Autocross Wrap-Up 2023

Autocross Year End Wrap-Up

By: Greg Hartke

Happy New Year to all! I hope you had a great holiday and that 2024 is everything you hope it would be!

Even though it‘s the off-season, it‘s been hopping here at Autocross Central. There’s always plenty to do, planning for the next season and getting equipment problems straightened out.

First things first, though. The final results for the 2023 season Class championships were compiled as soon as the season was ended. There are 15 awards for 2023 to be given out for various 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners in Classes with sufficient standing to warrant awards. (The number of awards for a given Class is determined by how many eligible entrants there were in the Class for the season.) Many of these awards were presented to the winners at the Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon on Saturday Nov 11th at Kelsey’s Irish Pub in Ellicott City. The remaining awards will be given to the winners when I see them at an AX race early in the 2024 season. The 2023 award winners are shown in the accompanying table.

The 2023 racing season went very well. Attendance was the best I’ve ever seen, so thanks to everyone for supporting us. We had a user-friendly schedule in 2023 with AX starting in April (which has more moderate weather than March) and ending in early October (which I like because it can get mighty cold in late October). In addition, we had great event spacing throughout the season. It’s hard to get through 9 events (AX School, Test & Tune, plus 7 races) without some rain, but 2023 was OK in that regard. We lost the second heat of the AX School to lightning and drenching rain (I was very disappointed for the students!) and it rained for AX#7. Other than that, the weather really cooperated for us and (somehow or other) we actually avoided blistering heat during the summer. I’ll take that!

In contrast, the 2024 AX season is not exactly getting off to an auspicious start. I started working on the 2024 schedule back in November. Keep in mind that the event spacing is largely dictated by the Bowie Baysox and Aberdeen Ironbirds Minor League Baseball schedules and it was immediately obvious that the schedule wasn’t going to be as nice as last year. Oh, well. You can’t have everything. I worked up a first draft and sent it off to management at Prince George’s Stadium to see what they had for me with the intention of contacting the Ironbirds as soon as I heard from PGS. As expected, I had to fiddle some dates because of events at PGS, but at first glance it didn’t look too bad.

The next step was to contact the Ironbirds about using Ripken Stadium, but when I checked with them, I discovered that every available Saturday was already booked. Wow! Didn’t have that problem last year – I was able to get a date easily and right when I needed it. Hmm. They still had a Sunday available and though the date wasn’t ideal, I thought I could make it work.

Just about then, I heard from the Potomac PCA and their AX schedule had one notable conflict with mine in late July. I checked to see if they had any wiggle room, but that event happened to be the AX associated with PorscheFest at Summit Point, so it couldn’t be moved. Just my luck. OK, I reworked things to fit, then went back to PGS to see what they could do, while also telling Aberdeen that I would get back to them on that available Sunday date. Since then, I’ve heard nothing from PGS, despite emailing them several times. In the end, I tried to call the Director with whom I negotiate the schedule, but she was out of the office on an extended break ’til Jan 2nd. Grrr! Betcha dupa I’ll be on the horn as soon as she’s back to see what’s going on.

While all this scheduling mess was transpiring, I’ve also been looking into the equipment failures that we had at the end of the 2023 season. AX#7 (the last of the season) was contested in the rain and during the race, the timing display died and showed absolutely nothing no matter what we did to try to bring it back to life. Sheesh! That’s two years in a row that happened, but at least this time it happened at the very end of the season. That was inconvenient, but not a disaster because competitors could check their times via WiFi, connecting to a timing application running on the AX PC in the trailer. In a true Murphy’s Law moment, though, the router went down, which meant that avenue for checking results was no longer available. Fortu-

nately, it went down when there were only 8 or 10 runs remaining, so it wasn’t a disaster.

Since I was going to have to troubleshoot the timing gear, after AX#7 I had to load everything necessary (display, cabling, sensors, console, etc.) into Marilyn’s Subaru Forester to take home, besides the usual stuff I needed to service over the winter (backpack blower, generator, etc., plus all the battery powered equipment). Everything fit, but it was close. Good thing Marilyn was there! She’s the de facto “soccer mom” for CHS AX – I don’t know what I’d do without her. ‘Course, that’s true in other ways, too. ;)

First item of business was the display. I cabled everything up at home and, sure enough, the display was showing nothing. I examined connectors, fiddled with DIP switches, tried all kinds of things, but nothing seemed to help. I left it cabled up and powered up while I went off to read the manual again for any hints and when I came back and retested, it looked to me as if it was starting to dimly display times. Huh! To make a long story short, the longer I left it powered up (testing intermittently), the brighter the displayed numbers became until eventually they were at full brightness and then they stayed there. Why? BTHOOM. ;)

Clearly, whatever the problem might have been, it was caused by components getting wet. I’ve had it. That’s not happening again. I did a little planning and designing and now have a system to shield everything (including the display) from the rain. Hopefully 2023 was the last time we’ll have the display go down in the rain!

The next item was the router. I didn’t bring that home with me from AX#7, but Co-chair Mark Hubley and I had what I’ve been calling an oil change party for our Caymans at his house (very exciting!) and I picked it up then. The good news is that the router now works fine. I cabled it up to the AX PC (via ethernet) and had no trouble accessing it from the PC. There’s simply nothing wrong with it, which is not entirely a surprise because it’s a simple unit and we’re not taxing it in any particular way.

I discussed the router with AX Team member Phong Nguyen (I wasn’t in the trailer when it happened –Phong was) and he’s as mystified as I am about why it went down. Did the wet conditions cause a short? Was it inadvertently powered down? That’s actually a possibility. It was only when I dismounted it and examined it at home that I discovered where the power switch is on the console. That sounds unbelievable after all

these years, but I didn’t build it and the console could not be viewed at all where the router was mounted in the trailer and the existing documentation (such as it is) indicated the switch was in a different place than it really is.

As you can imagine, I’ve already affixed readily-visible labels for the console switches to the router so that nothing like this will happen again. I also created a document detailing the switch locations as well as the IP address and username/password for the router. The new documentation also includes a screenshot of the router dashboard (accessed via ethernet from the PC), which shows the SSIDs and security keys for the Wi-Fi. Now I only have to take the unit back down to Mark’s farm, remount it, and re-cable it. So as it turned out, the router was no real problem, despite my initial worry.

About that oil change party… For those of you that have never changed the oil yourself in a model 981 Cayman or Boxster, it’s a pretty straightforward task when you have a nice two-post lift in your garage, as Mark does. Besides changing the oil, we also changed the engine air filters and cabin air filters. For two cars, it took maybe 5 hours start to finish for all this since it takes quite a while (maybe an hour) to fully drain the oil and the air filters are a PITA to access. My air filters were filthy, so I was glad to get those babies changed. I should add that internet videos were very helpful in figuring out how to access and remove the air filters.

So that’s about it for where we are with prep for the 2024 AX season at this point. I still have more equipment work to do (putting together all the rain protection I have planned), but at least everything is working. I fully expect to have a schedule finished this month and when I do, I’ll put everything up on Motorsportreg as well as making sure it’s all up-to-date on the Club calendar.

Has everyone ordered their tires for the upcoming racing season? I haven’t, but at least there doesn’t seem to be an availability problem yet. As I did last year (after I replaced my 20” Sport Techno rims with 19” forged rims), I’ll be going with the Bridgestone RE-71RS’s. The Bridgestones and the Yokohama ADVAN A052’s are now considered to be the top tires for AX for those of us not driving specialty cars like the GT3 or Turbo. I should order ‘em up soon. Don’t want those babies to go out of stock while I dally! ;)

Stay warm!

Greg Hartke

CHS PCA AX Chair