Welcome to Autocross 2023!

Carvana Long Island Update:
Nothing new, no cars. 

We have one week to go for the first autocross event of the year here in New York, so things are heating up out in the garage at NMS-North. OK, it's about 30 degrees, so maybe "heating up" is not the right term. The weather forecast for the first event on March 5th is a high of 47 degrees in the afternoon, so with the first driving of the day happening more like 10AM, it's going to be chillier than that. Based on what I think I learned at last year's chilly events, my best tires don't really like the cold weather much, so this year I'm leaning towards just going out there with my old winter tires and having fun anyway!

This will be the 3rd season full season for the Cayman to compete with the Metro NY Region of the Porsche Club of America in autocross, so it will be a fun time with the car folks again down at Tobay Beach close to the ocean for the first few events. After that, the action shifts a little more inland to the parking lots of the Nassau Coliseum, so I'll enjoy that too. Recently there has been an announcement that the Sands casino folks want to develop the Coliseum and area into a big entertainment complex, so if that comes true, we might not be autocrossing there in future years. 

This brings up just about the only tough restriction on groups that want to run driving events in big parking lots all across the county, and that is to find space to hold the event in the first place. Your average large parking lot tends to have a lot of "furniture" that is not autocrossing friendly, like light poles, parking blocks, curbs, little landscaped tree areas, etc. Some locations have restrictions on noise, and yes, I've seen car groups follow the rules and operate decimeters during events and stop cars that are too loud. Even some racetracks more in the country may have these noise limits too. See, car drivers are all mature, responsible people!