Zoom Zoom, Take 2

This weekend I had another opportunity to smoke the tires and boil the brake fluid of Mazda's latest offerings. As I did last year, I attended Mazda's Zoom Zoom Live event, a marketing junket that basically involves adults driving real cars the way they would drive bumpercars. This year, Mazda offered several different opportunities to send their products to the scrap heap early, all on autocross-type courses laid out with cones on one of the expansive parking lots at the California Speedway in Fontana: a very short untimed circuit for Miatas and RX-8s; a target course for CX-7s, in which you must drive precisely over several electronic plates within an allotted time; a matching-time gymkhana, in which you must match a target time while driving one of several different products; and the featured event, the timed autocross in Mazdaspeed 6s.



Last year, the timed event was for Miatas, which had been newly redesigned:




This year, the Mazda 6 sedan (in full afterburner mode) was the choice. My friend Mike and I paired up for our first shots at the course, then drove separately for our respective "hot" laps. We could tell from the waiting area that there was a tricky decreasing radius right hand turn about halfway through the course; half the drivers noisily ground their tires into dust as they carried too much speed into the corner. Several drivers plowed throught the cones altogether. My first lap was very satisfactory, as I turned a 34.4 second lap against a target-to-beat time of 34 seconds flat. I figured a sub-34 lap was in the bag, to avenge my too-slow-by-.01 second letdown from last year.





Alas, it was not to be. In the first major corner of the course about ten seconds in, I committed the cardinal sin of forgetting to look ahead through the corner, instead focusing on the wall of cones I was rapidly approaching. Unlike the first car I drove, this one refused to take the corner, understeering heavily, forcing me to scrub off all of the speed I had accumulated. By the time everything was under control, I was late for the corner and too slow to get a good run down the back straight. The same behavior repeated itself from there on out. Rattled by my amateurish failure in the first corner, I was simultaneously too cautious and insufficiently attentive to look into the coming corners. As a result, I was consistent slower through just about every corner and ended up a full second slower than my first run.

I put on a poor display, but the car was quite clearly showing the strain of a morning of slammed brakes, excessive slip angles and clutch abuse. The last corner, in particular, required at least 90 more degrees of steering lock than the first car; I had to reposition my hands mid-corner, which I had not had to do previously. Still, had I not made so many mistakes, I might have been able to overcome the car's weaknesses.

On the whole, of course, I had a blast. Driving new cars is always fun. Plus, my first run on the timed course was very good, considering that there were two of us in the car, and that only about two dozen people over the course of two days beat the target time. Mike came within .015 seconds of matching the target time on the matching time course. To our amazement, about five minutes after our run, someone actually matched the target of 27.000 seconds (yes, down to the thousandth of a second). He won a Bose radio on the spot.

We also learned the key to these kinds of events, which have become very popular over the past few years: go early. These sorts of things always require the partcipant to sign up for a time slot, but the reservation only holds a place, not a time. Last year, we showed up at about 11 and endured lines that got longer as the day went on. This year, we showed up at 8 and, as at all amusement parks, we enjoyed the run of the place for the first hour or so. Because you only get about thirty seconds in the car at a time, the less time spent waiting in line, the better.

Stay tuned for our next adventure, coming up in two weeks!