Whoa, where has the month gone? We are a week out from autocross #2, and I haven't posted up the event recap for #1! So lets strap into our time traveler for a look back at our first event for the season and the autocross school that preceded it...
The Rocky Mountain BMW CCA kicked off it's summer autocross series with a bang holding an autocross school/car control clinic Saturday, then the seasons first event the very next day. Many clinic participants chose to also run in Sunday's autocross where they were able to hone their new car control mastery on a very fast & technical course designed by Chris Mayfield.
Saturday's Car Control Clinic:
Pikes Peak International Raceway's massive parking lot is a perfect venue to host a car control clinic; It's huge and therefore allows multiple disciplines to be taught at once without the need to re-configure the lot, the undulations, sloping pavement & change in texture/grip are excellent variables to test a drivers ability to interpret their ever changing surroundings.
Sunday's Autocross event:
Sunday's event began with David Jobush's informative novice course walk. If you ever sat in a trigonometry class and thought "when am I ever going to use this in real life" like I did, Jobusch's course walk was a perfect contrast to those lonely days of yore. Well, fear not! What was taught Saturday was put into practice Sunday! Many attendees of the course walk were students the day prior and Jobush was able to point out quite a few areas where previous drills and corner exercises applied within the course.
The BMW clubs autocross program runs a little bit differently than other organizations in the region. Because of the smaller crowd, we are able to run morning practice sessions before the timed competition in the afternoon. For those that love seat time, this is the place to get a ton of runs for your entrance fee! The morning practice sessions gave each participant 3 runs to blow out the winter cobwebs or test out all the new mods accomplished during the frozen months. After a lunch break with Short Stop filling out bellies with great burgers, we headed back to the cars to try and set our best timed runs.
The non BMW category was the largest class with a total of 15 entrants. Ryan Schossow pulled out a comfortable 2014 Lewis Hamilton like victory over Salil Shukla in his newly prepped Scion FRS/BRZ/FT86. Just like Renault and Red Bull Racing, I'm sure Salil will be able to close the gap as he gets more comfortable in the new car.
X class is a large category historically, and this event saw 13 competitors duking it out for the top spot. Micheal Feldpusch captured the fastest time of the day in his ear piercing corvette. However he was only able to roar to a 3rd place in class due to the PAX indexing of his car (PAX index is much like a golf handicap). Mark Smith won the class, with James Darden close behind.
BDS, my favorite class, was another large group with 11 entrants. Tad Kaminski remained king of BDS with a effortlessly smooth drive in his red 325Ci. the Cseh boys rounded out the top 3 and Fox Chung grabbed 4th. With such a large variety of cars in BDS, this class is always entertaining to watch!
BBS also had 11 entrants, but it was almost no surprise what car would be on top. That little flat black wrapped MINI kicked butt all last year, and it hasn't lost any pace over the winter. However, Kris Lee was finally unseated by his co-driver Christopher Dawkins for the #1 slot, handily beating Kris by 3/4 of a second.
We also have a great opportunity to participate in the Oktoberfest autocross. As many of you know, the big annual BMWCCA event of Oktoberfest is hosted in our back yard this year June 16-20th. Rocky Mountain Chapter members get a sweet deal because we can sign up for the autocross and wave the normal $100 registration fee! Our local autocross chiefs and volunteers will be running the autocross portion of Oktoberfest, so you know it will be a well organized, smooth running event. After spending a fantastic day up in the Rocky Mountians honing around some cones, why stop? The saturday after Oktoberfest we are hosting auto-x #3 in Winter Park. It's not the biggest lot, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in great scenery and a great time. Check out the video below of my old E28 running at Winter Park. Looking forward to more great events!
To view all the photos, click here.
