The RAL Autocross took place on Saturday, August 3.  This was a special solo event, outside of the regular 2019 points series, organized and designed specifically to support the RAL fundraising efforts. Approximately 50 drivers attended and raced the course designed by Brian Levesque. Both the solo and road racing schedules were faced with a delayed start Saturday morning, as lightning storms required the tracks to be shut down until the weather had cleared. But once the rain and lightning passed through, the remainder of the day was beautiful blue skies and sunny warmth.

Given that we had all specialties represented at NHMS, the opportunity for a little cross-competition arose. Known for their free-wheeling and carefree attitudes, always being down for a good time, a number of the road racing IT7 drivers decided to exist the tunnel and bring their cars over to the autocross course and see if they could maneuver around orange cones.

The IT7 guys left many of the solo drivers laughing and scratching their heads. Overheard were quite a few “have they ever driven a solo course before?” comments. All in the name of good fun, these road racers had a blast attempting to figure out how to follow a course of cones. The solo organizers were even faced with their own challenge of determining how exactly to class these IT7 cars??

At the end of the day, all of the solo drivers that attended were able to rack up plenty of experience, with each driver getting at least 7 runs on the course. The final results from the autocross can be found here.

Just like the autocrossers faced a delayed start due to weather, the road racing teams also spent the first two hours of Saturday morning waiting out the rain and lightning before on track competition could begin. This delay forced the stewards to re-work the day’s schedule as well, leaving all the groups with a much shortened morning qualifying session.

Unfortunately, the weather delay was almost a harbinger of the racing frustrations for the rest of the weekend. There were way too many on course incidents and track carnage for anyone’s liking. Racers always prefer when everyone takes the checker after a hard and clean race. The emergency and track crews worked all weekend pulling vehicles stuck on track and cleaning up after incidents.

Despite all that, there was still plenty of competitive racing. Three drivers set new track records. Congratulations to:

FS – #45 Kjell Tollefsen – 1:09.742

T1 – #00 Miguel Aponte-Rios – 1:09.093

T3 – #38 Darius Trinka  – 1:13.399

Lastly, how often can you see 34 Formula Vee’s on track together at NHMS!?! Not often, but we did this weekend as part of the FV tribute to Paul Faford. It was a heartfelt showing by the FV drivers to honor one of their own, including a Missing Man formation on the pace lap for the Sunday afternoon race.

NHMS Club Racing Experience

We had another great Club Racing Experience (CRE) at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last weekend. A great group of drivers, one a licensed competitor (David Gott) running with his sister Becky Mallory, and others (Lincoln Young, Mike Ruggiero, Tim Ginalski, and Thomas Rohifs) having varying W2W racing experience from some to none! All did well driving on track with others, said they had lots of fun, gained valuable in-class education and on-track experience!

Big thanks go out to all our licensed drivers who volunteered their time plus fuel, tires and brakes driving on track with the CRE participants; we really appreciate Miguel Aponte Rios, Bob Demers, Serge Lentz, Michael Saia, and JB Swan stepping up to help, apologies if we have overlooked anyone. James Ray was Chief Instructor for the weekend with support from Peter Morrison on day two. 

Jon Lamkins organized the GTA Road Rally event that was part of the RAL festivities over the weekend. 12 teams met at the gates to NHMS on Saturday morning and started off on their 142 mile tour throughout the lakes region of New Hampshire. Along the way, they were tasked with finding the answers to questions like “Which President was Daniel Webster the Secretary of State under?” or “What is the elevation of Mt. Kearsarge?”

The GTA rally sent drivers and their navigators on a scavenger-hunt-like quest to find the answers to 10 questions based on landmarks in the area, all while doing so in the shortest mileage possible. Penalty points for wrong answers and late arrivals could also be accrued.

At the end of the day, these 12 teams were able to visit a multitude of New Hampshire’s famous sites and learn a little more about the state’s history.

Please congratulate Nina Piccola and Michael Beliveau on their day’s win. The final scores for all participants are below.

For those interested in joining the next GTA Rally, Jon and Kelli will be organizing the 2019 Hurdle GTA Rally kicking off from Southington’s Drive-In in Southington, CT on Saturday, September 7. These rallies are a fun way to spend the day exploring new terrain throughout New England and learning a little more about some off-the-beaten path locations. Perfect activity for couples, friends and families!