May Gets Serious for Team NMS!

Also in May: The 100th Indianapolis 500.  Shown is Jim Clark's Indy 500 winning Lotus

Looking ahead to the month of May, the NMS team has some big events coming up, and you can find all our events listed over on the Driving Schedule page of the blog. Here's a quick look at the next few autocross events in May.

NMS South Miata

The biggest event this month comes up this weekend, at the "2016 Tire Rack Thunder Valley Showdown" at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee. Brian and co-driver Jason Rucker will be driving the NMS Miata at another National level Sports Car Club of America event.  Thunder Valley Showdown LINK   This is part of the SCCA Match Tour, and will have both drivers competing in a field of 196 entrants on both Saturday and Sunday. At their last big event like this, Jason was up in the middle of the ES class pack while Brian  hit his goal of not being last! With all the additional work they've done on the car, both drivers are targeting a slightly higher place this time in a field of 15 for ES class, but realistically will be having a blast no matter where they finish against serious competition. For these two  drivers, the big focus for 2016 is still coming up in September when they will compete at the gigantic SCCA Nationals along with 2,000 other drivers.

NMS South Miata Logo

Here's how the SCCA describes the Match Tour:


      "Match Tours are the latest addition to the Tire Rack SCCA National Solo Series. These events are three events in one package. The event is broken into four sessions. Session 1 and 2 are on Saturday. Each consist of a traditional 3 run autocross. The best run from each session will be added together to determine class rankings (basically a mini Champ Tour). Session 3 is another three runs on Sunday morning to determine the qualifiers for the Top Dog and Under Dog Challenges.  The top 8 on index per heat qualify for the Top Dog Challenge and 9-16 on index per heat qualify for the Under Dog Challenge. Everyone else is eligible for the drawing to be in the Lucky Dog Challenge. Session 4 is the Challenges."

NMS FIAT Abarth on course

Up here in Virginia, the NMS FIAT Abarth will be back at ACU-4 with the Tidewater Sports Car Club  on Sunday May 22nd. This is the largest autocross location in this area, so we're anticipating a field of over 100 drivers here too. In the FIAT GS class, we already see another driver entered with a VW GTI, and the NMS team will also have Michael Moore co-driving in the GS Novice class.  We'll report on how this competition turns out later in the month. The current entry list is located at this link: TSCC May 22nd LINK

Looking ahead to June, the NMS racing team anticipates a major announcement soon, and the gossip around the garage is that both NMS cars will be competing at the same event on Father's Day weekend, with team bragging rights at stake. Our sources also reveal that team NMS will also be racing together in August in Charleston SC, but team officials would not confirm that rumor at this time.