NER Autocross School  2025 

NER held its Autocross School again this year on May 3rd. The event was sponsored once again by Conway Autoworks in Hanover, MA. (Thank you, Kenny!)

This year’s event attracted 28 students all eager to learn about Autocross and to see what they can do with their cars. 19 of our veteran autocrossers came out to instruct and help out with the event – allowing us to continue on-on-one pre-assigned instructors.

Students had been advised (prior to the event) to watch the 3-part NER Autocross Video produced by Richard Viard to get some background for the day. After a brief morning driver’s meeting, instructors and their student were turned loose to drive.  

This year, we went back to having three exercises – a “Figure 8” exercise to help with turning and following a course, a “Clamshell” exercise for more braking with turning, and a “Slalom” introducing students to a frequently used autocross element. After breaking the students up into two run groups and three subgroups for the exercises, only 5 cars were at an exercise at a time for 30 minutes allowing plenty of repetitions for each student.

Following a Pizza lunch provided by the Club, we held a brief driver’s meeting before running an actual autocross event for the afternoon.

Students were driven around the course in their own cars by their instructor at a moderate pace to get familiarized with the course and a driving approach. Then, each student was given a chance to do 4 timed runs with their instructor riding along. We had been lucky all day to escape bad weather which had been predicted all week; however, as we were completing the students’ fourth runs at the end of the day, lightning was beginning to show nearby and rain clouds were approaching so we elected to forego instructor fun-runs and sent everyone on their way.

A look at the posted times for the day shows most of the students managing to improve their times considerably over the course of their four runs showing that they learned something during the day’s activities. Once posted, full results can be seen by going to NER’s Live Timing site at https://porschenet.com/ax, scrolling down to the date of the Autocross School (May 3, 2025), then selecting  “Results”.

Thanks again to Kenny Conway at Conway Autoworks for sponsoring the event and hopefully helping to generate some new autocross regulars …