August 2nd Autocross Report From Pungo

Make that "Report from Pungo, the autocross capital of the world"!



Nothing like a little rain to clean up the car!

Driver's meeting, the red flag you don't want to see!

On a sunny day in August at the former Pungo airfield, we had a field of 41 drivers for this month's Old Dominion Region of the SCCA autocross. In our tiny field of only one driver in the G Street category, I once again managed to take 1st place too! Thanks to my friends Joe Lewis and Aaron Burkle for coming out and watching some autocross, and Joe for riding along and not laughing too much as I managed to wipe out cones on my first run, flip on the windshield wipers in the middle of another run, and have to come to a stop and back up to avoid cones on another run!



Joe and Aaron enjoy the liquid sunshine!

Overall I finished 20th out of 43 drivers by PAX time, so I'm happy to be in the top half at least! The course was basically a big rectangle with two sweepers on the ends, and then a bit of a small sweeper at the finish. Oh, and the big rectangle was run twice, so for me the highlight was going through a high speed slalom and then really having to judge where and how much to brake into a 90 degree right hander TWICE on every run.



Lotus after the rain

We had 3 different run groups, so I enjoyed getting to watch all the drivers in the first run group, mostly to steal their speed secrets and to see where cars were having trouble in the tricky spots. After that I drove in the 2nd run group as some dark clouds started to appear, but we had a good 5 dry runs. But then, the rain came in the last run group, and before everyone got their 5 runs there was also thunder and lightning, so in the interests of safety the event was stopped.

Course Walk in the dry!

I started autocrossing in 2013, and this was the closest I've come to driving in the rain, although last month at Pungo we also had just a few drops as I finished my last run.

Here are my run times, the first run was REALLY FAST because I wiped out cones and didn't run the 2nd lap, so unfortunately my blazing fast 35 second run does NOT count! I'm always glad to have my last run the fastest. The next to last run in an amazingly slow 62 seconds was when I stopped on course to avoid a cone penalty. Either way, it was SLOW!

   #      DRIVER                         1ST                2ND                3RD              4TH                5TH

77

ROBERT NIXON

35.921

99

53.927

0

53.867

0

62.599

0

53.664

0

Here's a few photos from today. Regardless of results, every run behind the wheel and around (or into!) the cones was a blast, and I can't wait to do it again!

Love the cool stickers on other cars too!

69 CAMARO!

Dark clouds during the 2nd run group!

Joe Lewis prepares for a ride along!

1958 Morgan!

Watching the rain, waiting for it to stop!

And even heavier rain!

Just a little wet at the south sweeper!