OK, so it was not really a race, but it's a report I know you autocrossers
will enjoy!
The town of Stowe, Vermont hosts The British Invasion, a huge car show open
to all British marques. It's the biggest British car show in New England,
about 600 cars this year. Sure, it has lots of really nice cars polished
within an inch of their lives, but the people are great, the town is great,
and the event is just superb.
The organizers started a "Backseat Drivers" contest last year. Was a great
success, so they did it again. The concept is they blindfold the driver and
the passenger talks the driver through a course of cones like an autocross.
This is a timed event with a time penalty of 5 seconds per cone touched.
The event is held on grass.
Now, picture pristine XKE's, Bentleys, Austin Healey 3000's, MGA's, etc,
inching their way around the course fearing they might scratch their paint
from hitting a cone! The smell of clutch lining hangs thick in the air...
Then there was me, Phil Barnes and my three seasons daily driver, a 72 Stag.
Phil has had his TR6 for 25 years, and holds an SCCA competition license
for Rallying. He has been navigating for years, and currently has a ride
for a couple of SCCA Pro Rally events a year. He was the logical choice for
my navigator as we planned to show the spectators how this was to be done!
Under Phil's direction we were going to get around that course _way_ faster
than anybody else and if some cones got in the way, so be it! To make
matters even more fun, the grass was wet from the rain that night...
We lined up at the start, I was blindfolded. The word was given, and with
flying dirt and grass I was off. Whenever I was pointed in the direction of
the way we needed to go, Phil's instruction was "Stomp it". Nobody ever has
to tell me that twice! Grass flew everywhere. Chris, the guy running the
event was truly scared when we were going around one of the three circles
and Phil purposely directed me right into the cones. As I heard those
orange suckers bouncing off the underside of the car the crowd was
screaming, and Chris was yelling, "Stop, Stop!!!" Being a good rallist, I
only listened to my navigator, and accelerated. Phil was kind enough to
inform me that we were in the cones.... ;-)
The course had an area where you needed to pull into a stop box, then back
out at 90 degrees into another stop box, then pull out and go the other
way. The rules said I needed to get within one foot of the end cone. As
Phil was not saying slow down, I was tooling along with the crowd and poor
Chris screaming away. I got the Stop order from Phil, hooked up with
reverse and as I was backing into the box the sound of Chris pleading with
me to stop was just too much. I stopped, but we were 5 feet from the cone!
Chris directed me to go forward, so we did, again with much grass flying
everywhere. The last "Stomp it" was overheard by Chris, and he was trying
ever so hard to get me to pull away in a civilized manner......
So, we finished 35 seconds faster than anyone else, but mowed down 12 cones
in the process giving us 60 seconds of penalty. I understand we will have
pictures real soon of the whole thing, with cones popping out from under
the Stag... I will be sure to share the link when I post them on the web.
Still, came in 4th overall and for sure was the crowd favorite. Funny, I
don't think they are going to let us compete next year! ;-) Especially
after we admitted we both hold competition licenses....
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