NER Autocross Special Event August 15th, 2021
NER held a special event geared to give novices a chance to come and try out autocross, meet some of the “regulars,” and see what it’s all about. The event was held instead of our normal “Autocross School,” which we usually do at the beginning of the season. As they have done with the school for years, Conway Motorsports sponsored the event.
We had 50 people sign up, and 27 of them were novices. We had a bunch of parent/child dual drivers, and one family brought four people (father, mother, son, and family friend), all sharing Dad’s Boxster. Now that they are all into autocross, they definitely need to get another Porsche! So, we achieved our goal of attracting the newbies … the trick was to give them a chance to try out autocross and come away with a good taste in their mouths for the sport.
We set up two separate courses and divided them into three run groups so that folks would end up spending most instead of half their time driving and less time out working the course. One course was timed and the other untimed. The untimed course was used as an exercise course allowing drivers to get a good feel for some of the basic autocross elements like slaloms, gates, clamshells through repetitive runs through the course. The timed course allowed everyone to gauge their own improvement throughout the day or against their favorite autocross buddy – regardless of class. The experienced drivers spent most of their time jumping in to instruct the novices, but they managed to get a few runs of their own in as well as give the novices some thrilling rides to give them an idea of what can be done with these cars.
Because we set up two courses in separate areas of the airfield, the courses were up and back arrangements like would be done if autocrossing in a parking lot. The timed course also featured two switchback elements which, in hindsight, may have proved to be a bit too complex for the novices – in fact, it proved to be tough for many of the experienced drivers as well! But it did teach people the importance of learning a complex course – a skill which will undoubtedly come in handy in the future.
The Club sprang for a Pizza lunch as we normally do at our Autocross School, and people had a chance to socialize while taking a break in the middle of the day. After lunch, it was back to the track(s) where people kept driving until after 4:30. Between the two courses, folks got a lot of seat time in, and even though it was all fun, many were ready to call it a day by then.
The timing results from the main course are posted below and will remain up on our live timing site at https://porschenet.com/autocross/results_live.htm until our next event on September 4th. Photos from the event taken by Anker Berg-Sonne have also been posted to the website and our Facebook page. Thanks to all the new people who came out to try AX and to the veterans who spent most, if not all their day instructing and helping the novices have fun.
