NCR Autocross #1—May 23, 2009
by Joe Kraetsch, NCR Autocross Chair
Autocross # 1 is in the books. We arrived early to the airfield in Devens are were greeted by swarms of black flies and gnats. Shortly, however, a cold breeze picked up and sent them packing. The day was a bit chilly in the morning, but hey, it wasn’t raining! By the afternoon session, the sun was peeking out and it turned into a nice day.
This was our first event with our new wireless timing equipment and we had a bit of a scare when we could not get a signal from the finish line unit. After checking several possible causes, we fixed the problem by elevating the base unit to the timing table. Once we solved that, the equipment worked flawlessly all day. We also had a lot of on-site registrations to type into the computer. Both of these factors contributed to a very late start. If you are coming to an autocross, please pre-register online. It helps us get the event off quicker and saves you some money. In spite of the late start, we decided to go for four morning runs. After both heats finished their morning runs, it was clear that everything was running smoothly so we were able to get another four runs in the afternoon.
Chris Darminio and John Mac Donald set a fun and challenging course. It was a great course—easy to follow yet difficult to master. Everyone from novices to experts loved the course. Charles Stromeyer said it best: “…everything worked very well, the course was simply awesome!” Thank you, Chris and John for a job well done. Thanks to all my staff and to all the participants for making the event run so smoothly and efficiently!
We had a lot of new faces and a record attendance of 77 drivers. The race in P7 continues to be as competitive as it was last year. Ollie Lucier had a 0.427 second lead over Chris Jacques after the morning session but Chris won the afternoon session and the total for the day. [A driver’s score for the day is the sum of their best morning run and their best afternoon run]. The Improved Class race was tight in the morning with Mark Scala leading Scruffy by 0.129 seconds but Scuffy took the afternoon by 0.307 seconds for a net win of 0.1778 on the day. In Modified, Kenny Conway had a 0.499 second lead over Ron Mann in the morning but could not turn in a clean run in the afternoon. Ron Mann took the day by 0.150.
Scruffy took FTD while Chris Jacques had the top PAX.
