We had a good turn out today with 44 drivers. Split into two heats of 22 drivers, we opt’d for 6 runs and 6 runs type heat layout. Everyone only working once. Between the 6/6 or 3/3/3/3 layout which do you prefer? The official results are live here Results – Iowa Region SCCA. It was a day for tight battles within Pro class and PAX. Pro Class 2nd and 3rd between Jeff and Brent .049 second difference. Pro Class 4th, 5th between Ramon and Dan in the KM Kart .103 different. Matthew and Ramon .031 difference in PAX, Aaron and Bryan .051, Troy, Mike, Jim and Steve with a .013 for Troy and Mike and .004 for Mike and Jim and Jim and Steve .055. Between the 4 of them it was 46.821 to 46.893, 72 Thousandths of a second difference! Teresa, Brandy and Robert 48. 458 to 48.528, 70 thousandths of a second different! We also had a tie between DS Brett and DSL Jen with a 47.562 PAX time, that’s .000 seconds different!
Keep up the hard work everyone and thank you to all the people who helped setup and tear down the event. We look forward to seeing everyone at our Nat’s TnT that is open to everyone on 8/25 and again at our next points event at IC Airport on Sept 15th (http://msreg.com/IA-AX-24-9-IC).
Saturday was Concrete and Course Prep. The newly fixed concrete opened up the course for us on Sunday. We tried a 3 heat version today, please comment or message me with your opinions.
Big shout out to every one of our 62 drivers and workers. I’ll prepare a better recap during the week.
“It has been too long since the AutoX Season ended, I’m excited to get racing again. Thanks for releasing the scheduel! We’ll See you Soon” – Joe J DMod
Venue Event Counts
IC Airport 4 Points Events
Hawkeye Tech 4 Points Events
Hawkeye Downs 3 Points Events
Hawkeye Tech 3 TnT Events
2024 AutoX Begins
at the Iowa City Airport, we have 11 points events on the schedule this year with 3 additional test & tunes. We have 3 venues again this year; IC Airport, Hawkeye Tech Transportation and Hawkeye Downs. Registration for events will open the first week of February. Before the 1st event at IC Airport we’ll likely have a clean up of the airport. The Nationals test & tune is open to all Iowa Region members, but people headed to Nationals get first registration chance. If you’re new to Iowa Region we look forward to seeing you at our events, if you’ve been racing with us for a while welcome back! We’re excited to get back racing as much as you are. See you in April.
Sunday September 17th 2023 was a borderline perfect Iowa day. Temps weren’t too bad, wind wasn’t wild, few picturesque clouds floating around, and 48 screaming fast drivers bombing around Hawkeye Downs Speedway in Cedar Rapids. Couldn’t ask for more.
The Course was setup and tested on Saturday morning, Hawkeye Downs always uses a similar layout, this time was no different. We did tweak a couple spots to pinch speed and create a more technical element here and there. I personally really like the 6/8 packs in the back slalom to break up the monotony of the back and forth. This isn’t East Course at solo nationals 2023 afterall.
Sunday morning rolls around and we began the final setup and prep for the event. Competitors began rolling in when registration opened at 7:30. This event we had multiple father son combinations at the track helping with early morning prep. Both 12yr olds were planning on riding along with their dad’s, they both got roped into helping their dad in their work assignments. Good father son bonding putting them to work! haha. Once registration was closed we ended up with 48 drivers!
Racing heats went pretty smooth throughout the day, the course was pretty quick with some nice technical points. Patience and threading the needle was critical. As people tried to push they did hit cones. Course workers got their steps in on Sunday no question. The Novice group was 7 drivers, Isaac, David and Ben pulling out the top 3 spots respectively. It was great to see drivers drop time. Isaac cleaned up from his 1st run AND dropped 4+ seconds. David dropped over 3 seconds from his first run. Ben dropped over 12 seconds over the course of the day! Jeremiah in the Novice class dropped over 14 seconds from his first run! that’s wild. Great driving for the Novices.
Pro Class also had 7 drivers, but they had a combined 66 cones in 49 runs….whoopsie doodle. David Price said “No cones No Cones No Cones” before the event, but I forgot to tell everyone that. Pro Class is organized a little differently from the other classes. For Class points and rankings only your first 3 runs count. This is to emulate the importance of “Getting it done in 3” like you experience at a National Tour, where you only get 3 runs. The other 5 runs from each Pro Class driver still counts towards top Pax, FTD and year end “Soloist” of the year awards but the Pro Class championship is based on your first 3 runs! NO PRESSURE. Top 3 in Pro on Sunday were Spencer, JJ, and Jeff. They were within .7 seconds of each other! Spencer went into his 3rd Pro Class run dirty, which means he had no clean runs and had one chance to pull off not only a clean run but a fast one too! He managed to squeak past JJ and Jeff for the top spot in Pro Class on Sunday.
“You guys built a Kart Course on accident” – KMod driver Eric.
He’s not wrong, we didn’t build it for him on purpose but it worked for him. He ended up with FTD and 4th in PAX for the day. Joe, Bryan, John, Teresa and Leah were also in Mod cars for this event, split into 3 different classes. Joe took the DMod win, John won EMod and Lean took the win in DMod ladies.
Street Classes had 7 drivers Aaron took the win in DS and Aaron took the win in GS (pretty sure they are different Aarons, I’ll let another Aaron confirm). Street Touring had 5 drivers in 3 classes. Fastest of the bunch being Troy in his STU STI. CAM had 7 drivers in 2 classes. We saw an influx of corvettes this event and I’m 100% on board! The Corvettes of CAMS couldn’t catch Chance in his CAMC Camaro though, he took the CAM win Sunday. He kept complaining the course was slippery but he managed a fast clean time! XSA and XSB had 2 drivers each, Brady pulling out the top time between the 4 of them. Rounding out the remaining classes are Andrew in EVX with a flying time and 3rd in PAX, Aaron (pretty sure there were 3 different ones) in his RallyX spec Impreza laying down some very consistent times and lastly Jim in HCS (I keep forgetting to update his class in the main results, it’ll be updated for year end points) Alfa Romeo cracked off a 57.002 just .002 from a 56.
Top PAX was Andrew in his STU STI and I’ve stolen his youtube video from the run, take a look and enjoy. This is a flyer!
Check out where you and your competitors stacked up on the complete results here.
We managed to pull off 6 runs for every run group and out by 4:30pm, not bad.
Course was fast and technical, course workers deserve a huge round of applause for all the running they had to do. Someone should count the total cones hit. Rumor has it Pro Class had 5 clean runs total out of 27 in the morning. Overall I think people enjoyed the course.
We got to see some old and new faces! Jade who drove in from Baltimore, the GRR Miata Contingent + Turbo E36 + Lotus were there, Hans in his now top 10 at Hawkeye Downs DS Twin joined us, and we had a Nebraskan drive our normal route home from Nationals for some extra seat time before next month’s event.
I’ll let you comb through the results, but a few highlights.
Emery took top Pax and a Pro Class Win, with a 50.444 he had 2 sub 50 second scratch times. IN A GStreet CIVIC!
Jeff Ellerby took top time of the day and 3rd in Pro Class, only .097 behind Brent who was in 2nd Place.
Spencer Dewey inched his way into 2nd place in Pax in the afternoon with a 51.220, scratched two 50.4’s with cones!!
Bill Sand took fastest vehicle with doors with a 49.2, which he backed up with a second CLEAN 49.2. I hope he got some video I need to see how he navigated the inside loop!
My GR Corolla did very well, but I couldn’t clean up my fastest runs from the morning, the RE71RS really like to be cooled off. Thanks to Jade for co-driving with me, without a co-driver I forget to do 90% of the things I need to do between runs.
Big thank you to all of the drivers who came out and enjoyed the weather both the sprinkles and after, as well as the volunteers who make the Iowa Region SCCA a successful club.
Iowa Region Event Recaps are back! I’ve been slacking on keeping everyone updated on the results and shenanigans of Iowa Region AutoX as of late. My bad.
Today, July 30th we had 37 drivers sign up to drive 8 runs in the scorching Iowa sunlight and moderate 90 degree heat. The course was designed by Aaron B and team. The layout was phenomenal use of the Waterloo Iowa venue. It had a good mix of right and left turns which can be a struggle to design into our lot. It was fast yet technical, not a lot of high speed sections. The optional slalom was optional but there was a “right” way to take it. The sharp left hander after the slalom was open to interpretation (besides avoiding the corner workers) and if you went too hot into it you were punished trying to get back around the next element. Hawkeye Tech has a slight off camber side of the lot, this area has some reduced grip and can be challenging to navigate. Fight your instincts to fly in hot and hope it grips, slow in fast out really paid well here. Personally I never got it right. haha.
Looking at the battles today.
DSP, the battle of Aaron against his RX8. He managed a clean run on his 3rd run which was a flyer! unfortunately the rotary engine decided it didn’t like spark plugs, him and his son tore into it and got it back running for the drive home. His flyer was good enough for 4th in pax!
D Street, the battle of the Daves a Type R and a GR86. The Type R held the lead for the first 3 runs, but the GR86 found 3 tenths on their 4th run to take the lead going into the afternoon. The first 3 afternoon runs for the Type R were dirty, clipping a slalom cone right in front of the timing truck. The GR86 laid down their fastest lap of the day with a cold set of tires after the break dropping .3 seconds and securing a 5th place in PAX for the day. The Type R cleaned up their final 8th run and locked in 10th place in PAX.
There were multiple co-driver battles today. Roberto and Matthew in a 350z. They both laid down their fastest lap on their 8th run with Roberto taking the win and Matthew taking out 7 cones over the day. Chance and Gabe in a Corvette trading off the lead in the morning, but Chance found a groove in the afternoon laying down three sub 37.4 runs!! Gabe’s quickest was a 37.6. Chance secured a 9th place PAX finish.
I had the great pleasure of racing my new GR Corolla with a co-driver. Max did a great job in the GRC and he helped keep me on task during driver changes. I laid down a 38.274 on run 5, Max dropped a 38.255 on his 6th run!! but, it was dirty! NOOO!! Max had 3 39.0 today and his fastest lap was a 39.001. Held back from the 38s just barely! Max told me to go out and break into the 37s, but I missed it by a smidge. Laying down a 38.065, I knew there was more time out there and on my next run things felt faster and the time showed I did indeed drop time on my 8th and final run laying down a blistering 38.064…..hahaha yes. .001 faster than run 7. haha.
Emery and Jeremy were fighting back and forth for top PAX time all day. Emery secured the Pro Pax (only first 3 runs count for class) win with his 3rd run, Jeremy only .053 behind. Jeremy took back the PAX lead with his 4th and final run for the morning. Going into the afternoon heats Jeremy still held onto top PAX. Both Jeremy and Emery got faster in the afternoon despite the heat. Jeremy’s fastest run held onto 2nd place in PAX and only .158 seconds behind Emery’s last run which secured him 1st place in PAX for the day.
PAX results for the day were wild, between 5th place and 9th place was .202 seconds!!
If you’ve got any photos or video from the event don’t hesitate to share with us and I’ll add them to the post.
Can’t wait to see everyone at the next event at Hawkeye Downs! Convince your friends to come racing with you. If you’ve got questions or concerns don’t hesitate to reach out. We are happy to help.
Iowa had some amazing weather last week, unfortunately that weather decided it was time to leave on Sunday. It went from mid 70s down to 38 degrees on event morning. There was even snow in the forecast! This is AutoX not RallyX.
We had 30+ People cancel or no show due to the weather, and honestly I don’t blame them. When I wasn’t driving Troy’s car (thanks Troy) I was legit freezing as were the other 20ish competitors and crew. Thank you to everyone who came out to help and the course workers who pulled triple duty chasing, red flag and radio.
Our first run group was 12 drivers, there was not much time between runs to cool off which was good considering it STARTED SLEETING during the 1st run group. In the driver’s meeting we decided to run all 6 runs in 2 heats instead of splitting it into 4 heats. I think this was the smarter thing to do when comes tire temp.
STR was a close battle with Henry and Shane, they only had a 0.087 split!
As many of you know we’ve been repairing the Iowa City Airport surface. The surface repairs we completed in 2022 have held up well and we expect to do some more later next month.
Iowa Region SCCA hosted event #9 of the 2022 season today. We had 48 entrants over half in Pro and Novice classes. There were numerous battles today. STU, K Mod, Pro, two random convertibles. Course setup was completed shortly after the truck arrived (late), Aaron had a few ideas in mind and the course he drummed up was a mixture of speed and technical challenge. For our limited sized lot it was nice to get a few larger elements yet keep the course in the mid 30 second range. Results are live on Results Tab (https://iowaregionscca.org/IAR/results/)
Iowa Region SCCA hosted an AutoX on Sunday. 60 drivers came to compete with us at the Iowa City Airport.
Recently Iowa Region repaired large spots on the runway to help improve course design and layout, our patches are holding well and it allowed for a very fun yet technical course. Potentially too technical. There was a lot of cone calls, the airport does require some tight spots to avoid holes and cracks.
Our course designer wanted to include a couple elements that were similar to Nationals style courses, big fast sweepers into a slalom for example. This element proved to be very fun. The turn around is always challenging to design and drive, with the decreasing radius and continued turn it forced people to look ahead and give speed to benefit later.
The finish proved to be challenging to do fast and clean, we should’ve moved the finish beams a little further away. A few too many close calls, myself included.
Pro Class once again proved to be a heated battle. Top 7 drivers all within 1 second of each other. Top 5 within .6ish. First in Pro Class was Alex B with his Focus ST in GS. Jeremy E and Taylor J rounded out the Top 3 in Pro.
Novice Class had 12 drivers and the top 4 are all very close competition. The growth of the Novice drivers this year has been awesome! They are getting faster and faster each event. We’ll have to kick a few of them up to the normal classes in 2023!
Top Pax and FTD went to Jeremy E in the Sprinto RC 1.4T. 33.152 Raw and 29.770 PAX.
Solo Nationals is coming up, it’s a wild week long of autox and Iowa Region has a strong group going. We’ll be sure to update the website and the Facebook pages with details from Solo Nationals!
We have another event coming up Sept 18th at Hawkeye Tech, be sure to join!
