Yesterday was a good day at the autocross. It was a Utah region event,
held at the University of Utah, with yours truly and his co-driver Pugs
Pivirotto designing the course. Also, the Fat Chance Garage enticed a
number of folks from the British Motor Club of Utah to attend, using the
time honored method of offering them something for nothing, as I paid for
their $10 entry fee if htey ran a British car. Luckily, not all 180+ folks
who get the newsletter took advantage of the offer, though a number did.
And while Dave Thompson's "FTD once again" Ralt is indeed a British car,
it doesn't really count.
Bill Van Moorhem showed up in his very clean MGA, one couple shared a
Jasmine (actually the MG name is something else, Primrose?) yellow MGB-GT,
and another fellow ran a similarly colored MGB roadster. He was really
getting into the driving, and may show up again, as will a fellow in a
rather nice TR6. I need to talk to him about shocks, though, after
watching his car wobble around the course.
A few of the regular drivers fall into the BMC category, the event chairs
in Junior, the '74 Spitfire you've heard about recently, as well as another
fellow in a '78 DSP Spitfire and one guy in a real nice Lotus Europa. Doug
is looking at buying another car for autocrossing so he doesn't beat his
Europa, and he has his eye on this '77 Spitfire just languishing away by the
side of my garage. DSP could get pretty fun later this season.
One note of interest to a few of the folks on these lists was the appearence
of John Ross, a fellow who used to be my main competition in DSP, running a
mostly red, some gray, MGB. He lost his job at Novell shortly after he bought
a Real Race Car, which he brought out for his first time yesterday. Yep,
Scott Fisher's old black B was tearing up the asphalt once again. The
locked diff wasn't the best for the somewhat tight course I laid out, but
he had fun.
All in all, a good, if somewhat long day. Both Pugs and I managed to beat
a lot of Mustangs and a Corvette or two. A few drivers commented that the
course seemed particulary well suited to small, well-handling cars, and had
few places where one could simply rely on power. Gee, I wonder why? Wait
until we pull out the 1296 and put in a whopping 1.5 liters of pure pushrod
power!
mjb.
|