Porsche Club Autocross #3

After attending the first two Porsche club autocross events as a course worker, this time I took the 914 down on a trailer, 80 miles each way, not going to make it!

When I got there I realized I left my GoPro at home, so no footage of me running the course.  I did take a few pictures while lined up in the starting blocks with my group.

We each got 4 runs in the morning and 3 runs in the afternoon.  On my first two runs, I went off course.  Remember that the track course is outlined with little orange cones and the organizers made a crossover point right in the middle, so it was shaped a bit like an infinity symbol.  The crossover was, in my opinion, badly marked with the cones too close - my brain was screaming that it was the wrong place to go, just the gap between two neighbouring cones.  On run 3, I managed to get all the way through and set my first time of 99.398 seconds.  Each run from there got faster as I learned the course and pushed the car harder.  My last lap time was 85.2 seconds.  To me, it felt pretty fast but remember I'm going up against performance street cars and several dedicated race cars.

My best time was dead last, but I was only 7 seconds behind a beautiful Porsche 930 Turbo with the big whale tail.  Obviously the car wasn't being pushed at its limits, but I'll take that statistic any day.

I can't post the full results file since Blogger can't insert a PDF file...  The best lap of the day was a 57.053 from a Corvette Z06, followed closely by an awesome 2004 Volkswagen R32 with all-wheel drive.

Porsche Club Autocross #2

Our Porsche club held the second autocross event at the Santa Maria airport track on October 6, 2012.  You can find the details about the track and the first event here.  I didn't bring my 914 down because it's a long haul on the trailer and I didn't know if there was a plug available for a top-off charge between sessions.  I found out while I was there that there is a plug at the aerial firefighting station and perhaps I could get a plug at the Jet Center, so I'll think about it for next time.

The track had a different layout this time, with a full lap followed by a half-second lap which crossed over the return run to the finishing straight.  With two cars on the track on each run, we joked that the crossing point was sponsored by Vintage Auto Body.  Luckily, there were no accidents, but several cars forgot to make the turn on the second lap and were red flagged.

Here's a shot of the pit area, I think there were 40 - 50 cars in attendance, a lot of Porsches but also VWs, Subarus, Corvettes and others

There were 3 groups and while your car was not running you were assigned cone or flagging duty.  Each group got 4 runs in the morning, and 3 runs in the afternoon as we were running out of time.  This is the starting grid.

This is the very far end of the track with the big 180.  This was my position as background-checked-and-certified-airport-TSA-security-for-the-day.  I wanted to take a picture of my badge but didn't want to risk ending up in Guantanamo Bay.

Here's video of the most aggressive car making this turn, a bright red Turbo.

There were a blue and yellow 914, had to get a video of the blue one.

We had some spectators from the Jet Center and aerial firefighting station.

Porsche Club Autocross

When Porsche introduced the new 2012 911 (Codename 991) to the world's press, they did it on an unused runway at the Santa Maria, California airport.  Porsche spent a lot of money repaving the track, then "donated" it to the airport, but asked that it be made available for use by motorsports clubs.

The inaugural event was our local Porsche Club's autocross.  Since my 914 was still under construction I volunteered to be a track worker.  I was assigned to security, checking cars and people in and out of the track, and because it's an airport under TSA security regulations, I had to do a TSA background check and get a badge issued.  Unfortunately by the time the event came around, all TSA badges came back except for mine!  I didn't want to be sent to Guantanamo Bay for violating TSA regulations, so I switched over to timing which was a blast.  We borrowed timing equipment to give everyone accurate information on their runs, and we were able to run two cars on the track at once to keep the cars flowing through.

While there were a lot of Porsches, including a couple of screaming GT3s, the event was open to anyone with a vehicle.

 Even this sleeper of a pickup truck with a tremendous launch off the line.

Corvettes were well represented.  I found it interesting with all of that power that they were the slowest cars off the line.

Professional racer and local boy Townsend Bell showed up.  He told us that this was where he started his racing career, racing go-karts as a kid.  He drove a stock BMW M5 and came in with some of the fastest times of the day, of course.

The rain managed to hold off for us, but began pouring as we were picking up the cones and packing up.  Next time I'm definitely bringing the 914 to see how it compares!