NASA's 5th event of the year was put on by the Bay Area Miata
Association (BAMA) down at the Marina airfield. We had 118 paid
entries, and managed to put 'em through in typical relaxed NASA
fashion, and even had time for an hour's worth of fun runs, and
got it all picked up well before nightfall.
Nanda Holz was our first time course designer -- he did a fantastic
job, coming up with designs over the last month or so and refining
it. He cheerfully dealt with kibbitzing on site ("Oh, no, no more
cones!", "We can't run on the last two squares at the end of the
site!", "That corner isn't tight enough -- Kevin Stevens' Corvette
can still get around it!"[*]), and wound up with a fun course.
It had a couple fast sweepers, a tight Chicago box, a cross-over,
and a seven-cone slalom. Several of the turns had lots and lots
of room for the driver to choose a unique line through 'em, which
really made it fun. Nobody managed to get through it in less than
a minute, but it was fast enough that Miatas were bouncing off the
rev limiters at several points. I think that one first-timer
managed to DNF a couple of times, but he arrived after the course
walk...
The brand new NASA timing system (from Race America) seemed to work
just fine this time, and we even managed to get three cars overlapped
on the course at once. The timer seemed to be relatively easy to
use, and proved to be very robust, as at least one car nailed the
IR sender at the finish, and it just kept on working..
Tom Burke was the event chair, and he did a great job of convincing
BAMA to do the event, lining up volunteers, promoting the event,
and getting everybody where they needed to be. Chris and Yoon
Herring and Keith Hearn and Nanda and I were out there for course
set up, and worked through the course pick-up. Eugene Tu and Kevin
and Karena Christman also came out to help out with the setup.
I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody, thanks to all the folks who
stepped up to help make it all happen!
Big thanks, as always, to Peggy and Dennis Hale, without whom we
couldn't even begin to put on a NASA autox -- they are really in
charge of the whole thing, and the rest of us just try our best to
help out. They bring out the trailer, take care of the behind-the-scenes
stuff like rent and insurance, help with course setup and tear
down, and just generally work like crazy throughout the event to
make sure it comes off.
Woo hoo!
Kevin
kml@patheticgeek.net
[*] Well, not really. :-) In fact, we widened most of the corners
with those larger cars in mind...
|