Thursday, May 19, 2016

124 Drivers on May 22nd Can't be Wrong!

Entry to ACU-4 at Little Creek
We have 124 drivers pre-registered for the next autocross event with the Tidewater Sports Car Club in Virginia Beach, so I'm thinking that this Sunday May 22nd will be a fun day! In the NMS FIAT 500 Abarth, Michael Moore and I will be co-driving; with me in GS and Michael in GS Novice. The GS class has only 2 cars entered, and Novice GS will see more competition with a total of 12 drivers on course. Hopefully we'll have great weather by the Chesapeake Bay; right now there's a 20% chance of rain.

As a follow up to our last event at the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research (try saying that 3 times fast), I finished 34th and Michael was 69th out of 72 total drivers. That put me just barely in the top half, and Michael just a few spots out of last, so overall pretty good! I think your first time behind the wheel in an autocross is like a runner's first Marathon; you're not going to win, but if you at least finish, then it's mission accomplished! After being able to finish, it's time to improve and move further up the standings at your next event. This weekend we'll be back on a regular autocross course, so I think we'll do better!

NMS competes in SCCA and other autocross events

The current set up on the FIAT Abarth has us in the G Street class, and apparently this will be the last year for this car in this class. The SCCA has determined that the FIAT will move to H Street next year, where the main competition seems to be the Ford Fiesta ST. In an effort to be more competitive in 2017, the NMS team has been discussing swapping the Virginia FIAT for the South Carolina based Fiesta ST next season, since Brian just happens to have one of those laying around! Another option would be to upgrade components on the FIAT to run in the tougher Street Touring X class. This class allows upgrades to the suspension and other key areas, so we'll keep that in mind for next year too. For now, we'll monitor our performance times in GS and see how we compare to the HS and STX groups before deciding on 2017.

This link has a list of all the drivers and their cars: May 22 Entry List

2 comments:

  1. Good luck! Team Frazier will be there, sans the red MR2. Conner will be driving the funny little yellow car instead.
    Personally, I'm hoping for a little rain, we did really well in the wet back in April.

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