Saturday Autocross Preview

Robert at the ZMax parking lot, Ford version

Not too far outside of Charlotte NC is one of the coolest places in the world, IKEA Furniture! Yeah, they have great Swedish Meatballs and cheap hot dogs, plus all that furniture stuff...but hey, this is an automotive blog, so enough about food! What's REALLY great about Charlotte is all the wonderful BBQ places! Whoops, sorry, back to cars!

Brian at the ZMax parking lot, Jaguar version

Northeast of Charlotte is not only Charlotte Motor Speedway's giant NASCAR track, but also a dirt oval, and a 4-wide drag strip! Better than all that, however, is the huge parking lot next to the drag strip, because that's where NMS will be on Saturday. This is the home turf of the Central Carolina Region of the Sports Car Club of America, so we'll be competing with 140+ other drivers to see who gets around the course of traffic cones the fastest. A lot of autocross regions use smaller parking lots and run maybe a course only lasting 35 seconds or so, but at ZMax Dragway we'll likely be driving each run for well over a minute, so that sounds like more driving to me, and more driving equals more fun!

So far there are 165 drivers entered for this one event. I'll predict we beat at least half of them! You can find the current list of drivers and cars entered at this link:  Saturday Entries

There are a lot of different classes for various levels of modified cars, so in our class it looks like the NMS BMW will be up against a NIssan 350Z, a Chevrolet Corvette, and a Porsche Boxster S. Hmmm, that sounds like a bunch of cars that are a bunch faster than my FIAT Abarth, and again, faster equals more fun!

After fighting it out in Charlotte, we'll take on a smaller parking lot at Darlington SC on Sunday, more competition, different drivers, same amount of fun!

Stay tuned for our report next week (with video) on who wins this NMS Carolina Showdown, and keep in mind that it would be rude of me to go faster than Brian in his own car. Or the sun will be in my eyes. Or I'll be driving under the influence of too much Carolina BBQ.