This was the fall autocross for the Rocky Mountain region Porsche club.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEyZu5WcupI

 

Nice driving!

The light poles on the course look scary...

 

Exellent video and driving! I assume it was a TT you were driving? Did it have PTV and/or PDCC?

 

Yes. Turbo. No pdcc or ptv. Just a plain old 04 Turbo.

 

nice skills!!
looks like u had lots of fun

 

Thanks guys.

I don't have any action shots of mine yet. I know someone took a few.

Just for reference this is the Cayenne the video was taken in with me driving.



FWIW I beat the 944 with race tires parked behind me by about 7-8 seconds.


I did get a nice shot of the Turbo S that was also autocrossing that day. No idea what their times were yet. (you can actually see my Turbo still parked in the background while I was taking this pic)

 

Thanks for posting ! How was the body roll ?

 

Could have been a touch more flat in my opinion. But I actually posted some pretty fast times in it and beat many other Porsches so I guess I can't really complain.

I'm sure I could have posted even faster times in a GTS or Cayenne with all the fancy PDCC, PTV, etc. Mine has none of that. (not sure I like all the electronic aids involved when playing a "sport", my real track car 951 has none of that stuff either)

 

If anyone is really curious how the CTT did. Here are the official results listed by times.

http://www.rmrporscheclub.com/static...%20Results.pdf

 

Nice clean driving. You must have previous experience. This summer was my first summer and I never beat any of the smaller Porsche's times. I did, however, beat out a few other cars.

Folks enjoyed watching me. They said I was going so fast it always looked like I would never make it (brake in time) but I always did.

Then there was that time I came out of the circle tires chirping perfectly the whole time, I lit up the Turbos with enough advance throttle that before I knew it I was in the other corner! There were all these cones. There was no way I was going to miss them.

I wiped the corner out even thought I had never hit a cone and had a point deducted previously. Having garnered about 7 cones and points, I tossed caution and precision to the wind. When I came out of the slalom I was in a full power slide headed for a tight box. More cones went down but I expected more.

That "imperfect" run was more fun that any of my other perfect runs. Folks loved it; they'd never seen an SUV in a power slide before. Indeed, I never did anything like that before.

They never would count all those cones for me. Of course, I behaved like a mad man coming our of the box yelling, "I'll get 'em all!"

Autocrossing is skill building. I wish it was easier on tires & brakes AND I had started doing this years ago when my reflexes were sharper.

 

Great story!

...and I have just a touch of prior driving experience

 

How do you launch that CTT of yours? Do you boost it at all or just get on it? Looks like a lot of fun, must be easier in person to determine where the track is, hard to tell where the track is for all the cones.

 

I had help staying on course. For me, that was the hardest part. I requested an instuctor ride along with me every chance I got.

The instructor's always insist I turn PSM off. Of course, I set the PASM to lowest ride height and Sport mode.

With PSM off, it launches in 1st.

Also, I turn the A/C to Economy to try to grab some more power back.

When I put her into the power slide, I could only do that with PSM off. In this original issue of the Cayenne, the PSM will not come on to intervene automatically and save you. However, from reading the literature my understanding is that in the new variant, PSM is always lurking on the background ready to come on automatically to intervene and save you if it detects you're really out of control--much like it does on the 911 and 987.

Also, I select Full Load and air up 39/50 in the PCM. This is to keep my tires from rolling too much on the side walls. In the future I'm actually going to go slightly higher pressure in the front tires, maybe 40-41 psi.

With PSM on, she launches in 2nd gear.

While PSM off gives back maybe 50 hp to the drive system, I found that WITH PSM ON, I did much better. But if I really got sideways PSM would cut in much like it does when I am driving as I have grown accustomed over the decades on snow & ice. It is very rude and irritating when PSM interrpts rudely a slide I anticipated and launched around a corner.

The new Cayenne's PSM may be softer, not intervene so hard, so rudely, and may be more to my liking. PVT should also improve Autocross performance.

Why did I did so much better with PSM on? Quite simply, when you take your foot off the accelerator, PSM pre-charges the brake lines so that the brakes are ready and come on quicker.

I don't bother with shifting--let the Tiptronic handle that. All I do is hammer or squeeze the accelerator and brakes. Kind of point and shoot. It takes both hands moving quickly to thread those paths set up for little cars. It ain't fair but thank God for power steering (and heated seats).

Turbo lag is a ***** and ideally one accounts for that and hits the gas a few milliseconds earlier than the desired boost. Maybe 400-500 ms. It does get scary. I am almost lost it on a slalom in the rain.

Since this is skill building for real world driving, I am going to run in both conditions so that I can get better skills.

Autocross is an adrenaline rush. The other drivers (of course, not my personality ) are fun to watch.

A few act like they are non-competitive but really are engrossed with winning. There are those with Wonder Machines who don't do so well; they seem to be handicapped by their wonderful rides. Then there are the young guys with modest cars and major skills. And there are sadly few Porsches. However, it is really painful to watch and hear someone in a C4S refusing to shift out of first gear constantly hitting the rev limiter! I'm not buying THAT car!

I don't know enough to advise on this further. Autocrossing has improved my driving. However, our PCA courses up here are smaller than the one in the video. We don't get to driving as fast. However, our courses are more difficult to read and stay on course. I can't wait until next summer.

 

Cole,

Why didn't you drop the suspension to a lower setting for this? Seems like that would flatten out the roll quite a bit. Which for an SUV it really didn't roll much.

 

It was at the lowest drive able setting during the autocross.