PAX is flawed, but I digress. Hell I finished 4th in BSP at Nationals this year, but I was 7th overall out of 1185. Lots of poor indexes in there (BSP being one)...

Pax is hit or miss. The STF Mazda I drove in 2013 was a pax beast. Even when pax is "good", it still expects all cars involved to be maxed-out, no compromise full prep.

-not a lot of cars like that at local events.

I don't think I have been out paxed by any ST car at a National event in years...maybe Dixie last year when the car broke on day 2.

So many people buy a z and the first thing they ask is "What mod should I buy first?"

If anything, get an oil cooler and learn how to drive the ******* car first.

I'm kind of 50/50 on this idea myself. Having taken my car to the track fully OEM, and having done a lot since. Admittedly, some cars make better learning cars, I think ours is a decent middle of the road car to learn on. Not low HP, but not a 550 HP kill-a-noob-with-oversteer machine. It understeers like whoah, but that is actually safer for a beginner.

That being said, I kind of agree with what 350 is saying, a fast car, is just faster. And there is something a little more instinctual about driving a fast car, than trying to take a slow car and make it go faster. People sort of intuitively "get it" when they feel coilovers and springs vs an OEM spongey suspension. the feedback from a "fast car" is greater and more obvious, and feedback is what you need to learn.

Why not learn to drive a fast car first? Otherwise you end up in my situation, every time I go to the track it's like a new car lol.

I do like the typing example, it exemplifies a point. But really, wether you upgrade your car or not, there is a long learning curve ahead of you no matter which way you slice it. Seat time is the ultimate answer, but I can say from my own experience that I wish my car performed liked it does now from day 1. Some of it is because of seat time, but a lot of it is just the way the car feels now. It's lighter, better suspension, more power, better braking. It's honestly easier to drive.

As far as a seat time...I am a quality over quantity. I did less than 10 events last year and only at good sites/competition.

My point wasn't that a noob in a fast car would not be faster than a noob in a slow car. My point was/is that a noob will pick up more time from seat-time than car parts.

Anyone with zero track time that watches Mike in his BSP car and thinks "if i had all those parts, i would get those times" is wrong.

I know that using my wife's keybord will not make me able to type at her speed. I might hunt and peck a little faster from using better equipment, but no keyboard will get me up to her speed.

She's faster than me because she knows how to type and I don't.

I have seen a few noobs run out and buy race tires after their first event. They may pick up a couple seconds, but they were 5-10 seconds off the pace to begin with and tbey still cant get in the same zip code as veteran drivers on race tires. By the time they burn up that set of race tires their race-tire times *might* get close to veterans on street tires. -if they manage to correct the bad inputs that the race tires cover up.

I agree. doing the wrong stuff over and over won't help much. i have been two-finger typing for years and I still can't type 100 wpm. (Im faster than when I started though.)

Totally agree with what you are saying, if anything I'm proof that doing upgrades set you back lol. But , if I could have had my car today 2 years ago when I started, I think I would have ultimately learned faster.

You couldnt have sold the "seat time" aspect any better. I did my first autocross last Sunday and realized how fast I really wasnt. Civics, Miatas, STI's, VW's were all faster than me with less horsepower.

Now granted I wasnt pushing hard the first few runs but when I did my Z wasnt going where I wanted it to go. By my last pass I dropped 4 seconds.

I need some more major (SEAT TIME) to go faster.

I prefer sleep time. We need houses right next to the track

I think it's all relative...some are just better drivers out the box than others and if you were given a GTR would you not learn on it regardless of your time! I'm building my car first and learning to drive it and how it reacts to the upgrades, then I will hit the track and get some instruction. Different stokes for different folks and in the end I agree with cossie...man I wished I lived closer to a track!!!!

Well, when I was starting there was the Hyundai trophy dash cars - a mostly forgotten footnote in SCCA history. Hyundai was new to the American market at the time and gave a sporty (NOT) Scoupe to each region. At each event, the winner from each class was invited to take a lap in the car at the end of the day and the person with the fastest time won $$$ from HMC.

I missed the early years, but I did get to see a 10 years old Hyundai with faded paint, completely worn out suspension, rusted out exhaust, nasty bodywork (it seems the car had rolled up onto both sides multiple times over the years) and, my personal favorite, the ORIGINAL OFF THE SHOWROOM FLOOR all season performance tires! Yup, 35000 auto-x miles on the same tires.

Being driven by the best drivers around, that silly car usually placed within the top 25% of raw times each event.

Today, you could probably go rent a Chevy Aveo or similar. Make sure it's an automatic...

O

I see talent variations in new drivers all the time. Some people do have more natural aptitude for this than others, just as some people, who are naturally coordinated, pick up typing faster. Learning to type still trumps hunting and pecking. -Even really good hunting and pecking.

Seat time can make the mod path obvious. Once you get consistent, you can zero in on the things holding you back.

My first mod was almost a cat-back exhaust. I had ~1k burning a hole in my pocket after a about 6 2-day events and set my sights on a shiny new Nismo exhaust. My wife (GF at the time) asked me what it would do and I told her it would give me about 5-10 more HP. Then she asked me how much time that would shave off of my runs...."Well", I said, "maybe a tenth of a second on a 60-second course." Then she asked how much time I would pick up with an LSD (I was running an open diff at the time)....That would give me at least half a second and maybe even a full second on some courses.

The Quaife LSD was my first mod, ~10 years ago, and the exhaust was one of my very last mods, just last year. (Borla TD)

I'm not saying that there's anything "wrong" with modding your car. I'm just saying that modding the driver will net you more speed than modding the car.

What sold me on seat time was having someone be way faster than me in my own car.