Autocross in Review: November 2022

Chesapeake Region

Autocross In Review

Words: Greg Hartke; Photos: Ken Wilmers

Autocross #7 is in the books! We gathered at Prince George’s Stadium in Bowie on Saturday October 22nd for the final AX of the season and were met with a chilly start, but certainly very good weather for late October. As always, Co-chair Brad Martinez, as well as AX crew Pinto Soin and John Cho, arrived with me in the wee, small hours to set up for the race and Mark Hubley was right on time as always with the trailer of supplies. Unfortunately, Brad’s wife had come home sick from work the previous day, so he wasn’t able to stay, but Brad was there long enough to build the course with John’s help.

While Mark drove his truck with the trailer around the parking lot along the track that would be the course, Brad and John dropped cones and Pinto sorted gear while I opened up the port-a-pot. Or tried to. As it turned out, the door was locked with a small padlock (first time that had been done!) and I didn’t have a key. I had the key to the door, of course (2 keys, in fact), but not to that padlock. Not sure what to do, we grabbed some tools and tried to break it off, but that didn’t work. I was getting worried (more than a bit worried, actually) and when they came in from dropping cones, I asked Mark if he had anything at home, we could use to cut the lock off. He said he had bolt cutters, so the plan was for him to bring back the bolt cutters when he drove the truck home to get his car.

While they were uncoupling the trailer from the truck so Mark could head back to get his car, I went back over to examine our little problem. It didn’t make sense that they would lock the door that way without providing a key, so I thought maybe I had missed it, even though I had already searched all the usual places the keys are hidden on these installations. Using the flashlight this time (remember, this is 2 hours before sunrise), I did find a key on the ground, but that was a key to the door and I already had two of

those. This time I proceeded to use the flashlight to carefully examine the port-a-pot and, sure enough, I found the key taped to a channel along the side next to the door. Sheesh! They really threw me with that one. Anyway, problem solved.

With Pinto’s expert help, we got all the equipment set up quickly, so he went out to help Brad and John finish building the course while I worked to get the computers configured for the day. Once I had the computers set up properly (and with our hotspot problems behind us, that wasn’t too hard), I had a few minutes free, so, since it was really chilly before sunrise and I had forgotten my jacket, I climbed into my car to warm up a bit. I hate to say it, but it didn’t take long before I dozed off. Oops! That was embarrassing! It was OK, though, because I only dozed for maybe 15 minutes at most and when I woke up, people had started to arrive on-site.

I quickly got back to work and when Brad, John, and Pinto finished with the course build, we were ready to do the test runs. Rather surprisingly, we didn’t make a lot of changes, though there were a few tweaks that were needed to make the course safe, as well as readily navigable. This course started out as a design by Registrar Meilyng Wigney-Burmaka, then was modified quite a bit with changes I wanted. Brad wasn’t too keen on the course when he was building it, but it turned out to be fun to drive and I thought it was a nice course to finish the season.

While not apparent from the map, there were some really fast sections on this course. After coming out of the start and turning to the right, the section heading up to and through the channel was simply a gentle arc that could be driven flat out until braking for the mini-slalom leading into the sweeper at the far end of the course. That sweeper was very fast, too, before leading into the oblong skidpad. That skidpad was deceptive because the arc coming around the back side was off-camber and required some care to stay tight and not lose time before rolling on the power to run back up through the channels.

We hadn’t used a Chicago box all year, so I thought it would be fun to throw in that element to slow down the fast leg after coming back up through the channels. In reality, the Chicago box functioned here as the first part of a short slalom and provided more interest and required more care than simply driving a long slalom up to the finishing element. That last sweeper was straightforward and the kink in the line to the stop box was in place to prevent roaring into the stop box at too high of a speed. Actually, the last kink to slow down the entrance to the stop box introduced the possibility that drivers would take it too fast and lose the rear of the car when entering the stop box. (I’m sure most of us kicked out the rear end at that last cone, but the key was to do it in a controlled fashion.) Although two drivers did hit cones in the stop box after not quite catching the rear end coming out at that kink, they only took out a few cones past the timing equipment and didn’t hurt anything.

After I did the test runs, alert course walkers noticed glass shards near the entrance to the oblong skid pad, so I went out with the backpack blower and spent a fair amount of time cleaning that up. Of course, that little chore became an exercise in frustration when the throttle on the blower stuck in the fully open position, which meant I couldn’t reduce the noise when drivers walked by me who were walking the course. Sheesh!

One more thing I have to attend to during the off-season. It was interesting to see that the parking lot was kind of a mess with a lot more trash than I was used to seeing. It made me wonder what events had been held out there since our previous AX in September because it was much cleaner then.

Anyway, as I mentioned, it was quite chilly that morning (though it warmed substantially later), so I warned everyone at the driver’s meeting to be very careful on their opening runs because tires (and track) would be cold and would not have the grip they might normally expect. Interestingly, I had several drivers tell me they were on all-seasons that day instead of their summer tires because of the cool temperature. We filled the registration for this event (capped at 65) and continued to receive late entries which went on the waitlist. We had a whole bunch of drivers waitlisted at one point, with those confirmed plus those on the waitlist at something like 74. The course was fast and the design was such that a second car could get on the course fairly quickly, which made for a fast pace. For that reason (and because it was the last event of the year), Brad and Meilyng urged me to accept everyone who registered and just go with it, even if the event ran long.

I gulped and finally agreed to do it that way, but I was worried about how long we’d run with so many drivers. Would you believe it? With last-minute cancellations (there are always last-minute cancellations!) and no-shows, we wound up with 64 drivers (35 P-cars, 29 guests) at the event, which was a very comfortable number. I always want to do as many runs as possible, but I also don’t like to beat the course workers up too badly and have them out there shagging cone for too long. By the end of the 4th run of the 1st heat, it looked to me as if we would be able to do 7 runs instead of 6, but I was uncertain how that would be received. To find out, I halted racing briefly to query each worker station in turn to see how the workers felt.

Among 5 worker stations, plus grid, start, and queueing, all but one station was happy to do 7 runs, so 7 runs was what we did. Our first driver went off at 9:51 AM and we finished at 2:35 PM. Not bad at all and everyone had a blast. It doesn’t get any better than that!

First place among the Porsches, 3rd overall, and 1st in Class S5 went to Michael T. with a time of 48.159 sec. Second among the Porsches, 4th overall, and 2nd in Class S5 was Scott B. Third among the Porsches, 5th overall, and 3rd in Class S5 was Howard L. Fourth among the Porsches, 7th overall, and 1st in Class I was Damon L. Fifth among the Porsches, 8th overall, and 1st in Class S4 was Mark H. As usual, the CHS AX participants were superb in helping with the teardown. When we were done racing, everyone pitched in to collect the cones and gear so we could store it in the trailer as quickly as possible. We finished racing at 2:35 and with everyone’s help, we were packed and ready to go by no later than 3:15. It actually took a little longer than usual because I had to select and pack a bunch of equipment in Marilyn’s car to take home for repair and/or maintenance over the off-season, but believe me, we really appreciated all that help after a long day running the event!

The following Saturday (10/29), a number of us from CHS were out racing with Potomac at their final AX of the year at Summit Point. POT had been racing all year on Washington Circuit (which is an old kart track) instead of the Cone Pad due to a zoning problem that arose with the Cone Pad. It turns out, though, that the problem was resolved just in time for the final event to be held at the Cone Pad. Great news, because the Cone Pad (which is simply a very large rectangle of asphalt) provides many more possibilities for the course designer compared to the Washington Circuit.

The organizers took the opportunity to create a hugely complicated and surprisingly slow course for the last event of the year. It really wasn’t my cup of tea, but I always have a good time racing no matter what the course design. I walked the course three times and really concentrated on looking far ahead when I drove it, with the result that I was actually comfortable on the course (never had an instant of “what now?” during my laps) and had no off-course calls on any of my 6 runs. Not too many people could say that – many had multiple OC calls. (POT used every cone they had for that course – you might say it was the prototype for the pro-

verbial “sea of cones”.) In fact, the person doing grid told me that of the maybe 15 cars ahead of me in the first run, ¾ of them were OC. That ain’t good. Actually, I walked around and asked various folks driving other heats if they wanted to ride with me on my runs so they could see the course before they went out to race (which I can do because as an instructor, I can take passengers). That was certainly appreciated because that course was fiendish!

Just because you can never have too much fun, I went out and raced at PGS the next day (Sunday) with another car club, joining a bunch of PCA members who also came out to race that day. We had a great time and it was really a treat to go to an AX and not have any responsibility for running or operating the event. Very relaxing. I hardly remember what it’s like. ;)

We finished the season on quite a roll, with great weather and AX#7 running quite smoothly and certainly a fun day of racing for everyone. The 2022 AX season is now complete, but we’ll be back in the spring, ready to do it all again. Take note that the CHS Introduction to Autocross (aka the AX School) will almost certainly take place in April. I’ve already submitted my request for racing dates to PGS management, but who knows how long it will take to get a response and the schedule finalized? I’ll be working on it! As in recent seasons, you can expect the Test & Tune as the first event, followed by the AX School and 7 full race events. You can expect most of these at PGS, though there may (and probably will) be an event or two at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen. (Ripken is a great venue, but logistically difficult for us.)

Many thanks to everyone who supported us for the 2022 Autocross season! It's been a great pleasure providing these events for you and I’ll be looking forward to seeing everyone next year for the 2023 Autocross season!

Best wishes, Greg Hartke CHS AX Chair