NCR Autocross #3 - July 1, 2006
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by Joe Kraetsch, NCR Autocross Chair After being forced to cancel our second autocross due to heavy rains and flooding, we were rewarded with beautiful weather for Autocross #3. The Devens skies were sunny with temperatures in the low 80s. The gate was opened late delaying the start of the event. First car off was about 10:00 a.m. Everything ran smoothly once we started so we decided to try FIVE morning runs. This proved to be too many runs, especially for the two-driver cars, with many tires, cars and drivers getting overheated. We settled for four afternoon runs giving everyone nine runs for the day. We still finished early. The course was designed by a national expert in course design and presented a lot of technical elements making it very challenging. Most drivers enjoyed the course even though they had trouble with parts of it. Most of the negative comments had to do with the sections where we were forced to use the brakes. However threshold braking is a skill most of us need to work on. We had a close battles in Classes 1 and 2. Sigrid Schnoerr held the early class 1 lead, but Mark Schnoerr and Chris Darminio both turned in smoking last runs with Mark edging Chris out by a quarter of a second for the trophy. (Sigrid did beat Mark at the NER autocross the next day.) Dave Porter set the mark to beat in Class 2 with his first run of the day. I tried hard to beat it the rest of the day but had to stand on my second run which fell a tenth of a second short. Dave tried to improve his lead by taking shortcuts and earned the dubious distinction of having the most off course runs for the day. Class 2 also crowned two Cone Queens. Jamie Gratton appeared to own that crown with fifteen cones for the day…until Christine Zrimsek evened the score by taking out eight cones in her last run. Both young women are great sports and won’t mind sharing the honor. Another woman in the highlights is Cara Ness. Driving Mike Stukalin’s Miata, she personified the cliché, “Drive it like you stole it." In so doing, she won Class 16 and earned FTD and top PAX for the day. Congratulations Cara! I believe that Cara is the first woman since Linda Kogan to take FTD. (Some of us are starting to wonder what she did with Mike since no one has seen him for months but his car shows up at Devens almost every weekend…). Meanwhile Charles Stromeyer took the Porsche FTD in his 993 Turbo. I would like to thank Porsche of Nashua for their continued sponsorship and another huge thank you to all the volunteers and morning workers who once again worked extra shifts to make the event run so smoothly. We could not have done it without you. NCR Autocross #4 will be Saturday, August 26th; Autocross #5 will be Saturday, September 16th both at Devens. We hope to see you there.
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