Spring is nearly here...or did we have Spring first and now Winter is arriving late??? It's really hard to tell this year! Regardless, we have a couple competition related activities to report on.
CCA Charity Go Kart Event - February 26th - Autobahn Indoor Speedway
A big congratulation goes out to Pat Roney for setting up and organizing yet another fun and charitable event! Although Pat provides a detailed summary, I'll make my own observations and brief summary in my section.
We had nearly 30 club members, friends and family participate in arrive and drive or competitive races, with numerous others coming to spectate. Like last year's format, there were practice heats, qualifying heats, and main event heats. There also was a final race of the fastest 9 for bragging rights and top 3 trophies!
My family did well again this year, with me winning a meaningless practice session and Zack and Tyler each winning one of the qualifying and main races. All three of us qualified for the finals, with Zack and Tyler in 1st and 2nd and me in 4th.
It was tougher competition than last year (with noticeably dropped lap times). Not only did Andrej and my kids beat me in the first main, Doug Wade absolutely spanked me in the qualifying race with the fastest time of the event!
The final "Fast 9" race had a couple of notable upsets. First, you may have noticed that Pat Roney is suspiciously absent from the "Fast 9" picture above. That's because he was beaten out by Bob Couse, who took the final grid position! Congrats Bob! Second, not only did I NOT win again this year, I did not even make the podium! However, Team Catlin still took home most of the hardware with Tyler coming in 1st (again beating his brother) and Zack 2nd! We were prevented from a clean sweep by Andrej beating me for 3rd. Congrats to Tyler for again trophying (and having 2nd fastest time of the event) and Zack for a close 2nd!
It was a great day of competitive fun and comradery, except maybe the trash talking by my sons on the way home about me choking and failing to make it a clean sweep! LOL. The event also importantly raised over $500 for one of our favorite charitable causes, Hospice Caring, thanks to Autobahn donating a portion of entrance fees.
2017 Autocross Season
We have been a little slow in formally advertising and opening up registration for our autocross events this year. One of several reasons was to allow time to fully sort out and debug our timing equipment (another is a complete re-do of our website). After much discussion with the manufacturer and several "testing" sessions at Lincoln College over the winter, we isolated the problem to an increase of cyclical interference at the lot. This is possibly from one or more of the recently added buildings and stores nearby. To achieve consistent timing transmitter signal strength higher than the interference levels, we acquired and last month successfully tested new directional antennas. These should help provide a more reliable timing setup for this season.
Our current scheduled CCA autocross dates are:
- April 23 - CCA Autox Test & Tune
- May 21 - CCA Autox 1 & 2
- June 11 - CCA Autox 3 & 4
- September 10 - CCA Autox 5 & 6
- October 1 - CCA Autox 7 & 8
Flyers for the first two events are in the newsletter, and online registration is open now! The first event will be a test and tune event on April 23 at Lincoln College that will not only accommodate new autocrossers and provide instruction and guidance, but will also be open to any autocrosser wanting to shake the winter cobwebs off, and get some seat time in. The second event on May 21 at Lincoln College will be our traditional double autocross. If there is sufficient demand, we may add a school or other test and tune dates in the future. Unfortunately, due to the cost of daily insurance we can no longer afford to offer a school for a small class size.
Stay tuned to our website for registration opening and additional details. We hope to see you all out at our events this year!
Until next month...
Stephen Catlin
Competition Director
competitionvette-club.org