What is Autocross?

Hi everyone,

This is a quick post that would hopefully help you to understand a little better what is Autocross.

Let’s start with my way of seeing it, Autocross is not racing, it is not. Autocross is not racing, because there is barely any wear and tear added to your car unlike racing. There is less risk of damaging your car, you won’t run against a wall in autocross. 

This brings us to the question, What is Autocross? briefly defined, it as the action of driving your prepared car or daily driver through a course delimited by cones (pylons) in a big flat surface such a parking lot or old airport.

Here is a quick video of how autocross looks like:

The video was taken through my phone and the app used is called Race Render, as seen on the bottom right corner of the screen.

On the top left you have set-up of the course as detected by the app, which is pretty accurate. More about this app in a following post.

The Course.

Autocross courses are a “one time only” deal. The courses are designed specifically for that event and probably never used again, which adds to the autocross difficulty. Autocross is an event where you run the course alone, each car one by one and the driver with the best time wins.

The Classes.

The cars are divided by classes, depending on your vehicle you get placed in a class with cars similar to yours, to make everything fair. Each class runs together at a determined time of the day arranged by the event organizers. Your car then is identified by its unique number in each class. Examples of class number configurations on the picture below:

Autocross classes will not run alone on the course, but a few classes will run together on the same time slot. Professional numbers are not needed for the vehicles, painter’s tape can do the trick, as long as the numbers and class are legible for the course workers, you should be fine.

The Workers.

This brings us to the next topic, course workers. Autocross is an event run by volunteers, nobody gets paid to do these jobs. There are multiple jobs in an autocross event that you might be able to perform. Course workers are three types, flag person, runner and radio guy.

The flag person holds a red flag, not rolled neither extended, that has to be waived in case cars are getting too close to each other, a car gets out of the course or another situation with potential danger. The runner is the person that runs and picks up the cones after the car that hits them and promptly before the next one arrives. Finally, the radio guy is the person that communicates the car number to the timing booth, of the car that dropped the cone or went out of course. In autocross, every time you drop a cone you get penalized by adding a second or two to your time, depending on the organization rules you are running with.

More autocross jobs include timing personnel, starting line person, who flags the cars to start, set up helper, etc. Again, working in autocross is needed due to being a volunteer run type of event. If nobody worked, nobody would be able to have fun.

What do I need?

Finally, what do you need to take to your first autocross event? Well, technically yourself and your vehicle. You will need a helmet but most organizations have loaner helmets that you can borrow. Make sure to wear comfortable clothes, depending on the weather. If it rains take a poncho or raining gear. Take water and other refreshments and have fun.All of the autocross community is really helpful, even though they compete against you they . If you have been on the fence about going to an autocross event, do not hesitate and do it!
If you want some information about the next autocross event you can head to MotorsportReg. There you will find the next event neat you.

I hope this quick post helps you make up your mind and gives you that extra push to get up early and hit some cones.

Have fun!

DL