Category: Autocross

I was looking forward to Event #2 with the Mohawk-Hudson Region of the Sports Car Club of America. We had upgraded our timing software, we had a new laptop, and I had two new Hoosiers on the front of my Evo. We had tested the software and I’ve run Hoosiers for quite a while, so I was set.

Or so I thought. First up was the sinking realization that I had completely forgotten about testing out our live timing setup. It’s based on a donated wireless router and some freeware software that was written 7 years ago, but it all seems to have worked. Until now… turns out the new timing software changed the output format of results, and the freeware we used – axti.me – couldn’t read and process it. We had a few folks gathered around to help with troubleshooting, but it wasn’t to be.

We had a great autocross course, and the new Hoosiers were putting me closer to the battle, but my times were still off from what I felt the leaders of the Pro class were putting down. My last run I decided to push myself to the absolute limit, and I did just that, but stepped over those limits at the end, spinning through the stop box and knocking down 4 cones. I managed to avoid the timing lights and cables, and watched a light pole spin by, but the 180 I did voided my event best time. Oh well, the car didn’t stall, and I was able to continue on and get back to grid. I got out and looked at my car to make sure it was OK. I laughed – I had two perfect outlines of cones on the driver’s side. Usually when you hit a cone it smears on the front bumper or wheel, but I had hit these straight on with the side of my car in the spin. I went to the passenger side, and noticed a patch of orange in my front wheel well. Oops – I still had a cone stuck between the tire and the fender liner. I got down on my back and slowly worked the cone down to the ground and just as I was wrestling it out from under the car, I noticed another issue: I had a long ribbon of what looked like fabric extending off the driver side front axle and extending to almost the middle of the car. “What the heck is that?” I said out loud. I got up and went back over to that side and got down on my back to look at it. It wasn’t cloth, but actually felt like a rubber strip. Touching it made my hands a mess, with dirty oil on it. Weird! A small group was gathered around, and as I pulled on the rubber strip, it wouldn’t come loose. Someone offered me a knife, and I cut it just behind the front tire. I figured once I got the car back up on my trailer, I could see what the heck it was. As I got up and showed folks the rubber strip, another competitor got down on the ground and was looking at it when he shouted “It’s from your tire!” Damn – that tire was brand new. As we looked at it and once I got it up on the trailer, we finally figured it out. Apparently when I spun, the tire rubbed on the trailing edge of the inner wheel well so much that the sheet metal literally lathed off a complete ribbon of tread, about 2″ wide, right down to the cords. The tire is shot and I’m out $400.

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July 19, 2020 – MoHud got the chance to host an autocross event recently when Poughkeepsie Sports Car Club (PSCC) decided to pass on holding an event at this point in the pandemic. I, too, was a bit skeptical about all the new protocols we’d need to put into place and ensure that participants followed them, but others were eager to give it a shot. We have some folks on our team of organizers who had been dealing with pandemic protocols in their day jobs, and that experience helped immensely. We also benefited from several documents produced by SCCA National and some other regions that pioneered hosting events under Covid-19 protocols.

The site we used was the former location of IBM in Kingston, now called TECH City. It has large parking lots, and asphalt is reasonably good condition. There are a lot of little stones on the pavement, but in some ways I think that saves wear and tear on cars and the pavement as they aren’t able to put down so much grip that they lift up the pavement.

We decided to put a limit on even attendance capped at 50, following NYS guidelines for gatherings. We didn’t sell out, but we came close at 48 attendees. We also had an unwanted guest at the event: a stunningly hot heat advisory for that day. It made mask wearing a bit more uncomfortable than it normally would be, but attendees were very good at following our protocols. My special challenge for the event was arriving and realizing that the cooler I had packed with cold waters and lunch had been left on my kitchen table. Due to the pandemic, we had announced that we were not providing water to attendees, but fortunately my fellow competitors had brought extra water and generously offered it to me. I took advantage of those offers, but apparently I didn’t drink enough because by the time we had packed up and were discussing the event, I was feeling pretty woozy. Another generous offer of water and I regained my bearings and was able to tow the Evo home.

With that success, we’re looking to put on another Solo event on August 16th.

We had good weather for our first autocross on Sunday August 11th, 2019, at the now-closed Berkshire Mall in Lanesborough, MA. The lot that is available for use and in appropriate condition was somewhat small (D below), so the course was pretty tight for the Evo. I couldn’t really get on the power, which is the Evo’s forte, so I was left fighting it out mid-pack while the nimble cars ruled the day, with the exception of a very well driven F Street Camaro. Cars were gridded up in the upper left corner of the C lot, and cars were paddocked in the rest of the lot to the right. We had a lot spectators show up, which is unusual. The 65 entrants put on a good show for them, and even one of the EMTs attending the town mandated ambulance got to take a ride. Event results can be found on the MoHud Solo webpage.