Patience is a virtue

The title of this post was something my mother often said when I was young. I never gave much thought to the meaning, but it was typically said just before I had to wait longer than I'd liked for something. I guess it means that self control and patience are good qualities for a person to have. Some related quotes are "good things come to those who wait" and "only fools rush in". You can probably think of one or two more if you try.

I'm a firm believer in taking the extra time to think things through, avoiding the pitfalls of rash decision making. (Luckily for me, it gets a bit easier to do when you get older.) Separating my performance modifications into "phases" and waiting until after I've driven my car a while before purchasing them, should result in me being happier with the final outcome. This topic came up late last week when I was asking for upgrade advice on a WRX owner's forum. I was getting some good feedback on various products, but one reply stood out from the rest. A gentleman suggested taking the money being saved for making the car faster and spend it on making the driver better. In other words, taking professional driving lessons would result in much better SCCA solo race finishes than pouring thousands of dollars into car parts. He also provided a very interesting link to a website called Autocross to Win, which I added to "Links of Interest" section on the left hand side of my blog. Much of the information on this site is for the serious racer, but many tips can be useful to the "just for fun" guys like me.

One particularly key piece of advice I pulled from the forum post and website link was the importance of tires and wheels. Of course I already knew it was better to have lighter wheels and wider, racing tires, but I didn't realize just how big of a deal it was. Matter of fact, I'm seriously considering moving new tires/wheels way up on my list of upgrades. If you get a few minutes, click on the website link and spend an hour or so reading through the articles. If you are just getting interested in racing, I think you'll come away much better off for it.

Good luck!