Event 4 - September 6, 2003

Finally we get some good weather. Wait, no, not just good weather, but perfect weather. As hard as it may be to believe, the sun was shining, it was a pleasant 75 degrees, and above all, there was no threat of rain.

With the great weather came a great crowd. 55 drivers (a new record for NCR) battled the fast and open course set by Chris Darminio. The course flowed really well and there were a few strategically placed cones which were real hard to miss without letting off.

The morning saw everyone make four runs before we broke for lunch. After lunch things were progressing well until the oil filter washer on Mark Gagnon's 944 gave up and caused his engine to start spouting oil. To begin with the oil went all over his tires which caused him to spin, but not knowing this Mark quickly recovered and continued on course, only to then see flames coming out from under the hood. Mark quickly pulled off course and leapt out of the car. Within seconds our Safety Steward Ed Broadhead was speeding to the scene and within moments the fire was extinguished. The engine looked a mess but Mark thought the fire was put out before any real damage was caused. That was the good news. The bad news was that we then had several hundred feet of oil covered course to clean up. The cleanup operation took about an hour and a half but thanks to everyone's willingness to help we were able to resume the event.

Fastest time of the day went to Mark Skala in his 1970 914-6, who just managed to beat Charles Stromeyer in his 993 turbo by 0.082 seconds. In fact there were several drivers who could have taken FTD at this event as the top five cars were all within three-quarters of a second.

The 2003 Series Championships were decided with several classes going "down to the wire" and a couple of classes ending up with two drivers with the same number of points. When the top two drivers in a class are level on points we take each drivers' fastest times from each event at which they both competed, sum them, and then the driver with the lower (faster) total time wins. In class 5 Tom Gurski and Georges Rouhart both finished with 24 points, but Tom's total time was 0.985 seconds faster than Georges'. And in class 11 Fred deNapoli and Ron Mann also both finished the season on 24 points but Fred's total time beat Ron's by 1.949 seconds. Congratulations to all the Class winners.

At the conclusion of the event we held the drawing for the annual NTB tire giveaway. Who won the set of tires this year? Well, the lucky person was non other than Mr FTD himself, Mark Skala.

Finally I'd like to thank everyone who helped to make this 2003 autocross season so successful. There are far too many people to try and thank here individually, but they know who they all are. Running an autocross is most definitely a team effort, and I think this year we had a terrific team. My sincere thanks to all the team members.