Trivia Question: What Is A Gymkhana???

[nsxt2000]

Trivia Question: What I A Gymkhana???
Our "more mature" forum members will probably be more familiar with this term.

And the answer is........


An older name for autocross, and generally associated with a less serious event. Although I have been interested in sprorts cars since in high school (and that was a very long time ago -Kennedy was in office) I never experienced autocrossing. One time I was a passenger at a gymkhana. A course was set up with tape and the object was for the driver to complete it as quickly as possible while the passenger held a spoon out the window with a raw egg in it. The egg had to be in tact at the end to qualify. My friend and I did two runs and failed on both attempts. There were a lot of cracked eggs along the route! The winner received an egg timer!

A few years ago my son-in-law was doing an autocross with his new Lotus Elise. He is very good at it and well experienced. Although I wasn't registered he let me take one of his runs and frankly I could not discern the course. To me, all I saw was a lot of leaning cones with no definite course to follow and wantered aimlessly through it. As it ended up his Lotus had the quickest time - and the slowest time.

I'm an old dude. I need a taped or painted course!
-Mike S.

[Jack FFR1846]

Mike,

Back in the day (as my son says), I did autocrosses. I found that I did best on courses that stayed the same and ran as a series. That was especially advantageous when the SCCA autocrossers found our series and came in mid-season. My experience on that particular course kept my time better than the "real" autocrossers of the time. After 10 years of being away from autocross (I just do the track now), I went last year to instruct at a test n' tune day. I ran the 3 practice courses, which were set up to practice a certain skill. I then ran the autocross course once. For instructors, there were no workers and I ended up getting lost several times and knocking down enough cones to make my run several minutes slower than most others. I'll stick with the track.....I know where it goes.

:D jack

[nsxt2000]

I am glad to see that I am not the only one who can't figure out where the #*@^#ing course is. My son-in-law kept saying "head where they are leaning and pointing to" but all I saw was a lot of cones - some up & some down.

The good news is that I did not knock any cones down, but when you takes ten minuits to navigate the course that should be a given.
-Mike S.