This weekend was our first autocross of the year and the first one we have totally managed independently of any other experienced clubs or professional racing organizations to assist with timing and management. Here is a little summary of the days events. I first started to post this on the daily chat today, but it became a little long winded and plus their might be something here to interest someone in the future that decides to manage an autocross event themselves. If you are ever interested and need information about equipment of how to pull this off please feel free to contact me. Anyhow here is how it went down

Saturday
We started on Saturday morning setting up the course and proofing the design.. We just got this finished when we had hurricane-like downpours of rain. It was unbelievable how much water was dropping out of the sky at times and we still had a beginner autocross class to present. We spent about an hour in the classroom with the students and we are really lucky to have one of the best auto-tech instructors from Lincoln Tech to help us out. He is also a Race Team Manager and Driver for a Washington DC Lotus Team that competes in SCCA Autocross and Club Racing. He is an incredible instructor and took our own NCCC materials and turned them into gold!! Between my Competition Director and the Lincoln Tech instructor we held a Top Notch instruction for new autocross drivers. They went out into the garage area of Lincoln Tech (which by the way is beautiful in its own right)and learned how to inspect their own cars and how to assist in the tech-in process during an autocross event. After that, they donned their raincoats, ponchos, umbrellas and course map and went out for the course walk. It was still raining pretty steady but not as hard by then and this proved to be a good initiation for new drivers.

After the course walk they all got into their cars with an experienced driver and drove the course in the rain!! Experienced drivers drove the course first then let the students drive next. Then a third run was allowed with them driving solo to see what it feels like without the instructor in the seat next to them.

They all then came back inside to dry off and get warm and to finish the days course content before leaving for an early supper and a cold beer at the local Ruby Tuesday's

Sunday
Over the night the clouds and rain moved off shore and we were presented with a beautiful blue sky with some remaining puffy clouds floating over our heads. However, the wind did not leave us and we had a time with things blowing around. So no tents or canopies were employed, therefore, my Nissan Xterra became Central Command for the timing team and course control. I was like a new pilot being let go on his first solo flight. This event was our fifth autocross event over the past two years but in the past we either rented the services of a timing company or co-hosted with another NCCC club that had timing equipment and years of experience. This was my first solo with brand new equipment and brand new help. We had tested the equipment many times before yesterday but I was still on pins and needles the entire first heat. All went well and the technology worked. I also had a great team of people helping out and this made things go a lot smoother. We had no kinks or "Oh shit" moments all day. Things went incredibly smooth and we finished two complete events with about 35 cars each. That is three runs per person, per event in two separate heats per event. Everyone had a great time and we are looking forward to our next one on May 22nd.

Below are couple photos of the event, one shows yours truly at command central imputing staging information and the others are a shot of one of the grid during a heat and one of a buddies C4. He just put those spoilers on there and is getting ready to stripe it in red.... LOL, I think he is trying to keep up with the Jone's. I told him no more white C4s with red stripes are allowed in our club! LOL

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Added a few more photos

Cool! Ya Mon!

How did the C4 compare to the C5,6's?

Nice work! Looks like a lot of fun.

Results are interesting to look at.

Indeed the there were only 2 C4s on the lot and they were both running street stock and had virgin drivers. Both drivers attended our beginner class. Their best times of the day were 54.186 and 54.962 respectively.

The FTD for Men was 45.160 and this guy has won SCCA Championships and NCCC Championships. He has been auto crossing for many years and drove a bone stock C6 base coupe. I think it had a cat back on it.

The FTD for Women was 49.841. She is also a seasoned driver driving a 2006 Z06

However, when I look at all the times throughout the day, I don't see any one generation really doing better than the rest. There were C6 car that did 60 second runs in the first couple heats. We also had a BMW M5 coupe that was deadly and a Suburu Impreza that ran 45.654. Pontiac G8 GT ran 46.264. These cars smoked many a C5 and C6 yesterday. They had young drivers that were responsive and knew their cars and had better skills.

This sport really depends on driver skill and course layout that works best for your car; either horsepower or handling. I think this course was very fast and let the Corvettes have an advantage over the Subaru and Pontiac. The M5 was pretty fast but the driver was not that impressive. Had the course been slower, thus tighter like last year we would have had better times for the imports.

Nice way to start the season!

That sounds like a great weekend with the instruction and course. Good turn out of cars, too!

Matthew

This will have made our second event with the Autocross Primer School the day before. We do this to get new people involved. We charge $15 for the Primer School and give them ten dollars back if they register and go to both Sunday events. We had all of the students from last Fall's class except one come back and participate in this event. We hope to grow this to up to 100 cars. I don't think we could handle much more than 100 cars.