Mix a beautiful Saturday in October, a large parking lot, an autocross course designed by Bob Clark, and a bunch of fun people with their fast cars; what do you get?  A really good day!

The course layout rewarded handling over horsepower and some of the sweeping turns allowed legitimate drifts as the fast way through.  Bumps in the turns and varying grip made for some busy hands and arms inside the cockpit, but also crazy fun.  And those sweepers weren’t always obvious.  It took some study and practice to figure out the proper line as the cones weren’t necessarily going to show it to you at first look.

For whatever reason, we had an unusually high percentage of fast times spread across the classes.  Typical times were in the high 60 to low 70 second range, but half of the drivers broke the 70 second barrier.  This includes the REALLY fast times like Justin Pye in his 996 (FTD Showroom Stock 67.696), Bill Crumley in his 1987 Carerra (65.719), Grant Davis in his Cayman S (63.118), Jerry Sladek in his 997 (FTD Production 62.752), David Wilhide in his Cayman S (64.807), Jeff Gordon in his 914 (66.945), Jesse Koorse in his 1999 911 (67.215) and FTD Overall, Paul Douglas in his Improved 986 S at 62.147.

Your Autocross Committee represented by Bob Clark, Kimsey Pollard and Bob Axt all in Boxster S’s(986 S’s for the aficionados)  thought they were competing for fastest time in Showroom Stock, but Justin Pye had different ideas with his 996. The Clark/Pollard/Axt trio were all in the 68s, with Clark winning the class by 0.016 sec at 68.102.  (Somebody tell him who the car owner is!)

 We had two women competing: newcomer Elena Binder in her 2004 911 (91.040), and already good and getting even better, Leanne Phillips, in the family 993 C4 Cab (79.467). Elena and Leanne each were the only ones in their classes, so guys, get your female friends, wives, etc. out to have fun and give Elena and Leanne some camaraderie and competition. 

We also had some very fast visitors.  David Rehm in his 2012 Challenger (is it American, German or Italian?), a car seemingly too big and too powerful for our course, surprised us all with a best run of 69.992, just 0.15 behind a Miata (!) driven by Adam McAleer.  But the fastest visitor was Almambet Iskakov in a Honda S2000. His time of 63.905, was faster than everyone except the Porsches of Grant Davis, Jerry Sladek and Paul Douglas.

Win or lose, everyone seemed to have fun.  Participants went out of their way to tell us how much they were enjoying the day.  They got six runs, and we were done by 2:00 pm. 

So, was our Saturday experiment a success?  We aren’t sure.  We knew we would lose some entrants due to college football mania trumping Porsche mania.  We thought we might gain some who don’t come on Sunday due to other family activities.  We had 31 entrants.  Our attendance historically drops in the fall. Would we have had more on Sunday?  We may find out at our upcoming Nov 11 event.  It’s on a Sunday. At Atlanta Motor Speedway.  Hope to see you there!