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Buttonwillow AutoX Oct 20
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 5:40 pm
by Bill Martin
Fresno region is dropping south hosting an AX at Buttonwillow Raceway. If interested, info below:
Flyer:
https://mail.yahoo.com/b/folders/1/mess ... Attachment
Registration:
https://www.motorsportreg.com/events/20 ... ter-113058
Re: Buttonwillow AutoX Oct 20
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 6:50 pm
by Anthony P.
Neat, I think Tarnoff did one last year?
Re: Buttonwillow AutoX Oct 20
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 6:55 pm
by Anthony P.
Re: Buttonwillow AutoX Oct 20
Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2019 2:24 pm
by James Yom
The weather will be perfect. Hi of 75 that day. The region said 5 competition runs, lunch, and then they will do fun runs afterwards.
I should be going! Reg ends on Thursday.
Re: Buttonwillow AutoX Oct 20
Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 4:12 pm
by James Yom
I had a great time with Fresno SCCA last weekend. I had such a good time that I'm going back tmrw, which is the last scheduled event on the go kart track this year. It's with a non SCCA group, I'll post the link here. Here is video of the Fresno event:
https://youtu.be/wuqRG29rjsQ
Event reg:
https://www.omegamotorsport.com/copy-of-autocross-1
Re: Buttonwillow AutoX Oct 20
Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2019 7:30 pm
by Bill Martin
Never heard of Omega Motorsports. Are their Buttonwillow autocrosses just time-only or do they have classes and such?
Buttonwillow is great venue. I towed in the night before and got free camping in the grass & trees paddock. It was a race weekend so the place was crawling with serious race cars...made for enjoyable walk-abouts. They also had a race parts store, fuel pumps, a tire shop. Someone was running a dyno. Probably food somewhere, but I didn't see it. I showed up with tires from the 2014 season...big mistake. But I ordered new Hoosiers the next day and am looking forward to trying again. Seriously fun event.
James is too modest. You always have fun when you get TTOD.
Re: Buttonwillow AutoX Oct 20
Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 7:21 am
by Reed Gibson
This definitely seems like a fun idea for us to hold a non-points event during the cooler months. If we could set it up to run during a SCCA race weekend I'm sure we could get a great deal on the track rental from Papa Cal Club!
We could advertise to the Fresno region as well to help boost our attendance up to a reasonable number. I'm sure a decent group of people will attend!
Re: Buttonwillow AutoX Oct 20
Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 8:49 pm
by Steve Ekstrand
We had a couple of Conefests at Buttonwillow on the East loop while PapaCalClub hosted the Drivers School on the West Loop. We BBQ'd for all and had a great Saturday night party. One of the events we featured in SportsCar and we even won an award for the event. But two things stopped us. First, our relationship for a time with Papa CalClub got openly hostile. They tried to take us over. We had to fight pretty hard to stay reasonably independent. But forget a cheap rate at Buttonwillow back then. I'd hope our relationship is much improved now.
The other problem is that speeds got out of hand on the road course. I hit over 87mph in an H-Street Dodge Intrepid on 340 treadwear tires. I'm sure a couple of the hottest ASP/SM2 cars hit over a 100. Taka Aono took a tank slapper out of control past and to the outside of where Ann Donahue was handing out time slips. Gary Thomason had one of the scariest off I've ever scene. Our DSS cracked the whip and we had a whole set of requirements. The killer was being forced to line both sides of the entire course with cones. That's a LONG course. And a lot of cones. We also had a four-off and you're done rule that we argued endlessly over. The experienced racers all knew absolutely it was a dangerous rule. It meant people tried crazy saves in tank slappers when they should have safely gone both feet in straight off. Best event in the country was killed off.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to resurrect it. But having a calm and reasonable discussion of how we'd approach the safety requirements would be a first planning step after finding out if the site could be obtained.
Re: Buttonwillow AutoX Oct 20
Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 7:55 am
by Reed Gibson
Steve Ekstrand wrote: ↑Mon Oct 28, 2019 8:49 pm
We had a couple of Conefests at Buttonwillow on the East loop while PapaCalClub hosted the Drivers School on the West Loop. We BBQ'd for all and had a great Saturday night party. One of the events we featured in SportsCar and we even won an award for the event. But two things stopped us. First, our relationship for a time with Papa CalClub got openly hostile. They tried to take us over. We had to fight pretty hard to stay reasonably independent. But forget a cheap rate at Buttonwillow back then. I'd hope our relationship is much improved now.
The other problem is that speeds got out of hand on the road course. I hit over 87mph in an H-Street Dodge Intrepid on 340 treadwear tires. I'm sure a couple of the hottest ASP/SM2 cars hit over a 100. Taka Aono took a tank slapper out of control past and to the outside of where Ann Donahue was handing out time slips. Gary Thomason had one of the scariest off I've ever scene. Our DSS cracked the whip and we had a whole set of requirements. The killer was being forced to line both sides of the entire course with cones. That's a LONG course. And a lot of cones. We also had a four-off and you're done rule that we argued endlessly over. The experienced racers all knew absolutely it was a dangerous rule. It meant people tried crazy saves in tank slappers when they should have safely gone both feet in straight off. Best event in the country was killed off.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to resurrect it. But having a calm and reasonable discussion of how we'd approach the safety requirements would be a first planning step after finding out if the site could be obtained.
For this event we would be focusing on using the kart track only. This is done by other groups in the nation and from what I can tell only requires a few supplemental check boxes on the sanctioning forms. If we could look into the idea of doing a kart track event we can see how our relationship with Papa Cal Club is and then go from there.
While I think we could set up an amazing on course on the big track I don't know if it's something the sanctioning office would let us do under the current format. I have a dream of modifying the Time Trial Nationals track sprints to include some autocross elements on track (as it stands they just have you run one sector of the course, sometimes in reverse). We could keep the speeds down with some slaloms/lane changes on the straights and allow people to experience some of the amazing turns at BRP; but that may just be a pipe dream at the moment.