Category: Autocross

Last month I was amazed it was already Sep and time for the TireRack SCCA Solo National Championships! We will frequently have 6-12 Region members make the trek to Lincoln, NE each year, but this was a light year with only four attending. I’ll make this disclaimer up front, if you are a dual member but your primary is elsewhere or if I just screwed up and missed you, sorry. Please let me know and I’ll catch it next month. Here’s how the four that went did, congrats to all, but Dave just dominated!

Michael Jeffries – CS – 23rd
Robert Clark – CS – 34th
Tim Sholar – HS – 18th
David Montgomery – FP – 1st!!!

If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it. I missed this year, first time since ’96. It’s an amazing time, great food, fun activities, big courses, challenging competition, and 1300 other competitors to meet and become friends.

On the local scene, we had our joint challenge event with Miami Valley Sports Car Club (MVSCC) on Sept 16 and 17 at Traders World. We had 200 drivers over the two days and had a blast. Competition was fierce, MVSCC took a narrow lead the first day, 89.94 vs Cincy SCCA score of 87.62. The course was essentially reversed for the second day and Cincy SCCA attempted to battle back but came up short with MVSCC again taking the lead with a 84.03 vs. Cincy SCCA score of 82.72. The combination of the scores from the two day event resulted in MVSCC taking the overall win from Cincy SCCA, 86.80 to 84.20. (Scores weighted based on PAX times for every entrant.

As the season winds to its end, we have our last two points events, one of which is another joint two-day event, and a year ending fun event.
Oct 8 – Points Event #7
Oct 28 & 29 Joint Challenge event with Western Ohio Region (Sunday is our PE #8
Nov 5 – Fun Event

Look for season point standings elsewhere, but the points lead to year end trophies which will ge at the banquet, date is Jan 27, 2018. Four events in the same class are required to qualify and the top 5 events count. (Note, if you only have three points events, the fun event can count as a 4th; however, no points will be awarded.

Lastly, plans for next season are already underway. We will have an Evolution Driving School May 5 & 6, with a Phase 1 on Sat and a Phase 2 on Sun. Highly recommend doing one or both of these! I had been competing for 8 or 9 years when I went to my first one (way too many years ago) and was competitive locally and at the division level. Over the course of the first day, I dropped 2 secs off my time. Great stuff!!!

Kent Weaver
Cincy Solo Chair

Wow, we are five (5) into our nine (9) event 2017 season already! The best was to summarize our Aug 13 Solo Points Event #5 is it just keeps getting better! It was a fantastic fifth Solo Points Event at Traders World, what perfect hosts! Another record setting crowd, this time 140 competitors which was one more than the previous 2017 record with 28 novice entries and 50 weekend memberships! Thanks to the hard work of the solo committee (couldn’t do it without them) and the cooperation/quick change overs by everyone we were able to give everyone six (6) runs on a fun and challenging course by Evan Frank! Tightest margin of victory went to Pat Witte in his M3 over Brian Walker in an RX-7 by 0.009 secs in the Street Tire index class. Michael Jeffries in his ’16 SCS Miata eeked out the fastest time on PAX just beating Joe Gordon in his ES ’03 MR2 by 0.075 secs. Christian Moist had the fastest raw time his Pro Class DMod Birkin 7 with a time of 30.390 sec over Tim Viars in his STS Miata with a time of 30.838 secs. Thank you, everyone! Can’t wait to see what we can do for our next event!!!

We also assisted Miami University and the City of Oxford host a TireRack Street Survival School at Miami University on Aug 19. In my opinion and that of every student and parent with whom I spoke, it was a huge success. See Tact’s article regarding that event.

Along the line of future events, we have we have six (6!) more days over four weekends to go play at Traders World until the end of the season. Two of those will be joint events.

Sept 16 & 17 is a joint Event with Miami Valley Sports Car Club (MVSCC). We are continuing the tradition of a joint event with them, this time at Traders World. Sep 16 is the MVSCC event (using their class structure) and Sep 17 is Cincy SCCA PE #6 (using our standard classing). Registration for both events are on www.myautoevents.com but are separate. We are planning to have a party on Sat at Traders World after competition, but need to make desire there is enough interest. Discounted prices will be available for chicken dinners or pizza as mentioned in our CincySCCA Facebook page. Trailers can be left on site over night, but no camping is permitted.

Points Event #7 will be Oct 8 at Traders World

Oct 28 & 29. This is a joint Points Event with Western Ohio Region SCCA (WOR) and continues that tradition. Sat, Oct 28, will be a Points Event for WOR. Sun, Oct 29 will be Cincy’s last Points Event of the year. Should be a great time. Expect a party Sat night if the Sep joint event party is a success. Trailers can be left on site, but no overnight camping permitted.

Fun Event, Nov 5. We will celebrate our 2017 season with a non-points event (all the events are fun, right?) at Traders World. If you only have three events, this event can count as a qualifier for year end points, but there will be no points accrued.

Year End Points. Had a number of questions about this so I will attempt to set the story straight here. Year end trophies will be awarded per class for those who qualify (as adjusted by number of qualifiers in class.) The entrants best five (5) points count toward year end points, four (4) events minimum are necessary to qualify. Trophies will predominantly be awarded as they are at the events, 1 trophy for 1-3 qualifiers in class, 2 trophies for 4-6, 3 trophies for 7-9, 4 trophies for 10-13, etc with some flexibility for close battles, etc.

If you have ideas on how to improve things next season, gone me a shout.

Sincerely,
Kent Weaver

We had Points Event 4 at Traders World on July 9th. Wow, can’t believe it’s almost been a month ago already. Traders World continues to be fantastic hosts and the weather was perfect. Even though this was the first event which didn’t hit the online entry cap of 125 prior to the event, we ended up with our largest turn-out yet in 2017 of 139 entrants and were still able to provide five runs for everyone. My son, Ben Weaver, has helped with course set up since he was a tyke and last year tried his hand at a course design in Wilmington which was well received. He had an idea for this past one which in my humble opinion also turned out to be excellent, giving a challenging mix of speed maintenance elements and some “digs”, while giving room for competitors to choose their lines. Have to thank the set up crew for some great on-site adjustments which made it even better.

Paul Curley captured FTD as the only one in the 42s with a time of 42.704 and Jim Zeisler captured the PAX FTD with an indexed time of 35.346 nudging out Michael Jeffries by 0.221 secs. Closest class margin of victory was in Street Touring Open where Crissy Weaver edged out Myke Dziengel by 0.004 secs in their STi’s with Robert Clark a mere 0.307 behind and Shari McCoy 0.230 secs behind Robert in their Miata’s.

After some in depth discussions, we are now thinking there may be an opportunity to give six (6) runs for an event this size and still finish runs by 4:00, but it will take everyone’s cooperation with the workers hustling to be early/on time to minimize our heat change overs times. It’s a goal I’d like to target for next event. Please, feel free to come to me or any of the solo committee with suggestions on improvements. Another request which we will implement is to mix up the run/work order so the same classes aren’t always the same heat from event to event.

Upcoming events:
– Aug 13 – Points Event 5 will be at Traders World, go online and register so you can get your reduced entry fee.

– Aug 19 – TireRack Street Survival will be at Millett Hall parking lot at the University of Miami in Oxford, OH. Tact Takagi and Glenn Ellerby have been working diligently with the city, the university, Cincy SCCA, and many others to bring this exceptional real-world, hands-on event to the area. Please, if you have a teen driver or have a friend or a neighbor with a teen driver, please get them the info on this event! If you want to volunteer to help, please see the website or our facebook page for further information or contact Tact.

– Sep 16 & 17 – Points Event 6, the joint event with Miami Valley Sports Car Club is still in a state of flux, was hoping to have details hammered out by now, but it should be soon. Current thought is a two day event at Traders World, with Saturday being MVSCC car classification and points and Sunday being the Cincy classes and points. That said, details aren’t finalized yet, it could be at Upper Valley Mall in Springfield or one day each location, or a multitude of other options. Please stay tuned, sorry for the delay in nailing this one down as it is always a great event.

– Oct 28 & 29 – Points Event 7 will be a joint event with Western Ohio Region (WOR) SCCA. Saturday will be WOR’s PE 7, and Sunday will be our PE 7. You will be able to run either event or both to maximize your weekend fun. This too promises to be another exceptional event.

UPDATE: The Sept 16 & 17 joint event with Miami Valley Sports Car Club (MVSCC) at Traders World is now confirmed!!! Sep 16 will be a MVSCC event and Sep 17 will be our Cincy SCCA event. Details will follow including the potential for an onsite dinner after competition on Saturday.

Kent Weaver