Autocross in Review: July 2022

Chesapeake Region

Autocross In Review

Words: Greg Hartke

Open mouth, insert foot. That’s my reaction to last month’s Autocross column in which I mentioned thatCHS had been blessed with 5 events with good weather this year while Potomac had 2 out of 4 contested in the rain. So, what happened? CHS AX#4 at Prince George’s Stadium on July 9 th was a drench fest! Talkabout a comeuppance! Sheesh. Someone took a picture of me as I wandered around taking care of business;I looked like a drowned rat. That seems somehow appropriate. ;)

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let’s start from the beginning…

I’m always keeping a careful eye on the forecast before a race and a week prior, the weather forecast was not threatening at all. I was also pleased to see that the registration filled earlier than usual, and we had asubstantial waitlist. (We cap the registration at 65 because we feel we can give the best experience to participantswith that as the maximum number.) Around mid-week, though, the forecast suddenly went to pot,and I resigned myself to a wet event that Saturday. And not just a wet one, a very wet one. The forecastwas calling for something like an inch and a half of rain out of that system starting overnight (with accompanyingflood warnings), so I knew we were in for it.

We race in the rain??? Sure! Rain may throw a damper on other PCA events, but AX soldiers on. The onlything that stops us is lightning – that’s a significant safety item, so if there’s lightning in the area, we halt operations ‘til it passes. I was actually contacted the day before the race by PGS management asking if wewere going to be racing Saturday; they thought we’d cancel because of the heavy rain forecast for the day.Nope! The show must go on and go on it did. Truth to tell, the driving was gangs of fun, though I’m not going to say all the other work of setting up, etc. was any fun under those conditions. Still, it was certainlyworth it. Hey, look on the bright side. The driving rain cleaned the undercarriage of our cars. ;)

This one was challenging right from the get-go. AX Co-chair Brad Martinez had developed a course design that I really liked, then when I sent it off to Registrar Meilyng Wigney-Burmaka to be included with the informationto participants, I started having second thoughts. Was it suitable for the conditions? Hmm. Itwasn’t long before Meilyng emailed me, asking if I really wanted to use that course for the predicted conditions,which jogged me to an immediate decision to save that design for a dry day (hopefully AX#5) and useanother course design. I went through the designs I had from Brad and Meilyng and picked a very simple and straightforward (yet interesting) design that Meilyng had come up with months previously. I askedMeilyng for a minor tweak to the design and with that, we were set.

To make matters complicated, Brad couldn’t make AX#4 due to work commitments and that was a serious problem because he always builds the course in the morning. What to do? Fortunately, John Cho has beenhelping Brad build the courses on event day, so I asked John to take over as lead course builder for this one.He thankfully accepted my request (phew! Thanks a bunch, John!), though I’ll bet he spent a sleepless night worrying about it because he’d never been in that particular role before. In addition, Pinto Soin usuallyhelps me set up everything else while Brad and John build the course, but this time I asked Pinto to help John instead of helping me – it’s very helpful to have two people working on the course. Pinto (who is ever-

helpful!) was happy to do so, of course, so we were all set. Even better, Meilyng showed up early (tough witha young family!) and also worked with John and Pinto, so we were in good shape with the course.

There was one other problem. We had a plastic protector for the timing board in case of rain, but early in theyear, it had essentially fallen apart. (The plastic turned brittle with age and probably UV exposure, so itcracked up and became useless.) I was aware of this and was hoping for a year of dry events so I wouldn’t have to do anything about it, but ‘twas not to be. The simplest solution was to buy a clear plastic drop cloth,which I took to the event, then cut and taped it to form a rain cover for the timing board as part of my morning set up. I’m not going to say it was a thing of beauty, but it did work. The timing board worked fine untilthe very end of the event, so I’ll consider that little piece of improvisation to have been a success.

Since I was expecting heavy rain in the morning when I was going to leave, I packed the car the night before.Marilyn was out of town, so I had to take everything in my Cayman S, which was decidedly limiting. In additionto my usual gear including the needed computers, I had to take two 40-ct cases of water (fortunately theforecast high temp for the day was only 72 F, so we didn’t need a lot more water beyond what was already in the trailer) as well as a cooler with two 16 lb. bags of ice. I managed to fit it all in my car and there was even(some) room left for me.

I got up Saturday and of course it was raining as forecast. The rain got worse as I went south (which I expected)and was heavy when I got to PGS. John and Pinto showed up very quickly, as did Mark Hubley, haulingthe AX trailer with all the necessary gear. They dropped the cones on the lot and John and Pinto quickly got startedbuilding thecourse, with Meilyngshowing upalmost immediatelytohelp. Meanwhile, I goteverything setup at the trailer. It was kindof breezy thatmorning, which madecreating the cover for thetiming board

out of the light plastic drop cloth a bit of a challenge, but I managed.

Once the course was done, John and I went out for the safety runs to test the course and see what needed to be modified. It turned out that we barely tweaked the course from the initial build. Nice job! I also decided Ireally liked the course design for the conditions. When I was doing the test runs, it was bloody well pouringand there were rivers running down the parking lot, which certainly made driving at speed interesting.

The course design looks quite simple and it was, but now picture yourself trying to drive it really fast. In the rain. In the heavy rain. Truthfully, it was a lot of fun. This course was dead nuts perfect for the conditions and had some interesting challenges for the extant conditions. We only had a couple of spins, too. I’m also happy to report that no one wiped out the timing gear at the finish and I was a little concerned about that possibility – it’s easy to get a little too exuberant coming out of that final sweeper (which tightened up at the end) and lose the rear end. Mine was swinging when I drove it, but I kept it under control and I’m sure that’s what a lot of us were doing.

The relatively simple course made for fast times and because there were a fair number of cancellations and no-shows due to the conditions, we only had 54 drivers (29 Porsches, 25 guests), which in concert with thefast times meant that we could do 7 runs instead of our more usual 6. The first car went off at 9:39, the firstheat finished at 11:55, and we finished racing at 1:55. Not too bad! The rain calmed down during the first heat and became much lighter, though it got very heavy again about 2/3 of the way through the second heat.The times for the last couple of runs of the second heat were something like 2 seconds slower than earlier because of the downpour, which meant we couldn’t improve our times as we normally would in the back endof the heat. For that reason, heat 1 drivers had the advantage, but that’s the luck of the draw. I can rememberdriving through rivers on the last 2 runs of the second heat (with similar conditions to when I did the safety runs early in the day), which was fairly entertaining with the car sliding out, though not particularlyfast. ;)

You think we were dedicated (or maybe just stupid) to be out there racing in a downpour? Hey, we even hadsome Taste of Autocross participants out there as well as several newcomers to AX. Now that’s dedication!Or obsession. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. ;) In fact, one of the spins that day came when a ToA participant told Dave that she hadn’t been scared all day, so he tried to push it a bit. I reckon maybe hepushed just a touch too much given the tires and conditions. ;) Dave is arguably the best CHS driver of us all,so I wasn’t too worried about him doing anything dumb. As I’ve said before, if you don’t spin the car occasionally, you’re not trying hard enough and that’s an easy mistake to make in the rain when the conditions

are changing from run-to-run.

Among the Porsches, Michael T. was 1 st overall and 1 st in Class S5 with 40.227 sec. Second overall and 1 st in Class S4 was Mark H. with 41.444 sec. Third overall and 2 nd in Class S5 was Howard L. at 41.790 sec. Fourthoverall and 1 st in Class I was Damon L. at 42.103 sec. Fifth overall and 2 nd in Class S4 was Kevin K. with 42.224sec.

As usual, the CHS participants were magnificent in helping with the tear down. When we were done racing,

everyone pitched in to collect the gear so we could store it in the trailer as quickly as possible. I’ve been findingthat it takes only 30 to 35 minutes to get cleaned up with everyone helping, and so it was at this event. We were packed and ready to go grab a late lunch at 2:30. I thought ahead and brought a dry shirt to changeinto when I got to the restaurant, which certainly made me feel much more civilized. Then again, my hair wasa mess from the rain, and I didn’t have a comb. Oh, the shame of it all! ;)

Lisa Gritti was back and again brought us AX cookies. Wow! She’s spoiling us! Lisa brought cookies forMeilyng, Brad, and me, but Brad wasn’t there, so Meilyng and I magnanimously accepted his share of the bounty. Thanks again, Lisa! Actually, after enjoying several cookies during the event, I told Meilyng to takethe rest for her kids, but somehow, she didn’t seem to think they were going to get that far. I wonder why? ;)

AX#4 wasn’t the wettest AX I’ve experienced, but it was up there. Certainly, it was the wettest since I’ve beeninvolved in running these events. Good experience for me, though. (Talk about putting lipstick on a pig…) Iasked Mark Hubley to open the trailer doors during the day for the next couple of days so that everythingwould have a chance to dry out – the electronics (timing sensors and other timing equipment) worried me a bit, but they should be fine withthe dry time. If I lived closer to Mark, I’d check it all out beforeour next race, but since I livesomething like 60 miles away, that’s probably not in the cards.I may think about it, though.Might be good insurance.

We have a bit of a break ‘tilAX#5, scheduled for Sunday August14 th at PGS. (Note that it’son a Sunday, not a Saturday!)Hard to believe that we’ve been through 6 events for the year(Test & Tune, AX School, and 4races) and only have 3 more to go. The season seems to be flyingby!

I’ll be looking forward to seeing you soon at the races!

Greg Hartke CHS AX Co-chair