Connecticut Autocross and Rally Team 2007 Autocross # 1
The Connecticut Autocross and Rally Team kicked off the 2007 season with an event on Sunday, May 29 in Bristol. It's been a busy off season. Due to construction at our previous location, we were faced with the challenge of finding new places to hold our events. Paved real estate is at a premium in New England, and several clubs have been faced with problem of having no place to hold their events. Thanks to the efforts of several club members, we have secured permission to hold events on four different parking lots in 2007. It's a good thing we built a new timing trailer last year, it's certainly going to accumulate some mileage this year.
This was our first event at Rowley Spring Corporation, in Bristol, Connecticut. It's just a stone's throw away from ESPN world headquarters. They declined our offer to telecast our event, since their crew was tied up in Alabama at some other racing event. Oh, well it was they're loss, as the autocross was great.
Eighty six drivers registered for the event. Mother Nature cooperated with us. Our first non points event two week earlier had to be canceled because of sleet, driving rain and flooding, but other than a brief sprinkle of rain, the weather was pleasant. Course meister Bill Evans was faced with a new challenge. The Rowley Spring lot is in better shape but smaller than our previous venue. Bill designed a economical course that utilized the lot well, and was very low maintenance. We try to keep it simple for the first event, as we blow away the cobwebs. A pre-season test of the equipment paid off, as everything started, and ran as planned.
The layout was deceptively simple. A slight jog started the course, and then you were on the fastest section. A wide left connected two straights, leading to a tight, slow left hand one eighty. A short blast out to a right one eighty, and then a surge to the a narrower left one eighty. Back across the lot to a right one eighty to the finish. The final corner was the doom spot. You could take it as two turns or a wide sweeper. The inside cone of the final turn took a terrific beating, as it was the bane of a lot of drivers who saw good runs go up in a two second penalty cloud of smoke. That poor cone had more hits than Casey Kasem, and the corner workers soon learned to stay in range, it was going down again.
For the results, it was Tom Mak's Nissan 350Z taking AS and FTD with a time of 29.253 beating Gus Lin's nicely prepared Evo. Tom beat Kyle Bishop for FTD by less than 5 hundredths of a second. CS was mostly Miata with Timothy Crane beating Charles Aucoin by two tenths. It's time to fix that front sway bar, Charlie. Brad Snow in the Mini continued where he left off last year in GS, beating Todd Kean's Subaru by a half second. HS was won by Roger Booth in another Mini, beating Tom Cavuto's Jetta by a little over a half second.
For the prepared and modified classes, ASP was won by Stan Marcewicz's bright yellow Lotus, over Jeff Wooten's STI. CSP was won by Paul Omichinski's 924, barely beating Chris Difiore's MR2, with a victory margin of less than 3 hundredths of a second. Jim Duphiney took first and last in his FSP Spitfire, since this somehow got missed in the bumping process. Chris Zelle was also first and last in DM, in a similar oversight. We will be fixing that in the year end points. John Santos man handled his Factory 5 Cobra for the AP win, and took a shot at FTD, but came up short. Bob Doiron's Fiero was second, in a bump from FP. AM was won by Bob Napoletano's Porsche 944, beating the Fiero of Gary Frankel by less than 2 tenths of a second. As noted earlier, Kyle Bishop's Evo came up short for FTD, but took the win in Street Mod, beating Warren Elliott in a borrowed GTI by just over two tenths of a second. The 2006 CART Driver of the Year, Nick Fandacone's 350Z won SM2, beating Stephen Gartner's Miata by almost three tenths of a second. STS winner was Timothy Kang in an Impreza RS, beating Jordan Pagano in a very clean Saab 99. You don't see many of those on the road any more.
We had sixteen novices in two classes. YN was won by Michael Duquette's Porsche 944, beating Brian Phillips Nissan SER by one tenth of a second. ZN was heavily populated with Subarus, as Michael Sousa's WRX beat Brian Stoehr's WRX by less than three tenths of a second. ZN was notable for Gary Viola's 1979 Dodge Diplomat. It was proof once again, autocross is a run what ya brung sport, and anyone can compete.
We'll be in Hartford, Connecticut at the LAZ parking lot for our next event, on May 6, and then it's the Pocono North course for the first track event of 2007. C'mon down and join the fun.
