Event 2 - July 17, 2004

This event will go down in the record books as our best autocross event ever. Why? Two reasons. The course, and the drivers.

Chris Darminio and Mark Schnoerr combined their talents to give us a very different, but highly enjoyable, course. Using the full loop the course was fast but used a few well placed gates to keep the speeds reasonable. But the most interesting aspect of the course was the use of large sweeping turns with only the inside of the corner coned. This is my fourth year of autocrossing and I've never seen anything like it before. Several people said it was as close as you could get to track driving without actually driving on the track. Many, many people came up to me both during and after the event and told me how much they enjoyed the course. Thanks Chris and Mark. Great job guys.

The second remarkable part about this event was the number of participants we had. Our previous record at an autocross was 55, and at this event we had 72 participants. I don't know where they all came from. Maybe people were frustrated after the miserable weather we had at our first autocross. Whatever it was, it was wonderful to see so many people turn out and make it such a successful event.

Something new we're trying this year is allowing a driver to take a fellow driver out on their runs for instructional purposes. This is a great way to receive feedback on your driving. We also allow drivers to "ride along" with fellow drivers, allowing them to watch how someone else tackles the course, the lines they take, where they are braking, etc. The idea is that by riding with other people you will learn a lot more about how you should be driving than you can ever learn by just driving alone. Lots of people were taking advantage of this, and those who tried it, seemed to really like it.

FTD (fastest time of the day) went to Bill Seymour in his Lotus 7. Second fastest, only 59 thousandths of a second behind, was Charles Stromeyer in the 993 turbo.