Cal Club Autocross Forums

Sooners beat Texas, all is well with the world. ;)

John and Karen Stewart are saints. I left the site at 8pm and they were still hard at work.
We managed to get them on stage and rightfully cheered on by the large gathering at awards.

I felt bad though that as the MC I was made the face of the SCCA volunteers. Dozens of teams sought me out to thank the SCCA volunteers for a truly great event.

I was just the local loudmouth. The thanks goes to our dozens of hard working chiefs and volunteers. Your constant hard work made this event universally applauded.

Just wanted to pass that on to those who really deserve it.

was fun to catch the first half of the endurance event. Would have liked to stay to the end to see the end results, but I bailed out early though due to:

1. really harsh sun (for the photos)
2. back-lit condition in the afternoon from the photo areas (though, was probably one of the few people on the field that had to reach to photo them on the back half)
3. having people working on my back yard at home

It was pretty fascinating watching the Sooners active aero at work. I was a little confused on their programming though. The front wings consistently opened up prior to the rear wings, rather than both deploying at the same time

traction to the rear while accelerating out?

I batch processed all the pictures from this morning -> linky <-, didn't bother sorting them except to eliminate the ones that were clearly out of focus, nor crop / touchup, etc.. the overexposure is intentional..

Steve Ekstrand wrote: John and Karen Stewart are saints. I left the site at 8pm and they were still hard at work.
We managed to get them on stage and rightfully cheered on by the large gathering at awards.

Yeah, they were pretty amazing. No matter what you needed, a call to John and it was done. Same for Christine and Marshall.

I felt bad though that as the MC I was made the face of the SCCA volunteers. Dozens of teams sought me out to thank the SCCA volunteers for a truly great event.

I have no problem with you representing us Steve. No question your announcing the endurance has greatly enhanced that event. Besides the info provided to the teams, definitely made the slow periods go a lot faster for the workers ;)

I was just the local loudmouth. The thanks goes to our dozens of hard working chiefs and volunteers. Your constant hard work made this event universally applauded.

Just wanted to pass that on to those who really deserve it.

I for one am really going to miss this event.

Rick Brown wrote: I for one am really going to miss this event.

Me too.

Kudos to the folks who did all the heavy lifting. John and Karen are amazing. I'm really sad it's going away.

I wonder where they are going to get enough workers in Lincoln.

The FSAE admins talk a lot of about Howard and Clancy. They are certainly our heroes, but their plate is full. They are a great resource but this event requires literally hundreds of volunteers and dedicated people like John and Karen pushing the event along all year long. Then you need scores of experienced active core people to be chiefs. In Lincoln, Mark Walker is amazing, but criticism came at the SpringNationals about all the gaps. Not Mark's fault, he's one guy who tried to do way too much and accomplished more than I can imagine. So, I have my doubts they can make it happen year in and year out at Lincoln. The SoloNationals works because we are the workers. We are the chiefs. Mari and Eric know they have 1100+ people coming their way to draw from.

There is some talk of having the FormulaSAE Lincoln share a week with the Solo event. Not an overlap but at least you would minimize setup and teardown work. And it might be possible to get some carryover chiefs from the solo community that come early or stay late. There might be some expense coverage in the budget. I'd say they are on the clock now to start firming up those plans.

I'm totally clueless. What prompted the move in the first place. Kinda seems like if it ain't broke...

Kurt Ra wrote:I'm totally clueless. What prompted the move in the first place. Kinda seems like if it ain't broke...

Money. They were hoping it would grow to near 100 entrants. Was losing money at the current level.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you to everyone that came out and volunteered! I hope you all enjoyed the event as much as I do.

It's always so much fun to see the varying styles of cars and the different ways that they can fail. We have seen wheels fall off of cars before, but they always seemed to get held to the car by brake lines or something. This year we had 2 different cars lose a wheel and those wheels went rolling across the track. I think only one car caught fire (during the acceleration event Friday morning) and they were able to get it fixed and re-teched for the autocross (Friday afternoon). It really broke my heart to see the Oregon State car break after crossing the start finish line for a second lap. They had been on track to win the whole event if they had finished the endurance.

Results have already been posted, which is the fastest than I have ever seen them up after the event, but still slower than our own Rick Brown gets our results up.
http://www.sae.org/images/cds/selfservi ... inder1.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Once again, Thank you to all the volunteers. I am really going to miss this event

Christine Berry wrote: It really broke my heart to see the Oregon State car break after crossing the start finish line for a second lap. They had been on track to win the whole event if they had finished the endurance.

I was really disappointed in that also. They (Oregon Institute of Technology) were smoking fast in the autox.......a total domination. They also dominated the skid pad. From a performance stand point, there was no equal when the car was running.

George Schilling wrote:They (Oregon Institute of Technology)

No, Oregon State. Global Formula Racing. http://www.global-formula-racing.com/en/home" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Oregon Institute of Technology was there, they just were not as spectacular in the other events... but they did finish the endurance and placed 29th overall.

Christine Berry wrote:

George Schilling wrote:They (Oregon Institute of Technology)

No, Oregon State. Global Formula Racing. http://www.global-formula-racing.com/en/home" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Oregon Institute of Technology was there, they just were not as spectacular in the other events... but they did finish the endurance and placed 29th overall.

Crap. I should have known better. I was mixing those two up during the autox.

and GFR didn't win the skid pad, they got second to the sooners.

Hopefully with all the money they won't be paying cali speedway they'll have a 5 figure travel budget to pull the event off in Lincoln.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Christine and Marshall! I'm thanking you because the participants probably didn't even know to, but I saw how much of yourselves you both put into this event and was moved by that. And the results were on full display. The endurance event ran very very smoothly, I think mostly because you two were so well organized and prepared. Great job.
And thanks again to anybody else who gave even a little of their time to come out. On Saturday afternoon I was taking note of how many people were out working course in the hot sun for the final two cars, and was struck again by the generosity within the racing community. Everybody was tired and hot, but there were no complaints. Everybody just muscled through, all so these two teams who worked so hard could finally have their moment. And I was disappointed when the Mexico team couldn't get their car started after the driver change. Great event. I'll miss it too.
Mark D.

I will add my thanks to those who helped me set up the bulk of the Autocross/Endurance courses on Thursday afternoon and all the volunteers that worked the course on Friday afternoon. The event ran very smoothly, even with a number of breakdowns that slowed the pace down a bit. Cars moved thru the start and exit areas well and broken cars were moved off course quickly so we could continue sending more out. In the end, only one team missed taking their last run because time had expired. It was a better ending then last year, when several teams weren't able to finish. Thanks again for all the hard work.

Rick Brown wrote:

Kurt Ra wrote:I'm totally clueless. What prompted the move in the first place. Kinda seems like if it ain't broke...

Money. They were hoping it would grow to near 100 entrants. Was losing money at the current level.

And the level of manufacturer support they were hoping/expecting never happened in the first two years and after 2008 it wasn't going to.