Connecticut Autocross and Rally Team Autocross # 8 “Wahoo! 2nd Gear” by Liam Dwyer

The Connecticut Autocross and Rally Team held its 8th autocross of the season on July 27th at LAZ parking in Hartford. 63 drivers showed up to test their skills against the clock. The weatherman called for a chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Unlike the past, the rain held off to complete a sunny, warm autocross.

Event Chair Marc Boerma and Bill Evans set up the course. In recognition of the Brickyard 400 being run at some obscure track in Indiana, the course featured an oval course, albeit in the opposite direction the Red Neck Racers were running at Indianapolis. The course started out with a sharp left turn leading into a tight right hand loop. You ran the loop twice, giving you twice as much opportunity to screw up. On the exit of the loop, you went wide to the outside loop, for the fast section. To keep speeds down, half way thru this section, you faced a slalom. The last gate before the slalom was the cone killer, and this work station was kept busy recovering errant cones. Out of the slalom, back up the course and into not one, but two first gear hairpin turns first right than left. The left hand turn was particularly tricky, since it feature pivot cones instead of gates. Less than 10% of the first runs were not off course due to this section. It continued to confuse drivers thru out the day.

John Williamson posted the fast time for A-stock. His Sti beat out Matt Dunham's Vette by just over one second. E-stock saw James Duphiney's Miata take down fellow Miata driver Rob Carter by just over one second also. G-stock saw a new winner as Brad Snow was absent from the days event. Josh Menke, who moved up from H-stock in his Saab, beat out class regulars Joe Rathbun and Andrew Heller.

Into the Street Prepared classes; Tom Mak made a valiant attempt at FTD again but came up short. He lit up his ASP competition by over 2seconds running a 48.5. Although not fast enough for FTD, Tom did have top PAX on the day. BSP saw Leo Ficks return to the top, but it wasn't easy. Jeff Wooten, who won BSP at the last event, was right on his heels finishing just three tenths back.

The shock of the day comes in CSP where Paul Omichinski was upset by Austin Golankiewicz. This marks the first time this year Paul has not won his class. The margin of victory.... .057 seconds. DSP was won by Andrew Weinle's 02 Si. He took out Nick Fandacone who borrowed Kevin Shea's 240. Nick wasn't so nice as he beat up on Kevin in his own car. FSP saw a familiar face return and win; Matt Cummings returned from a brief hiatus to A-stock and purely obliterated his fellow FSP competition. His margin a victory was almost a calendar year in auto-x time... over 3 seconds.

X-prepared became a bump class from EP and CP. Travis Lariviere's Civic (CP) took out the co driven Merkur of Ray and Matt Teicholz by over 2 seconds. Bill Evans was the only car in A-mod and finished 1st and last all at once. Warren Elliott was bumped to E-mod from D-mod and in the process took out Dean Cusano's Jag. Dean couldn't' quite drop his time enough on his last run thus giving Warren a quarter second victory.

The top time in SM2 and FTD belonged to Nick Fandacone in his 350z. Nick seems to have the Jekyl and Hide effect going on right now with his driving, one week his on and killing everyone in FTD, the next week he's off hiding and trying to make a clean pass.

The the Novice categories; Andruw Breault and his MR2 took out the new 135 driven by Allen Hutton and the Lancer driven by Harry Caruso. Robert Bath's Miata would take the Y novice victory over Philip Petronis' Boxster S. Ryan Wandas' 1st gen DSM earned the Z novice over Don Truskauskas' Buick Regal.

CART's next event will be held again at LAZ on August 10th. Just a reminder, we need to be out of the lot NLT 4pm. Visit us on the web at www.cartct.com.