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Autocrossing

Autocrossing the 2002 Civic Si

We were lucky enough to have an autocross occur at Hollywood Park when we had the Si for a week. We decided to see how the car would do and analyzed the car in this extreme environment. I was unfamiliar with the local car classes available and asked if they had a street tire class for stock cars. I was told to enter STS (Street Touring w/Street tires) and though I was puzzled, I complied. STS allows many modifications to your car such as springs, sway bars, exhaust, intake, headers, etc.. but requires that they be run on street tires. The tire of choice for this class is the Falken Azenis tire which is a remarkably inexpensive tire for their high performance. I was going to compete against all these cars with modifications and sticky Azenis tires, while I had to make do with a bone stock '02 Si with the factory tires. To get to the result, the car and I fared decently, placing mid-pack (16th of 30) in STS. If I was placed in GS (race tires allowed), I would have been 5th of 11 (mid-pack again). I think with more autocrossing seat time in the Civic Si and a set of sticky tires, I should start placing in the top quarter. The torquey engine pulls you out of lower speed corners in second gear noticeably better than my '94 GS-R ever did. The car definitely has potential at the autocross track.

The stock filter element is a simple cylinder. This should be a very easy design for an aftermarket company to develop for. The filter element simply fits sandwiched between the bottom and top of the air box. You can see the dyno charts here.

Notice the rear weight transfer when launching the car. I tried a 4000 rpm launch and just spun the tires. 3500 did work fine on my best run of the day. The car was very easy to launch with it's torquey i-VTEC engine. It just becomes a matter of finding the right RPMs for your tires and track conditions.

For the autocross, we increased the tire pressures by 5 PSI over the stock recommended 33 front, 31 rear. At this pressure the car becomes noticeably more neutral. The body still rolls quite a bit and the tires squeal like mad, but the car remains quite neutral if you apply the slow in, fast out theory of performance driving for front-wheel drive cars. A quick turn of the wheel has the car hesitating slightly before the car takes a set. I blame this on the OEM tires which have a very soft sidewall. Lifting in the middle of the turn will make the rear swing out just a tad and applying throttle will tuck it right back in. You can easily make the car rotate at your will like this. It brought a smile to my face at how the car could rotate so nicely around the autocross course.

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