April 22nd was an exciting day for me — It was my first autocross of the 2012 season! Not only was it my first race of the season, it was my first autocross ever driving the S2000. To say I was nervous would be an understatement.

Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get the KW Variant 3 coilovers installed before the day, but I’m hoping to get them in before the next autocross. I figured at the very least I now have something to compare the coilovers to and maybe I’ll notice a difference. Either way, the Bridgestone Potenza RE-11 tires are great!!

My only goal for the day was to NOT SPIN. The S2000, especially the early AP1s like mine, are very prone to snap oversteer. The course had two turn around points, both being pretty wicked corners that would easily induce oversteer or understeer, depending on the car. While drifting might look cool, it sure isn’t fast…. And autocross is about being fast.

Luckily, I didn’t spin at all!!! I had a pretty nice drift in my first run though, here’s the video for that:

I was really happy I didn’t, and I felt pretty accomplished considering a LOT of people did end up spinning throughout the day. I wasn’t one of them, though! I learned by my second run (video below) that the S2000 responds best when I drive as smooth as possible. And, since smooth is fast, that’s what I was going for anyhow!

After my second run, I knew that the S2000 was only going to be as much of a handful as I would let her be. She’s not crazy or out of control or hard to keep facing the right way… At least not when I’m trying to be crazy fast. Of course, the idea *is* to get faster, and thankfully I managed to do that in my third run!

Also running for the first time of the season and in a different car was my husband, Sean. He decided to take our STi out and see what she could do. He royally kicked my ass, laying down a 51 second time when my fastest was a 58, but part of that comes from the turbo and AWD of the STi too. Plus he’s just more aggressive than I am. Here’s one of his videos:

I went into the afternoon knowing that I was in 3rd place in my class, and I wanted to keep it! I didn’t know how many people were in my class, and though it turned out to only be three, I still wanted to do as good as possible. My fourth run was another improvement, hooray! I also moved the camera to the hood to see how it turned out, but I don’t think I’ll do it again… It’s pretty shaky.

My fifth run went a little backwards in time, as I got a little too gas-happy and had to slow down in the first slalom. Ick.

Unfortunately, the camera’s battery died after my fifth run and I didn’t get to record my sixth run, which also happened to be my fastest. I set down a best time for me of a 58.160, which wasn’t bad at all! It was an improvement of at least three seconds over the day, which is pretty good honestly. I believe the time translated to a PAX-adjusted 49 seconds and some, which sounds better to me honestly!

I did manage to get a 3rd place trophy, too! Yes, I was third out of three people…. But I was still proud of myself for getting a trophy. I may not be the fastest, but at the very least I do get out there and actually race instead of just watching from the sidelines!

I’m very excited for the next autocross, which is on May 20th!

I really didn’t want it to happen, but it did anyway (not that I REALLY thought I could get away with it not happening) — I fell in love with the Ferrari 458 Italia. Hopelessly in love. It is such an amazing car that you can’t help it.

The Gallardo Superleggera is behind the black and red 458 Italias.

The entire time we spent at the Exotic Driving Experience was great. We got there early enough to watch some of the people from the session before us and see the cars before we went through the class. The class itself was alright — definitely nothing that I haven’t heard before. To me, a track day is a track day and is familiar — don’t do anything dumb, here’s the track layout, here’s the cars we have, etc.

Shot of the two cars we drove that day -- My husband took out the Gallardo Superleggera and I got the 458 Italia.

It was kinda weird, because I don’t think most people that do it have the experience my husband and I do. We were in a group with two other guys that have NEVER done anything similar to it before. Not that having experience helped that much — it’s still a bit crazy to see the track layout for the first time, and then fifteen minutes later get into a rather expensive exotic car for the first time and then go out and try to drive a new car on a new track at speed.

I was happy to get to drive the red 458 Italia. Everyone knows red Ferraris are the fastest Ferraris.

Then again, my experience probably helped in that I was fairly relaxed about the track part. I do autocross, and autocross hinges a lot on your ability to quickly learn a course and master it in a short period of time. After that first easy lap, it was a matter of working to shave off the seconds and feel comfortable in the car. (Shaving off the seconds isn’t too hard, but getting used to pushing a car that cost as much as they did? Yeah, that’s the hard part!) I did get a kick out of the part where the instructors asked, “Where’s my Ferrari guy?” and I raised my hand, hehe. I was the only girl in my group driving and I was driving the most powerful car there.

The crazy steering wheel of the 458 Italia. The guys there were great and let me get this photo after I had my laps in!

All in all, it was a FANTASTIC day! Pricey, sure, but it wasn’t that bad compared to other similar events I’ve seen before. It’s great to see them doing so well, too, since they have just started this in January of this year! And, if neither the Porsche Carrera S, Audi R8, Lamborghini Gallardo & Gallardo Superleggera or the Ferrari 458 Italia get you going, don’t give up hope yet! They told us that they’re working on adding more cars to the experience.

I had to giggle at the 997 Carrera S, since we had driven the 991 Carrera S only two weeks beforehand. The R8 was the V10 one, so pretty close to the Gallardo, save for the sound when they were driving. (Gallardo > R8)

Honestly, my words can’t do it justice. Lucky for me, I don’t have to try! I have the video of my entire drive. Just please forgive my weird dialogue, plus I sound off since I was sick… But I still managed to lay down one of the fastest times of the day at that point, and they may have been the fastest times of the day overall but I don’t know that for sure.

Bottom line from me: If you get the chance to do a drive or day like this, DO IT! I would love to go and do this again if I go back to Disney World, and I want to do more at different tracks as well. I mean, I gotta go and drive a Lamborghini myself yet….

While I’ll talk more about my overall race experience at Sebring in this post, the photos I’m sharing today are of the various other cars I saw at Sebring other than the race cars and, what race cars I do share, were there on display and not running. (Well, some were racing, just not during the 12 Hours!)

Absolute dream come true getting to see one of these!! Also got to see one of the retired 935 race cars!! <3

Like I said in my last post, we spent a lot of Saturday seeing everything else there was to see and not really watching the race. We had practically no cell service whatsoever, so it was practically impossible to keep up with the live timing and scoring… It’s not as much fun watching a race when you have NO idea what’s going on!

Thankfully there’s a lot to see and do other than just watch the race!

For one, there was a little midway with booths, including a bar set up by Patron Tequila. Yup, I had to go and have a drink! I also failed miserably at Forza 4 and we got a funnel cake. Yummy.

I think this 904 was a kit car, but I can't be totally sure...

There was my little version of heaven, the Porscheplatz, or Porsche car corral. It really made me want one more seeing so many older 911s from the years I really like! Someday I’ll be able to pay to park in the Porsche corral.

Not surprising at all that Porsche had a large presence there, including some of the cars from one of the local dealerships like this beautiful yellow 991.

One of the fun things to do was to walk through the garage area during the race. Any damage suffered on the track and the cars go back there to get fixed. Early on in the race we were walking through this area and had one of the 458 Italias blow past us, less than a foot away. It actually scared me! With all the noise on the track I didn’t even think that the car was right behind us… I never made that mistake again, though.

Which was good, because later in the day we were in the garage area and I turned around just in time to watch the Number One Audi pass by us. The R18s are eeriely quiet for how deathly quick they are, it’s almost like watching ghosts pass by and you only really hear the air moving for them…. It was a pretty cool moment, even if it wasn’t thrilling to see the Audi in the garage area and not out on the track!

She was hiding by the Corvette Racing truck, but no surprise there -- she's the "street version" of the C6Rs!

I have learned that I really need to get a mobile charger for my phone…. Battery just does not last! I’ve had it pretty much die at the end of the day when I’ve gone to Formula D, but it was pretty much dead this day. So yeah, I need to invest in one bad!

One of a group of Club Racer Z's. As I mentioned, there were some race cars that were there, just not racing during the 12 Hours! I think they had events going on during the week before the race.

I also cheated and ended up taking a nap for an hour or so. We had only been in Florida for a few days and I hadn’t yet reacquainted myself with the heat and humidity, so I got wore out pretty fast.

I did manage to sit and watch the last hour or so of the race…. I got to see Audi take the checkered flag.

Pretty cool to get to see one of these in person! I also got to see a Ferrari FF in person, so it was a great day for unusual cars. (Plus like four or five Bentleys, haha.)

All in all, it was a very long, very overwhelming day. We got there at about six in the morning, and all of the teams were already there and working when we arrived! So it is a VERY long day for all the teams and anyone else involved with the race. I really got an appreciation for all the work that goes into it from going.

Sure the GT 40 is cool, but I totally love the Daytona Coupe!!!

I also have an incredible desire to get involved on some level….. Someday maybe I can figure out a way to do it. I really hope I can.

Even before the actual race there's some carnage, like the damage suffered by Flying Lizard No. 44 during practice.

I’ll be splitting Sebring coverage into two parts based on the small amount of photos I have to share. This first part will cover the actual race cars, while the part later on this week will cover the other random cars & old race cars that were there. That splits my SLR photos nicely, and I’m not going to worry so much about the crazy amount of iPhone photos I have right now. (If you’ve been following me on Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr, then you’ve seen most of the iPhone photos anyhow!)

One iPhone photo I love -- the one of the Falken Tire RSR that won me their photo contest!

So. Sebring. Florida. The 12 Hour endurance race on a track that beats cars and drivers to hell and back during the time it runs. What you don’t see if you watch the race on tv is all of the work that goes on BEFORE the race ever takes place.

Luxury Racing 458 Italia

The first memory I have of Sebring is pulling up to the gate on Friday and hearing all of the cars running during a practice session…. It was INSANE. I loved it. The easy ones to pick out right away were the Corvettes, and the Ferraris really stood out too.

Krohn Racing's 458 Italia

Honestly, there is NO way to accurately share how wonderful it sounded. In a bit I’ll share a video I took at the track and posted on YouTube, but it’s just not the same…. You really have to go to a race to appreciate it.

Wider than the regular GT3s, but they look small compared to the RSRs. Very quiet, comparatively speaking, as well.

Even though I had my SLR, my iPhone was my best friend. You know the saying, “The best camera is the one you have on you when you want to take a photo”? So true for the iPhone. But I still made sure to put the SLR to use and the photos here are mostly from Friday because of it.

Friday we didn’t stay long, the heat and I weren’t agreeing and I didn’t want to chance getting sick on Friday from it and have a bad day Saturday for the race. Friday was figuring out how it was laid out, seeing what there was to see somewhat, and mostly autographs!

Audi had a ridiculous line for autographs, so I decided to forgo other teams in order to spend the entire hour of the autograph session waiting in the Audi line. Thankfully I made it to the drivers just in time! I got to bring home a beautiful poster of the R18 signed by eight of the nine Audi drivers, as well as getting to “meet” Tom Kristensen, Dindo Capello and Alan McNish, some of my driving heroes!

The R18 driven by Kristensen, Capello and McNish!

While I spent my time in the Audi line, my other half went to visit our favorite team, Flying Lizard. He got all of their drivers’ autographs on both a hero card and one of their license plates. He also told me that he talked to Patrick Long, and that Long had said we’ve made a good choice deciding to get a 3.2 Carrera and that he used to have one himself! That really made me happy to hear. I’m really sad that I didn’t get to meet him myself though.

No. 45 is the car that Long drives. If you like Porsche & motorsports, chances are you know who Patrick Long is!

I was also depressed that I didn’t get the autographs from Falken’s team of drivers. I’ve been a fan of Falken in ALMS ever since they started campaigning a 911 and I love how they use it to test out their tires. Lucky for me, they ran a photography contest on Friday…. And I won! One of my prizes was a 1/43rd scale Falken truck signed by their drivers — YAY! It’s definitely one of my prized possessions now…. Pun half intended.

The SLR version of the winning photo.

Really, when you’re at the race you spend more time doing everything else but watching, at least for a long race like Sebring. I think I’ll end it here for now and pick it back up in the next post!

I’m interrupting my normal posts for this important announcement!

As of March 14th, I left the chilly Inland Northwest and headed down to Orlando, Florida, to spend just shy of two weeks having fun in the sun.

Part of this trip involves attending the 12 Hours of Sebring live! I’m excited beyond words. It’s totally worth putting up with a Nissan Versa rental car to make the quick trip over to Sebring for the festivities.

As a help to my favorite twitter chat, Motorama, I will be live tweeting from the race! I won’t get the blog updated until the end of the month with anything Sebring, possibly out to even April… So if you want to keep up with the race, follow me on twitter, Instagram or both!

Of course, there’ll still be posts here later on if you care to wait, or just want the SLR photos. My live coverage will be all iPhone done.

Feel free to join me, and if you’d like me to cover anything specific please let me know!

(I’ll also be live tweeting in a week from my time spent with the Exotic Driving Experience, where I’ll be taking a Ferrari 458 out on the track for a few laps!)

My second autocross wasn’t exactly the best day out for me, I had a hard time trying to be fast and just didn’t make it happen.

June, however, was great to me! I somehow became competitive and was running times up there with people, not at the back of the pack the entire time… I was even excited to be beating people. (I was faster than a stock Mini Cooper! Don’t judge, those things can be wicked autocrossing…)

My Results

Once again, going without my support system (the husband) isn’t fun, but it’s also extra motivation to do really well and make him proud of me.

At the end of the day, I even made myself proud — I came home with a 3rd Place trophy!!

My awesome little 3rd Place Trophy!

And I wasn’t 3/3 either, I was 3/4! That means there was actually somebody who was slower than me. Really, that hardly ever happens…

Definitely a proud and surreal day for me. July’s autocross is coming up quick, and I’m wondering if I can’t pull it off again.

The Videos

Once again, I’m either waiting in line for my turn at the course or chasing cones, so I don’t really have time to play photographer if I want to play racer too.

It’s quite alright with my GoPro, though! I might put it on photo mode one of these days and see how that goes, but for now I’m enjoying the video I end up with.

I had nine runs on this particular day, and managed to only screw up the recording of one… So there are eight videos to share.

If you want to see my fastest run of the day, that’s the fourth video down. (My fifth run, I botched the video on the third run.)

While it definitely wasn’t for my birthday (which is today, btw ), it was extremely nice of Audi to make me proud and bring home yet another win this year at Le Mans.

Audi’s Stunning Victory

First off, last weekend was the 79th running of the 24 Heures du Mans, or the 24 Hours of Le Mans for us English-speakers. It was an intense race through and through, and typical of Le Mans, only half of the cars that started the race finished.

Included in the retired cars were both of Aston Martin’s own cars, numbers 009 and 007, who were both retired in under five hours. (It turns out that the safety cars did more laps of the circuit than they did, sad!) Most notable, however, was probably the fact that Audi lost their number one and three cars, both to horrific crashes.

The best news is that both Allan McNish and Mike Rockenfeller are okay and actually both got out and walked away from the crashes. It was an amazing testament to the safety of the R18 that both of them were alright. Of course, here’s the videos for anyone who missed them:

There really isn’t any good video on Rockenfeller’s crash, but needless to say the R18 disintegrated upon impact of the wall, and it happened right after the Mulsanne straight. He did walk away from it and was sent to the hospital to be observed, but has been released and is at home recovering.

I do hope for a speedy recovery for both McNish and Rockenfeller, and it is truly amazing that they are both alright. Safety in racing has come a long way.

Despite losing two of their three cars, though, Audi’s number two R18 managed to pull off a victory!!! Three Peugeots could not catch one Audi, and it was definitely a good way to end an otherwise grueling twenty-four hours for the team. I’m very happy for Audi!!!

The No. 2 Audi that managed an amazing victory, a great end to the day that took its comrades away. (Photo Credit: AutoBlog)

As for the GT classes, Corvette Racing did quite well, snagging the GTE Pro win, eeking out their Ferrari 458 competition. I’m very proud of Flying Lizard’s efforts, and while only one of their cars finished (6th) I still think they did fantastic! As I said before, literally half of the cars that started the race did not finish.

More Than a Race

More than any other year, this year I kept up with the race as much as I could. I had to work, but I had an audio feed of the race for as long as I could, keeping up with what was going on. I was also obsessively following the twitter feed of the action, both from the official Le Mans twitter and from a few of the teams.

What I ended up realizing is that this is the most I have ever followed the race and really been into it. While I’ve been cheering on Audi for years, it was really only left at that. I never really followed them on their journey to victory during the race.

It seems that I get more and more into it with each passing year. I feel like it’s indicative of my dedication to cars as a whole — Each year I’m more and more into it, no matter how much I thought I was into it before.

One of Flying Lizard's two very beautiful Porsche 911 RSR's. (They're one of my favorite teams.) Photo Credit: AutoBlog

While I didn’t get to actually watch a ton of the race, I still followed along. It dominated my thoughts for an entire day. I was seriously on cloud nine after learning that Audi pulled off the win.

In a way, it’s become a way to track my progress as I learn more about cars and racing…

And really, I wouldn’t have it any other way. GO AUDI!!!

There are good race days, and then there are bad race days. Sadly, this particular day fell into the latter category for me… It just wasn’t my day.

Regardless of having a very slow day, it was a ton of fun! It was great to get out and autocross at Spokane County Raceway. Definitely different than any other course I’ve ever run — It was cones set up on the track itself!

It was probably nice for the novices — There was really no way to get lost. Though for anyone who’s first day was out there, I think it’ll be way intimidating when we go back to Deer Park next time and you’re staring at a sea of cones.

Since my amazing sidekick and adorable husband of mine is deployed, I ended up going to the event solo… Which meant that I had no time to bother with taking photos. My poor Nikon had to stay home. (I decided to leave it at home rather than worry about someone walking off with it.)

Instead…

Since I knew I would be hard-pressed for any photos, and I definitely can’t take photos of myself racing, I made sure I got a GoPro camera.

While I will always love photography, I’m finding my venture into the world of video to be an interesting one… Hey, it’s fun because I can do both video AND drive, at the same time!

Naturally, I forgot to turn the camera on for what ended up being my fastest run of the day… *Sigh* Hopefully next time I won’t forget to do that!

Overall, it wasn’t a very good day for me, but I think everyone has bad days where it just doesn’t come together. That’s how this day was for me, definitely! Anytime I would try to do something it just wasn’t working.

Next time, I’m going to figure out how to better read my tires to see what’s going on… I have a feeling that’s to the point where it’s making a difference to me big time and I need to get on it.

Here’s my video results from the day!!

This was my first time out to the Friday night drag races by myself. It was a bit lonely, but it also let me focus a bit more on my photography.

With the track getting busier, the benefits of having a nice dSLR are starting to come into play. On this particular night, I was allowed to position myself in places that other people weren’t allowed. (Basically, on the side of the wall closest to the cars, while other people had to stand behind the wall.)

I’m trying to figure out what sort of lens would be best for shooting these cars… I’m thinking I’d love the 85mm prime, since I really enjoy shooting prime and it would get me closer to the cars without actually being closer… As long as there’s an aperture that would be low like my 50mm so it would work the longest with the fading light.

Who knows, we’ll see. Not all that many photos that I really liked from this particular day anyhow.

The Photos

The nice surprise of the night was spotting this gorgeous silver R8 when I retrieved my hoodie from my car.

I love the paint scheme on this bike.

I thought it was pretty cool to see a girl out there. Always gonna give props to female racers of any kind for actually getting out there and racing.

I liked how the light played on the smoke in this photo.

Another of the Cougar. He always did really great burnouts! I wish I took some of the room in the front of the car and moved it to the back.... I was closer, so it was harder to frame it well.

As long as my work schedule permits, you can find me out at the drag strip on Friday nights. The 13th was a little special to me since it was the last Friday I got to spend with my husband before he left for four months.

I’ll be doing all of these posts in the same format — Very little words and mostly just the photos. I am always welcoming critiques, as I go out to these to work on my automotive photography! (It’s nice to not want to race for once at an event, haha.)

The Photos

My 240SX! Had to get in a few snaps of her, since I've been in desperate need of up-to-date photos of her. I really like how the light turned out.

One of my favorite things to take pictures of... My 240SX's Bride seat. So comfy!!

Another sunny photo, once again I really like how it came out.... Car: Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX MR.

There were some great burnouts this night... This was one of them.

This was easily my favorite burnout photo that I took... And it was sad, because the car broke its driveshaft on launch. Really odd watching a car hop and a driveshaft just fall out.....

The license plate on this Camaro is 9SECZ28 -- It's the fastest street legal Camaro in this area, if not the whole NW... She ran a 9.118!!! Crazy. (No forced induction either, all engine!)