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.

Final Results | Pax Results | Raw Results | Pro Class Results

See everyone in a couple weeks at Iowa City Airport! don’t forget to register there is a cap.

Drew

RE Iowa Region SCCA