CART autocross # 9: Weather or not you wanted to run

The Connecticut Autocross and Rally Team held its ninth autocross of the season at LAZ Parking in Hartford on Sunday August 9th. Liam Dwyer was the event chair, and he somehow pawned off the course designing to Jim Duphiney. Jimmy designed a course that had you go through half a skid pad in the center of the lot before it spit you out onto a left hand sweeper that went all the way up and around the right hand side of the lot. The course tightened down hard at the very top with a set of offset gates than had you turning hard left. Once through the tight section, you had a set of offsets to navigate through before going through the finish.

We were given 6 runs but some people only took 5 because of rain that came late in the day. The rain also forced us to cancel fun runs as some people were getting out of control.

In A-stock, Mikhael El-Bayeh showed up in his new to him S2000 and took the class win. Ammonis Lampkin nipped Liam Dwyer by .048 seconds for second place. Jason Aucoin beat his father Charlie by a mere .015 seconds to take the win in C stock. Matt Cummings again lead the way in G stock (bumped to D stock) with Brad Snow finishing second….again.

In the Street Prepared classes; Jim Matons took the BSP win in his beautiful Porsche Cayman. Jim thanks for taken the car out and showing us not all Porsche owners are garagers. Mark Eastwood finally had an ESP class, mostly thanks to himself for bringing his son along. The older Eastwood thanked the son by beating him for the class win. Joe Rathbun handled FSP again by beating Matt Skibisky by just over eight tenths.

X prepared was again a bump class. Joerg Bode was the class winner, beating fellow FP driver Bob “not so Mario” Doiron by a quarter of a second. Greg Cullen in his Saturn was another two tenths back in third. Ray Covino is almost wrapped up with his C Prepared Championship after taking another class win. His co-driver, Schultz, finished second in class. Chris Zelle took the win in A mod but lost a tire thanks to Hartford glass. Warren Elliott was 2nd in his Audi. STA was lead by National Champ Sam Kraus and his AWD DSM. Nick Fandacone took another class win and another FTD with his 350z. This time he beat Kevin Shea who co-drove the 350z with him.

Lev Benkin was quickest in XN with his S2000, beating Aaron Kodz by almost a full second. ZN was one car, two drivers, with Jeffery Stote coming out on top. Our next event is August 23 again at LAZ. Thanks all for coming.