Road America Winter Autocross in an X5 3.0 5spd

[Ctsiegf]

So it's been a few weeks but I took the X5 out to Road America's second winter autocross March 1st. It was an absolute blast and I highly recommend it for anyone local or find a similar event in your area.

Elkhart Lake's Road America, Inc.

My X5 is pretty much bare bones as it gets. 5spd, no sunroof (weight reduction?), standard suspension, no cold weather, etc. I did have bridgestone blizzaks on standard 17" rims.

There were three events in the morning. A short autocross that wasn't timed. A long autocross that was timed. A start/stop challenge where you dragged to a cone, did a 180 turn, returned through a slalom and then had to stop in a box. You started at one event and kept doing it until it was time to switch to the next one. In the afternoon, all three rotations were repeated. It was a ton of driving.

I know a lot of people have had problems with their X5 recently on the forums. I've had most of the common ones in bunches and have fixed them all as well. But I want to say that if anything would have killed my SUV this would have been it. The X5 came out completely flawless after 6 hours of highway driving and 5 hours of hard autocrossing so I think that is a true credit to the vehicle.

The conditions at the events were really tough for a two-ton SUV. Everything was a thick sheet of ice so any type of hairpin turn would have you plowing straight in at almost any speed because of the X5 weight. I did do more handbrake turns than I've done in my entire life to try to get the old girl to change directions. In the start/stop challenge vid you can hear the handbrake gong going off lol. Studded tires were banned, btw.

With the DSC off it was really sketchy on ice. The x5 actually went towards snap oversteer followed by plowing straight on. I was really surprised how fast the suv would rotate around its center but it was too difficult for me (a novice) to balance that snap with the understeer from the vehicle weight. I spent a lot of those runs yawing back and forth between those two extremes.

So I went with the less aggressive DSC setting by holding the button down until the light went out. This upped the fun factor because I wasn't constantly fighting the suv trying to kill me.

As far results go...I guess I registered for the wrong class along with the other SUV owners. There was an SUV/truck class but all the SUVs except one were placed in the AWD class with EVOs, STIs, S4s, etc. Still, I managed to finish the long autocross in 13th out of 40 cars in class. I think that means a 2002 X5 3.0 is the fastest track SUV out there.

Results: http://www.roadamerica.com/media/wys...4Autocross.pdf

Overall, the event was superbly run and I highly recommend it to anyone interested.

Here are some vids and pictures:








Short Autocross


Start/Stop Event


Long Autocross 360 spin and stall


Long Autocross cone wipeout


-Carter