Iowa Region’s second rallycross of the 2023 season was held at Cedar Falls Motorsports Park on Sunday, February 12th.  If you’ve ever wanted to race on a couple inches of mud with ice underneath and with a couple small water features mixed in, this was your event! 

 

Fastest time of the day went to Eric L. In Modified AWD, who had made the bold choice of running mud tires all day.  On the morning course ice was king, so Eric’s choice didn’t worked as well as he hoped. He was 2 seconds behind yours truly for fastest raw time at the halfway point. The afternoon course saw more mud, and Eric took fastest time by 26 seconds! Aaron B pushed his monstrous 1.8 Impreza using all 110 available horsepower to take second in MAWD and fourth fastest overall.

Second fastest time of the day and first in Stock AWD went to your author, who didn’t make the same tire selection mistake as last month.  Studded  Winterforces helped me transfer my 173 horses to the ground, despite the morning ice.  My times also put me in second for the overall fastest time.  Second place went to Robert E,  who was tearing up the course in a beautiful 13 STI.
Third fastest time  overall brings us to first place in Prepared AWD, Jamison W.   When he wasn’t entertaining my daughter with his awesome robot dance moves, he was putting together runs that looked like they should’ve been in Audi advertisements.  David C took second, giving the course workers entertainment with a nice spin to watch. 

Prepared FWD saw Keith B take fifth fastest time overall, and first in class in his automatic Dodge Neon. Keith stayed smooth and pretty clean, putting down faster times than cars with double the power and double the drive wheels.

Modified FWD first place went to Rich C, who was again driving Keith’s Neon. well, but just couldn’t catch up to Keith.

 

Stock FWD saw Neil C take 1st place in his Fiesta ST by keeping all 4 wheels down ( it is a Fiesta after all) and consistent runs.  Andrew A took second place driving a VW Passat through all the slop. 

Stock RWD saw Ryan W return for his second event and a first place finish.  He came ready with snow tires, but sadly, due to a fitment issue, he was only able to run the rears.  
Constructors AWD saw newcomer Brian S. and his sweet King of the Hammers SxS.  Sadly his day was cut short,  but he was definitely starting to get used to his ride and the course. His fastest times were on par with some of the faster AWD cars.

All results can be found on our Results page.  I sincerely appreciate everyone that came out to race and spectate. I hope everyone had a great time and we’ll see you all back Cedar Falls March 26th!!!!! 

– Jay 

 

On Sunday, Cedar Falls Raceway was home to the Iowa Region 2023 RallyCross season opener.  23 racers came from all over Iowa and surrounding states to test their skills and cars on our two courses, both of which had 4+ inches of snow sitting atop a hidden layer of ice.  

Tire selection and driver skill was the theme of the day, as no matter how much power or skill you had, the wrong tires were going to humble you. Your author made the wrong tire choice and was rewarded with 15 cones, essentially equal my entire 2022 season total of cones.

Nobody showcased this theme better than Keith B and Rich C. They had made the right tire choice for Keith’s powerhouse 1998 Dodge Neon automatic.   Skillful driving on the morning runs had Rich in first by what looked like a comfortable margin of over 5 seconds.  Not to go down without a fight, Keith picked up the pace in the afternoon and clawed his way into first by only 0.112, taking both first in Prepared FWD and overall fastest time of the day. Rich hung onto the 2nd place spot in PFWD, and also posted the second fastest overall time of the day.

The third fastest time of the day went to Eric L, who was only 2.23 seconds behind Keith.  Eric’s time was enough to have him take first place in Modified AWD, with the class newcomer Charles P taking second. Charles remained consistent, and didn’t hit any cones on either course! 

In Prepared AWD, Jamison W showed what his Audi A4 was capable of, and drifted himself into a sizeable lead and eventual victory while only collecting 2 cones. 

Stock AWD was the battle of the VA chassis Subaru WRX. Brent L was the class victor in his 2021 WRX, but Dave M was hot on his heels in his 2018 WRX, missing out on first by only 0.663 seconds! 

Stock FWD was a family battle, as Victoria W pushed her VW Passat to victory, against her spouse Andrew in his Chevy Cobalt SS. 

Rounding out the day was our bravest class, Stock RWD.   With course conditions and low ride heights, these competitors struggled to even get to the starting line.  However, they managed to power through the courses, with each only needing one recovery.  Chase D was able to drive his Lexus IS300 to the top spot, with Ryan W and his Infinity G35 taking second. 

Full results are live at this link.  Thank you to everyone who came out to race, volunteer, and spectate!  It was a great way to kick off the season! We’ll be racing again in the snow on February 12th in Vinton, IA!

– Jay 

 

 

Well, we certainly all froze our curds and other appendages off at this event!  A total of 36 racers from four states braved the cold & windy weather to race our massive courses. A huge thanks goes out to our sponsors for providing trophies and other giveaways for the event!  Kravings supplied the trophies, Gibbsville Cheese delivered cheese curds for everyone as well as fabulous gift boxes for our first place finishers, and the Uncle Cory Scholarships foundation provided jalapeno cheddar sausages for our winners.  If you’re looking for tasty beverages or some awesome cheese, please support these two businesses.  In addition, the Uncle Cory Scholarships would love any donation you can send to help support their charity work supplying scholarships to help children in need.  You can Venmo them at @UncleCoryScholarships4kids or contact them through their page.

Saturday dawned cold with stiff winds that only got worse throughout the day.  The remnants of corn stalks, snow, and the frozen ground led to very slick conditions in the morning.  These somewhat improved through the day, but the grip was inconsistent.  A minor mistake could lead to a massively slower time, so the drivers had to stay on their toes!  With the size of the venue, we were able to have a fairly high speed course and still have run times that were 4-5 minutes!  The top of the podium were taken by Spencer D and Jayme S co-driving Jayme’s Maverick X3.  Spencer only edged out Jayme by 5 seconds, an amazingly close margin given their total run time was 1400 seconds!  The podium was rounded out by Sean H in his Stock AWD 2001 Subaru Legacy. Another great battle of the day was between Jess M (2011 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart) and Eric L (2005 Subaru WRX) in Modified AWD.  Eric looked to be walking away with the win, but then spun out on his fourth run, putting Jess into first by 0.094 seconds.  Jess then laid down an extremely fast fifth run widening the gap and really putting the pressure on Eric.  Eric gave it his all on his final run, but again had a spin, making it highly unlikely that he’d be taking first.  However, Jess’s car proceeded to pop a relay on his final run, shutting down his car and forcing him to take a DNF.  Eric walked away with the first place prize after all the drama!  Amusingly, we also had a Crown Vic “spec” class in Stock RWD; all three drivers in the class were racing these cars!  Jeff W took the commanding win, with over 80 seconds separating him from second.

 

Sunday started off even COLDER, but thankfully, the brutal wind had died down some, making things more tolerable.  Sunday’s course was a modified version of Saturday’s, run in reverse.  The combination of sun and temperatures that crept up into the 30’s ended up turning the course into a greasy mudfest for our second heat drivers.  For many of these racers, it was a battle to just make it around the course, let alone trying to put down the fastest times.  Lap times started in the three minute range, but then slipped to over five as the mud took its toll.  Once again, there was a very tight battle between Spencer D and Jayme S in the Maverick.  Spencer pulled off first again, only being 7.8 seconds ahead of Jayme.  The SxS again took the top two spots of the podium with the third spot being taken by Jess M with his Lancer Ralliart. The battle to watch was that between Jay K (2006 Subaru Outback Sport) and Travis H (1997 Subaru Legacy) in Stock AWD.  From their first run, these racers had to deal with mud.  Jay jumped off to an early lead, but Travis stayed right on his heels, ready to capitalize on any mistake Jay might make.  Travis used every trick in the books trying to catch Jay, even besting his times on the fourth run.  Jay managed to stay clean and mistake free, taking first by roughly 25 seconds.

This event was also a competition between the CenDiv regions, with the regions being awarded points for members racing in the event as follows: 10/8/6/4/2/1 for 1st/2nd/3rd/4th/5th/6th and lower in each class (7 points if only one racer in class).  As the snow settled on day one, Iowa Region had 64 points, Milwaukee Region 63 points, Land O’ Lakes Region 12 points and Great River Region 10.  Competition remained fierce on day two, but Iowa Region held on to take the win as the fastest region in 2022.  Final points were Iowa – 112, Milwaukee – 110, Land O’ Lakes – 32, and Great River – 10.

 

65+ minutes of seat time: that’s what the racers at this weekend’s multi-day rallycross got!  Our annual two day rallycross went off without a hitch, with 20 racers braving the cold early morning temps to battle it out.  The event drew racers from three states, including four racers from Minnesota.

Saturday’s day course featured a mixture of high speed offsets on the oval combined with technical elements in the infield, resulting in run times around 110 seconds.  The course was rather slippery in the morning, thanks to the heavy overnight frost.  This event was a case of perseverance for many racers, as seven experienced mechanical issues that had to be overcome to continue their battles on course.  Two front wheel drive cars took the top two podium spots: David C. in his 2004 Dodge SRT4 and Andy W. in his 1999 Honda Civic.  The final podium was taken by Eric L. in his 2005 Subaru WRX.

Next up was the night racing portion of the event.  A portion of the same course was used, having been shortened for better corner worker coverage in the dark.  Despite a full moon, it was still very dark and LED light bars were critical for visibility.  There was a close battle that took place in Modified all wheel drive, with Eric L. and Jay K. battling it out, both racing 2005 Subaru WRX’s.  Overcoming a cone penalty, Jay ended up taking the win by over 8 seconds over Eric thanks to some very quick final runs.  Overall standings ended up with Jay on top of the podium, followed by David C. who ended up less than two seconds in front of Eric in third.

Sunday’s course was Saturday’s course, but in reverse, with a few tweaks, resulting in run times that were rough 110 seconds.  Things ran extremely smoothly, so the racers got in 20 runs! In case anyone is wondering, this is the limit of our timing software. 😀  Jay and Eric resumed their battle right from the first run, trading the lead back and forth a few times.  For the afternoon runs, Eric made the bold choice of switching to 200TW summer tires.  This gamble paid off, with his times immediately dropping by 4 seconds.  Sadly, Jay’s car started misbehaving so Eric walked away with a very decisive win in class and overall.  The two remaining overall podium spots were again taken by the front wheel drive hot shoes, David C. and Andy W.  Another amusing story of the day was both Juan S. and Ramon P. mercilessly flogging Juan‘s 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer.  The poor car survived 40 back-to-back runs by this duo.  When the dust settled, Juan took the win over Ramon by a mere 4 seconds, and then drove the car home.

Make your plans now to join us for our next event, the Freeze Your Curds Off Challenge, on Nov 5th & 6th near Darlington, WI.  This will be a battle amongst the three active rallycross programs in the Central Division SCCA: Iowa, Land-O-Lakes, & Milwaukee Region.  We’ll be racing on a bit less than 40 acres, so courses may exceed three minutes per run!  More info can be found here or you can register here.

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/)

Here are a few videos from the event.

Aaron B.

DSP RX8

Ramon P.

STU 370Z

Alex B.

GS Focus ST

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.

Check the results here! Results

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!

-Drew RE Iowa Region SCCA 

 

Nineteen drivers had a great time tearing around the track at Iowa Region’s sixth rallycross of the year this past Sunday in Oskaloosa, IA.  This large, relatively flat venue is quite smooth and allows even lowered cars to race without concern.  Taking advantage of the large size, a course that was roughly 110 seconds per run was created.  Everyone got in 11 runs, providing in excess of 20 minutes of seat time. We had a variety of entries, including a pair of Hondas, a couple side by side UTVs, and the typical mix of Subarus.

The closest battle of the day was between Dave McCloney (2018 WRX) and Jay Kurth (2006 Outback Sport) in Stock AWD.  Prior to the last run of the day, Jay was in the lead by just over 2 seconds.  Dave put down a clean fast run, so Jay had to push hard to try to maintain his lead.  He pushed a bit too hard though, losing control right before the finish and collecting two cones, a four second penalty, that dropped him into second place.

Another battle worth noting was that of Modified AWD.  For a few years, Eric Less (2005 WRX) has taken first at every event he attends, typically by a large margin.  Up and comer Eli Irwin (2006 WRX) has slowly been chipping away at this lead and found his groove at this event.  He was nipping at Eric’s heels throughout the day and ended up finishing only 6.8 seconds back from Eric.  This is awfully close with cumulative times of just under 20 minutes.  Nice work Eli!

Iowa Region’s next rallycross is on August 28th in Oskaloosa again.  Make your plans to race now and then register here to get in on the action.  We’ll see you out there!

Iowa Region SCCA had an event on Sunday the 24th, it was awesome. A little hot, but awesome.

Over the past few months we have been investigating how to “fix” the runway. IC airport is a great venue, it had some very obvious issues though. We had to navigate around massive craters or cracks, it created a struggle for course designers. We essentially had a gravel trap after the finish that was “super fun” for cars with Hoosiers or race rubber. Gravel traps are bad for Mod cars with exposed tires and no windshields.

With a half pallet (1600lbs) of traffic patch that is used by the Nebraska region at the national site we were ready to start fixing. One week prior to the event we did a test patch and learned some very valuable lessons about mixing concrete.

1.) Have a proper drill, corded, if it doesn’t tax your generator it’s too small. haha.

2.) put the correct amount of water in the bucket first, then the concrete while mixing. LOADS faster this way.

3.) don’t let the bucket spin away from you, hold on!

4.) hurry up and pour!

During our test run we used 15 bags of patch for two big spots off the course (shut down gravel trap) and to fill some holes as well. The test patching went awesome and everything was properly cured for the next morning. 

Fast forward to the setup day on July 23rd, hottest day of ’22 so far, we assembled a team of ambitious unskilled concrete guys and got to work. Started at 9am and had the course setup and the necessary holes/cracks patched by 3pm. 16 bottles of Gatorade, 17 bags of concrete, 20ish gallons of water, multiple brushing apparatuses and numerous sunburns was all it took. 

On race day, we confirmed the concrete held up as expected and Emery (our course designer) did a couple confirmation laps and we setup some extra pointers to help with the crossover. 

Iowa City Airport is capped at 50 entrants due to it’s space constraints, we had 50 registered and 42 show up to race. We maybe able to open up registration to 55 or 60 next event, we shall see if the demand is there.

On to the action! Check out the results here

First runs were started around 10am, first heat was most of the Street Classes and the PRO class. 14 drivers in PRO battling it out to get their top time in only 3 chances. I knew this was going to be a fun fight. Of the first runs in Pro class only the Miatas were clean. 19 cones and 4 DNFs on first runs tells you how technical this course was. 10 cones and 3 DNFs for 2nd runs as people tried to clean up and improve. 3 People set their fastest pro class time in their 2nd runs. 3rd runs is where everyone (almost) knuckled down and got clean fast runs. Jeremy (31.163 Raw 27.984 Pax) was able to pull off the win, Emery (35.156 Raw 28.687 Pax) couldn’t pull of a clean 34.5 he needed to inch into 1st. Mike Bronson (36.446 Raw 28.938 Pax), Brent Seaton (35.804 Raw 29.216 Pax) and Jeff Ellerby (33.197 Raw 29.810 Pax) rounded out the 5 trophy spots in Pro. 5 People managed to be dirty all 3 runs, myself included haha. *Insert random excuse here*.

Pro class results are only first three runs of the day, but the remaining runs for pro class drivers still count towards Pax and Raw times, which is good for Alex. Alex had a rough morning in pro class, but pulled off a wild flying lap to set top pax with a 34.979 GStreet Raw time which is good for a 27.773 in Pax!

There were a lot of cones hit this event and I want to formally thank all the course workers for picking up and calling in all the cones! Our Cone Killer from 2021 Max Long somehow only hit 3 cones all event. I should get him his trophy so he can hang it on his wall for the rest of the season.

Here are a couple videos from the event and if we get some photos I can add them as well.

Thanks again for everyone who came out to the event and all the extra help with concrete setup before!!

Drew

RE Iowa Region SCCA

 

 

Iowa Region SCCA had an AutoX this past weekend at Hawkeye Downs. There was a water feature at the finish, luckily it did not impact the course at all. It did lead to some awesome photos though! Plenty of jokes of an Iowa Grand Prix with John Boats instead of Yachts parked in the “marina” haha.

The weather was phenomenal outside of a bit too sunny and a bit too windy, course design at Hawkeye Downs is pretty standard but we do try and do some small variations. This event we did a slightly different exit to the 1/2 mile oval which was very well received. The course was fast with some people hitting low 70mph going into the outer loop but still very technical (as shown by the cone happy pro class).

 

Thank you Nick for the photos!

We had a strong showing in the newly created Novice group, some notable references are Bill in his Corvette shaving 20 seconds off his time from first run to his 6th! Jen in her Veloster dropping 10 seconds off her first run to her fastest clean run! Big shout out to Justin in his S2000 with the win in Novice.

Our Pro class is new for 2022 and had 13 drivers signed up, with only the first three runs counting the pressure is really on to get a good fast run put down. I should include clean in that requirement. Fast and Clean! With over 30 cones hit in the first 3 runs staying clean and fast wasn’t easy. I personally scratched a 1 second faster run by being a little too greedy on the out loop pinch points. Based on the chatter in the paddock, I wasn’t the only one to center punch a cone from being a bit too greedy. haha. Jeremy in his DM pulled off the win with his 3rd run.

We had four father and son teams battling each other. Ryan and Eli in STH, Chad and Luke in STS, Brent and Emery in GS, also Jeff and Jeremy in DM. In STH the father pulled off the win, in STS the son was able to hold off his Dad, in GS the son not only pulled off a win over dad but he also got fastest vehicle with doors and in DM the son inched out a win as well. It is awesome seeing father and son co-drivers battling out in some friendly competition.

Results: https://iowaregionscca.org/IAR/results/

Couple videos from the event are below!

It was a perfect day for RallyCross yesterday!  Lower attendance allowed us to try a different event format, where each racer got to take two laps around the course per run.  This resulted in runs that were over 200 seconds and all racers got a minimum of 20 minutes of time on course!!  We paired this run format with hot swapping course workers, so we were still able to finish before 3 pm.

We still had some very close battles despite the very high cumulative times.  In Modified RWD, Chet Prust edged out Aaron Booms by only 0.946 seconds even with a cumulative run time just over 21 minutes and 45 seconds!  There was also a tight battle in Stock AWD, with Greg Little passing up Jay Kurth on the last run of the day to take first by less than four seconds.

Make your plans now to join us at our next RallyCross on June 12th at the Oskaloosa Fairgrounds to get in on the fun!

 

Final Results | Raw Results