT3s were in attendance, a couple turbos, a flurry of 911 carrera variants, and some odd men out (e.g. a B6 Nogaro S4 sedan, an old, old m3, a GTO, a Honda civic and Toyota corolla (i respect the effort!), and some corvettes). Event was comprised of a skid pad, a emergency/threshold braking / accident avoidance exercise, a figure 8, an autocross, and a slalom. I got some great comments from the instructors - one guy told me I had one of the quickest autocross times he's seen all day, and slalom guy told me I had one of the best slalom runs of the whole day! I gotta say I'm hooked - and that the A3 is impressing me more and more! A lot of the instructors were encouraging me to get out to some road track days as well. We had some icy weather to start with, but it began melting off mid day. The new winter tires performed great in both conditions. The cold, wet VHT was a force to be reckoned with - but I did managed to get almost a full spin on the skid pad when the e-brake was pulled. Majority of at-speed portions were run in 2nd gear around 4k rpms. Skidpad: i assume std setup with cones set in circle and large center cone to focus vision on. A3 pushed on throttle adjustment (as expected) but held quite well... even on the slick VHT. Probably ran the tightest circles i saw (not sure that's necessarily a good thing though). Accident avoidance / emergency braking: with stock pads, the brakes on the A3 actually did quite well. I wasn't getting very deep into the cones on straightline braking. The accident avoidance portion went well too - however the wife had a little later turn in and the A3 lost a battle with a cone (knocked off some part on the front of the wheel well of the driven wheels). I think i need to try the pads MDaddy got from tirerack once the rears are available too. Figure 8 - other than a decent amount of wheel slip in the straight portion (REVO's too strong! ), not a lot to tell here. I turn in too early, and ended up drifting well through the turn - but the A3 remained confident and predictable with ESP both on and off. Auto X - my favorite event. I got a comment from one instructor who said "I want a ride with the quickest guy" - that may have been why i liked it! Again, I turned in early at times, but the A3 recovered well. I really noticed this car can handle as much throttle as you can throw at it (in 2nd gear - haha) and the brakes do their job well. the instructors pushed me to push the car, and it continued to hold. Slalom: this was initially my most difficult event. i hit a few cones on the initial runs, the throttle is arguably too responsive in that it quickly recognized the most minor input (throwing me off my game). However, last run of the day, i went all out, pushed it harder, and came back to the slalom lead instructor running over to give me a high five! Again, the A3 runs great when really pushed! All in all, i'll be doing more of these and it really makes you realize the car has a lot more ability than you have. For the folks who mod and don't do these events, consider it! you may have a lot more fun and save yourself some money. with that said, an LSD is creeping higher on my list now.

[April]

[scotchy]

Last time I was there a certain A3 was able to do a pretty good job of keeping up in the rain in the corners (not in the straights tho ;-) ) with a certain B5 S4 that had a red front bumper....lol. (I was impressed) I've been pretty happy with how well the A3 performs so far.

You should come to Quattrofest in Feb. If you haven't heard about it ask Tomasz for details.

[Avant-agedS4]

[scotchy]

To a mainly BMW event in Portland...a little pricier but only 24 cars so ALOT of driving time. Advanced drivers only tho. I'd like to go to both but it's just too close together so I'll have to pick between the 2.