I'd have to agree. If you are doing that stuff on the street SAVE it. Not worth killing yourself to find your settings on the street, plus it's not safe.

Have your mom come with you to an event and have her talk to the autocross chief. She will find that autocrossing is probably one of the safest sports to do. She probably gets her feelings from hearing all the crap on the news and all the stupid movies.

But you really are not going to figure out your settings unless you do it in a controlled environment like an autocross. There are too many factors when you try to do it on the street.

How old are your Azenis by the way? I"m guessing they are heat cycled out if they are the 215s. Meaning they are hard as rocks. This is why I get new tires every season - huge major difference between heat cycled tires and new ones.

Also just for reference sake, you always want your car comfortable. When a car is comfortable you will always drive it 10/10ths (learned this last year at NE Divisionals). I had my car setup too tail happy and I was probably driving it 8/10ths cause I was scared of it coming around. When I backed off the stiffness of the rear I started getting faster and faster.

Understeer I believe is good in a way for a car anyway cause it's easier to recover from than oversteer and worse is snap oversteer. To recover from understeer just slow down more and unwind the steering wheel, while releasing the brake pedal a bit. It's more intuitive than anything else.