The Class:

F-Street Prepared

The Guru:

Kevin Wenzel – Colorado has taken 6 of the last 10 FSP National Championships due in no small part to the efforts and knowledge of Kevin Wenzel. Kevin himself is responsible for 5 of the championships and is the only driver in the class’s history to win in both a front wheel drive car and a rear wheel drive car.

The Pitch:

Simply put, FSP has the most interesting array of potentially competitive cars of any SP class. Although there have been three main car types that have won since the inception of the class in 2000, there are several more that *could* win. Within this there is a wide variety of drive train layouts, suspension designs, and vehicle configurations. On top of that, most of the cars are relatively cheap to get into with initial buy in often being under $2000 for the car itself. FSP is a budget builders class, there may not be a lot of dollars in these cars, but the hour count is high and the results are extremely rewarding to those who choose to take on the challenge.

The Scoop:

The two most proven formulas are the A1-chassis VW, now with the 1.8 liter 16v motor from the later Sciroccos, and the Honda Civic 5th generation hatchback. For the Volkswagens, both the Rabbit and Scirocco are valid choices here, with the primary difference being that a Rabbit can be made lighter, but the Scirocco center of Gravity is lower. The disadvantage for the VWs is that there are not many off-the-shelf choices from the usual vendors that will work well for autocrossing. The Honda, however, enjoys a wider amount of aftermarket support but tends to be heavier than either VW.

The BMW 2002 has been successful too, although that’s a more difficult place to start, since finding an affordable, good rust-free-ish chassis is difficult these days. The weak point for the BMW is in the rear suspension, as much as the front suspension is a land of tricky compromise with the VW, the 2002 has the same issue with the rear – not with travel, but typically binding issues.

Be aware that FSP is in the epicenter of update/backdate. This means that you can pick and choose components from a range of years of a model. For some this is part of the love of the class, spending hours in junkyards and online searching for the ultimate collection to make a one of a kind, unbeatable Solo car. For others, the dedication and attention required is more than they possess and the allowance is reason enough to stay away.

Regardless of whether you choose one of these three or a more unorthodox approach, you’ve got to be prepared to make careful, possibly creative decisions about car setup. This isn’t like competing with a Miata, which starts as a good platform, FSP is all about making pigs fly, and it’s rare that you’ll find good published advice on making these cars fast for autocross. So if there’s a combination upside/downside to the class, it’s that creativity and craftiness is rewarded. If you’re not the sort that can continually question your assumptions about car setup and make good choices about next steps, you might want to pick a co-driver who is, or a different class. This is even more true when it comes to the as-yet untried platforms that could win the class with the right effort – almost all of them have some kind of drawback for autocross competition that you’ll have to work around, and most have somewhat less than excellent existing off-the-shelf speed hardware available.

The Price Tag:

For the average FSP car, expect the base donor car to cost in the $500-2500 range. To make it basically competitive you are likely going to spend $5000-$7500, to build a championship contending car you will likely exceed that, but it will depend on how you want to go about things. The stronger aftermarket support of the Honda will make things more predictable for those inclined to go with a Civic. As for the VWs, the BMW and the rest of the misfit toys that make up FSP, it will take some more creativity and fabrication. Here is a rundown of what to expect:

• Good shocks, almost certainly shortened if they’re struts in the front. This can be as low as $400 or as high as $1400 if you need work done, and of course Really Good Shocks will just get more expensive.
• Coilover sleeves and springs – this can all be put together for cheap if you’re willing to look around on eBay or circle track shops: $200 – expect to go through a few versions of spring rates
• Some kind of front swaybar (the rear is less important, and for VWs, pretty much useless) – less than $100 for used, $150-250 for new
• Good brake pads – Carbotech autox compound is great
• If the motor needs it, a basic rebuild is a good idea and go ahead and throw in .020-larger pistons if they’re cheap and available. The machine work for this is not bad. Gasket sets can add up, and of course if you pay someone to do the assembly, it’ll start adding up. For a new build, if the motor has good compression and isn’t burning tons of oil it might be worth sticking with it until later.
• Older FSP-style cars have terrible intake/fuel/ignition systems – throw it away, get a Megasquirt and figure out a better intake. A basic MS3 can be built for cheap if you’re interested in doing the soldering yourself, and a crafty builder can come up with all kinds of cheap ways to make a crankfire ignition system work.
• Decent header/exhaust – $200-400
• Race wheels – the right size is more important than weight at this point. Real Racing Wheels is a great option here, not as light but reasonably cheap and strong: $800/set
• Differential – with a FWD car, this is a MUST if the car didn’t have a good one to start with and you have any hope of being competitive. With a RWD car, a surprisingly cheap and easy option is to have the stock differential welded, if the suspension and driving style are adjusted for it. A welded-diff RWD car can win as the 2002 did in 2008, 2009 and 2011. The real drawback to that approach is that the car is now going to be difficult in low-grip situations without other changes.
• Get the tallest legal second gear that the update/backdate allowance grants you. Even for a low-powered car, a top second gear speed less than 60mph is not going to cut it on national-level courses.
• If you can put power steering on it via update/backdate, do it, especially a FWD car.
• Get obsessive about weight reduction via update/backdate. Bumpers? Rear seats? Early cars that had no real sound insulation? This isn’t necessarily directly expensive, but takes time and research. Plus, you have to be careful about documenting the changes you made, not everyone is going to have your working knowledge, so paper is key.

Once you have taken those steps, you will have a really fun, reasonably competitive FSP car. For those who want to go to the front of the field, there are some additional steps:

• Get serious about intake/exhaust – although don’t assume you have to spend a ton for your intake. ITBs are great, and can be had for less money than you might think if you’re crafty about it, but there are perfectly good plenum manifolds in FSP that get very good dyno results and are absolutely less of a pain to deal with. If there’s a trade-off to be made in FSP, not having the absolute best intake system is probably not going to hurt you much.
• Get very, very serious about every piece of the suspension. Camber plates might be a big part of this, in a basic build you might be able to skip them, but don’t discount using the strut mounts for caster gain and shock travel. The other direction to go for strut cars is to take advantage of the relatively new control arm rules. As for Bushing, Delrin wherever possible, but be careful and constantly consider bind. Don’t create a suspension that binds worse than stock unless you have a very good reason for doing so.
• Brakes – the SP brake rules are really quite open. If you’re looking to obsess over unsprung weight, you can go nuts here with brake hardware, especially since you really don’t care about heat issues if this is a Solo only car.

Some of the above assumes some amount of update/backdate, where necessary. For example, an early Rabbit/Scirocco will have a useless 1.5/1.6/1.7 liter motor that should probably be thrown away. In cases like that, add the cost of a good core motor of the best type you can afford (and the rules allow). Update/backdate gets more important with “spare no expense” builds.

The Honest Truth:

Since FSP is made up of mostly light cars, wear and tear isn’t a huge issue for most cars though the older cars do require a different level of care than something build in the last 15-20 years. That said, if you make extreme decisions in weight reduction and horsepower gain, expect that to effect reliability.

Surface and weather can be an issue, since so many FSP cars have to make unusual compromises with suspension geometry and spring rates, any imbalance is going to become stark on a wet course. Then there is the reality of being north of $10,000 in what amounts to the ultimate crap-can SP class. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how seriously you take yourself and how you define fun.

The Top Tips:

Make it Easy:

The most important thing to obsess over is to make the car easy for you to drive aggressively. The fastest, lightest, most expensive, car won’t win anything if it can’t make it through a course without spinning. Every time you decide to do something risky to achieve an arbitrary weight or horsepower number ask yourself what it is that you are trying to achieve?

Throw Out the Book:

Roll centers and suspension kinematics, while interesting, are something on which you will have to compromise. Worry more about getting the car low, while making absolutely sure the suspension doesn’t bottom or bind, and work with springs/bars/shocks from there. If you’re the sort that absolutely can’t stand the idea that your roll center is not absolutely where you think it should be, then go build a Prepared car where you can fix that kind of thing. FSP spells “compromise.”

Listen to the Car:

Trust nobody, even the ones that are renowned for autocrossing the car you like. That includes this advice. Autocrossing is not like professional road racing. Very few people actual *know* what they claim to know. There’s just not enough time to test every assumptions properly. Do your own thinking. Test your ideas objectively and find the results you find, not the ones you want to find. It is a process of elimination, you will be wrong more than you are right but when you are right the car will be too.