It was an absolutely beautiful and delightfully cool summer day for our rallycross yesterday in Oskaloosa at the Southern Iowa Speedway. All our drivers got to enjoy 11 runs on the roughly 110 second long course. Grip levels were quite high, thanks to some rain on Friday putting some moisture in the ground. The competition was intense, with some surprising winners.
Stock FWD had five drivers competing for the win, including the father & son duo of Charles and Devin P, a semi-regular attendee Aaron D, and a couple newbies. After the first two runs, it looks like it was going to be a three-way knife fight between Charles, Devin, & Aaron, with less than a second separating all three. Things changed drastically on the third run, with Aaron really finding his groove in his 2ZZ equipped Matrix XRS. He began opening up the gap by at least two seconds every run, eventually taking 1st in class by 38 seconds as well as capturing 2nd overall. Charles and Devin fought each other hard for second place, trading who was fastest several times. With one run remaining, Charles was in the lead by roughly five seconds. Charles took his final run first, getting out of sorts and running his slowest time of the afternoon as well as picking up a cone. Devin’s second place spot appeared to be in the bag, until he also pushed too hard for his final run, picking up three cones to net a nearly identical run time to his dad. Thanks to Devin’s mistake, Charles took 6th overall in addition to 2nd in class. Our two newbies showed drastic improvement over the course of the day, with both dropping over ten seconds between their first and last runs.
Stock RWD was a class of one with Luke W putting on a master class of how to be a smooth yet fast driver in his Miata. Luke captured an impressive 3rd overall in his Miata, besting cars with more than double the horsepower.
Stock AWD was our largest class of the day with 9 entries. The usual SA culprits were in attendance, along with a couple less frequent attendees and one newbie. The morning runs saw some fast times and very good competition with five drivers all in contention for first place. Jay K was leading the pack despite some intermittent issues with his car. When the drivers returned to competition in the afternoon, they had to deal with a freshly watered track. The slick conditions led to much slower times at first. Run times began dropping fast as the track began drying fast and there was some shakeup in the standings due to the variable conditions. Disaster struck for Jay in the afternoon when the engine of his Outback Sport seized just after crossing the finish line while his co-driver Kim S was behind the wheel. In the meantime, Hugh H had dialed in his racing line and began opening up a huge lead over the rest of the field. He finished the day taking 1st in class by over 26 seconds and fourth overall. 2nd place went to Greg L, 3rd to David L, and 4th to Dave M. Random trivia for the day: we had four David’s competing, three of them in SA.
Prepared FWD was a class of two with yours truly sharing my car with Cliff J. Sadly, on the very first run on the day, the car stopped putting power to the wheels. Fingers are crossed that it was a failure of the recently installed modular clutch and not a grenaded transmission.
Prepared RWD saw the return of Steve M in his Porchse 944. Unfortunately, the car began struggling with a fueling and overheating problem after just a few runs. Steve’s best efforts could not remedy the situation and he had to retire for the day before completing his runs.
Prepared AWD was a class of one with Ethan T in his lifted Outback sedan. As a fellow owner of one of these cars, I really enjoyed seeing it compete. Ethan dropped his run times all day, despite battling significant body roll from his Outback.
Modified AWD was the class to watch at this event with very stiff competition between Mark M from Kansas City Region and Iowa Region’s Aaron B. Mark had the horsepower advantage in his ’05 STI whereas Aaron’s gutted ’95 Impreza wagon had the edge in nimbleness. After the five morning runs, Aaron had the lead by nearly 6 seconds, thanks to a rare missed gate by Mark. As afternoon runs resumed, Aaron’s car wouldn’t start and a quick repair had to implemented. In the meantime, Mark took his first run of the afternoon in the slick, post-water truck conditions, netting a painfully slow time. The rapidly drying track gave Aaron much more grip on his late run and he opened up the gap to 19 seconds. This gap was further opened on the second run to 26 seconds, again from the rapidly changing grip level of the course. By the third run, both drivers had similar conditions and the battle for the fastest individual run of the day began. Mark dropped a 100.261 on run four to briefly hold fastest lap of the day but then Aaron answered with a screaming 98.248 on run five to take and hold it for the rest of the day. Aaron ended competition taking 1st in class by just shy of 31 seconds and captured 1st overall by nearly 3 seconds. Mark captured 5th overall for the day in addition to 2nd in MA. Side note, having taken a couple fun runs in Mark’s car in the afternoon, I can confidently say he was held back by the tires on his car. The car understeered even through the slaloms and I can hardly fathom how Mark produced the lap times he put down.
Our next rallycross will be in Oskaloosa again on August 18th. Make your plans to join us now as you will not want to miss out on the fun!