Results from RallyCross #2, June 8, 2019
Full details at https://kwrc.blither.net/registrants.asp?eid=21

 

Series scores and how they are calculated are here

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As usual these days the event sold out quickly and we ended up with 40 cars register for the event. A few people had issues with cars and trailers at the last minute so that reduced the number to 34 cars. For those that had to withdraw I`ll be working on the refunds in the next few days. With being tired from Friday & Saturday plus putting away all the equipment on Sunday I`m dragging a bit. I’ll get the website and series standings updated this week as well.

We’ve had quite a wet and cool spring but the past weekend it warmed up so Friday and Saturday were quite hot and sunny. When we did the setup on Friday Jeff laid out a very technical course. The track staff watered the track at about 6:00AM on Saturday. Christina and Teresa did their usual efficient job on registration, we went through the competitors meeting and on to the parade lap. As I said the course was quite tight and that added about 30 seconds to our normal run times. We just used hitting barrels for penalties, cones were just for direction. We probably needed a few more direction arrows or cones since we did have some people taking the wrong route onto the small oval.

The dust started to be annoying almost right away but as long as the wind stayed blowing east it wasn’t a problem for the track`s neighbors but it was for Christina doing scoring. The computers were getting covered in dust and it was hard to breathe so she had to move inside the car. That caused some connection issues that delayed us a bit but we got going again for runs 2 &3 until a timing issue caused by a car missing the timing hose which then made it appear that subsequent cars had long times. (if car 100 doesn’t trigger the finish, then car 101 does, the computer assumes the entire time is actually for car 100. As soon as this becomes apparent we have to stop everything, fix the times we can and rerun the ones we can’t)

Then, as we restarted after the lunch break the wind changed moving more to the south and the dust was blowing onto the neighbors property. We had to stop and water the course which was another delay and it changed the traction considerably. In the end we were only able to get in five runs instead of our planned six.

Total seat time was about 10 minutes per person. Congratulations to Gary Sutherland (2wd) who won overall in his focus and Jason Ronza who took first 4wdN and second overall just 0.1 seconds behind. Zoltan took third overall and second 2wd, Eric Vlasic took first 4wdF. Interesting story there, Eric ran in a Volvo XC70 that he borrowed from a junkyard on Friday night and returned on Sunday. The first time he drove it was onto the trailer on Saturday morning and it had zero preparation. Great drivers mask the flaws in the vehicle, not that a Volvo would have any flaws.

Overall it wasn’t our best running RallyCross and I apologize for that. There are several things we can try to improve the setup: Use my van as scoring HQ with a table set up inside, some sort of local backup for the finish line, better wireless network and things like that. The track suggested running in the evenings and using their lights, as the sun goes down the track doesn’t bake and dry out as much. Matt and Jeff found that to be an interesting solution and we’ll be discussing it at the meeting.
Thank you to all our workers who put up with the dust and heat, Jeff Lantz. Ian Lantz, Teresa VanRees, Christina & Gary Thomlinson, Sean McConnachie, Darin Mayes, and Teresa Marek. Greg and Vasu shared duties as clerk and kept things running as best they could. We had a delegation from TAC including President Rob McAuley who are thinking of doing their own rallycross series and helped with marshalling.

The next rallycross is July 27 and registration will open on Thursday June 27 at 6:00 AM. Thanks to Teresa Marek for most of the pictures, there are more on our Facebook page and I appreciate the effort she and Andrew put into maintaining the page.