Midnight Madness Returns
For 2023, the popular NERRC night race moved from its previous calendar slot in August up to the weekend following the 4th of July. This event packs a lot of racing into one day. Given it was a scorcher, with temps in the mid 80’s all day and sticky humidity, a huge thank-you needs to go out to the 60+ volunteer workers that started working at 9am and did not finish until the last cars left the course around midnight. They are the true MVPs of the event.
Overall, with 8 race groups, each scheduled with 1 Qualifying session in the morning, 1 afternoon race, and then 1 race at night under the lights, there were almost 150 cars on track that required 24 sessions to run smoothly throughout the day. And for the most part – they did. There was a lot of great racing, and the few incidents that did occur were cleaned up quickly.
Hot and humid are never ideal conditions for setting track records, but two drivers managed to do it. Congratulations to Douglas Rocco in CFC and Scott Smith in SE30 for their fast times.
Specialty Groups
In addition to the regular co-hort of regional race classes, Midnight Madness included 9 drivers in the historics HRG group, as well as 10 novice permit holders in the CRE group. The HRG cars were fun to watch with a few loud muscle cars rumbling around the course.
For our CRE students, John Santos led the in-class portion and we were fortunate to have SCCA headquarters staff Jon Krolewicz (Sr. Manager, Regional Track Program Development) visiting. Jon contributed valuable insights to the classroom and drove JB Swan’s B-Spec car during the on-track portion. Special thanks to the SE30 class drivers for assisting with on-track lead follow instruction.
Jon Krolewicz provides his feedback to 16yo CRE student Zach Introne.
Coming Up Next
With 3 events completed, we are half-way through the 2023 season, with just 3 more to go before Championship weekend. Just around the corner is NERRC #4 – Homecoming Weekend at NHMS the weekend of July 29-30. The season points battles are heating up, so we be sure and check out the current standings in the link at the bottom of the page. Then register to join us at NHMS. The full 2023 NERRC schedule is available here.
Official Results
Official results from all Qualifying and Race events from this weekend are now available. Select your race group, then view or download the final Timing and Scoring results as PDF files.
New Track Records
CFC – #46 Douglas Rocco – 1:14.836
SE30 – #86 Scott Smith – 1:25.542
