Autocross Recap: OVR Points #2 And Some Illegal Street Autocross Yo

I don't think the Ohio Valley Region has updated their site design in a long time. Know how I know? That photo in the header above is from 2005. I think. 2006 at the latest.

Not that much has changed. I'm still autocrossing Ye Olde 2004 Boxster S. And still not autocrossing it particularly well. With that said, I did get a trophy for something besides participation.

For much of the day, I was either leading the 24-entrant Street RWD class or lounging in second place. Unfortunately for me, I overheated my rear tires in the first part of the last run and ended up putting on an entertaining Tokyo Drift performance that did nothing to move me along in the standings. Final tally: Third place, .264 out of first. That got me an official OVR plastic mug, as shown below. Overall, I was 12th of 82 in PAX and 14th of 82 in RAW time. Not exactly setting the world on fire, but I should point out that I'm driving a completely un-prepped, un-aligned car with an exhaust leak and worn-out Falkens.

Danger Girl had a tougher time of it. She placed second in Ladies behind a very well-known local competitor in a Nationals-prepped STi. She was 73rd PAX and 72nd RAW. What the times don't show is how much she improved over the course of the day. She had a flight to catch immediately afterwards, which made her nervous. As a result, she botched her last two runs pretty badly. The last one, she just flat missed the brake pedal and sailed off course. Despite that, she was still just 1.3 seconds off her best run. I think if she hadn't flaked the brake she'd have made a solid 49.5 which would have lifted her twenty places in both PAX and RAW. It's truly encouraging to see how quickly she's picking all of this up.

This weekend, John and I took it to the streets for a little practice in advance of his debut at Circleville Raceway Park in two weeks. He's very good at steering just enough to make it through our home-made cone chicanes. He understands how pointer cones work. It terrifies me to watch him drive because he has no real concerns about the idea of entering a corner too fast. I had to have Uncle Rodney stand between him and a particularly troublesome tree right off the racing surface. Things were progressing very nicely until his idiot crew chief (raises hand) broke his pull-start string. What can I say. Red Bull did even worse by poor Danny Ricciardo at Monaco, and they have an actual racing budget.

What's next? Well, at least one of us will be driving Laguna Seca next weekend --- and it won't be me!