Latest News / Event Recaps

 

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

 

 

Event #2 of 2022 is in the books, also our first event at Hawkeye Downs for the year.

I may have unintentionally not made a facebook event for this AutoX, I swore I set one up previously but I did not.

We had approximately 70 pre-registered but there were a good 22 people who either cancelled last minute or chose not to attend likely due to the forecasted rain.

 

The weather held out for us and everyone was able to complete 6 runs, some got 7 but they were scrubbed from the results due to not everyone getting to run their final 7th runs.

The course was a lot of fun, I thought it flowed very well and rewarded looking a head ALOT. Check out Andrew’s video above.

Hawkeye Downs tends to be higher speed and it rewards good car placement and staying clean. Pro Class was littered with dirty runs, of the 7 competitors only 3 were able to make a clean run out of their allotted 3 runs for the class championship points.

The Top 6 in Pax from Sunday’s event had a great variety of drivers and vehicles.

  • 1st Jeremy Ellerby DM Sprinto RC 1.4T
  • 2nd Zach Uthoff DS BMW 128i
  • 3rd Trevor Brown STX Honda Civic
  • 4th Andrew Dostal EV Tesla Model 3
  • 5th Andrew Advani STU Subaru WRX STI
  • 6th Eric Fredricks HS Fiat 500 Abarth

Definitely not one specific make or class taking home all the points this past Sunday.

Look forward to seeing everyone at our next event at Hawkeye Tech, it’s a two day event!

Check out the complete results on the results page.

 

-Drew

RE Iowa Region SCCA

Event #1 of 2022 is in the books! With a total of 45 entries we had a solid turn out for Iowa City Airport.

Iowa City Airport is a unique lot in that we have to avoid some spots in the tarmac that are “deteriorating”. In some spots the course designs itself to an extent.  The pinch points you’ll see in videos posted from this event show the pinch points pretty well.

 

The course was fast yet technical, cone happy and some good open stretches. I enjoyed the challenge, and it was challenging to do it fast yet clean.

 

You can find results on the results tab.

 

Thank you everyone for coming out and for staying to help clean up!

 

See everyone soon in Cedar Rapids in May!

 

-Drew

RE Iowa Region SCCA

This past weekend Iowa Region SCCA RallyX was at Cedar Falls Motorsport Park.

There were 22 entries at Sunday’s RallyX, with 8 of the 9 possible RallyX classes represented.

Stock AWD with 12 drivers was won by Jay Kurth

Mod AWD with 4 drivers was won by Eric Less

FTD and Top Stock time was set by Jay Kurth

Top Prepared time was set by Kim Kurth

Top Modified time was set by Eric Less

The results are now live!

Final Results

Raw Results

Thank you to everyone who came out to race with us on Sunday! See you at the next event.