Finger Lakes Region, SCCA
2004 RallyCross Series

First Event of the 2004 RallyCross Season
by Bruce Perry, RallyCross Chairman

Photo: K. Welker

The first event of the Finger Lakes RallyCross season took place on Saturday January 10. The day was absolutely gorgeous! The course was perfect, never been better. There was a 1 inch layer of crunchy ice with anywhere from 0 to 12 inches of snow on top. Oh, did I mention the high for the day was -1 degree F!!!

Fourteen dedicated ice and snow drivers took to the course, despite the temperature, and had a blast. Twelve runs, 8 in the forward direction and 4 in the reverse direction, made for a lot of seat time and a real value for the entry dollar. There were even a few fun runs when we were done. The course was designed to allow for all of us to practice setting the yaw, of oversteer, angle of the car and maintaining it through a long sweeping corner. The course was marked mainly with apex markers to allow for a wide variety of lines to be tried, and to keep the number of downed pylons to a minimum. Pylons tend to shatter at these temperatures!

All worker positions were established so that no one was out in the cold. Vehicles were positioned for the course workers so that they could stay warm.

Randy Zimmer/Subaru Impreza Photo: Tom Marks

The Rally O4 class had two competitors. Randy Zimmer and Jon Bottoms spent the day doing tire testing for the Sno*Drift ProRally coming up in a few weeks. It was fun to see a couple of real rally cars out there giving the rest of us something to shoot for. Randy managed to take first overall and set the FTD single lap time as well. Jon's WRX was burning the Sunoco race fuel, what a wonderful smell!

Stock O4 was the closest battle of the day with the top three within 13/100 after 20 minutes of seat time! Kevin Welker took first over Jason Light by 7/100. Robert Kraus was third by another 6/100 however he DNF'ed one run when a tire came off the bead. Robert tied Jon for 2nd FTD single lap time. Alex Kozik, from Philly, and Nick Guarasci rounded out the field.

The Stock O2 class was won by Tom Langdon again but this time he had some competition. Aaron Demus and father-in-law Tom Stevens entered Aaron's daily driver, a Golf VR6. Believe it or not, Tom and his SAAB won due to good reliability and other's attrition! It seems Aaron's gearbox was scattered around the course. I hear Aaron is finally out of cars. How did you get to work on Monday, Aaron? Actually, I hear Aaron bought Randy Zimmer's old Imprezza and will be tearing it up the rest of the year.

In 2WD, the $300 Neon of Roy Hopkins and Adrianne Hughes has a good day. Roy and Adrianne made up the Stock U2 class with Roy being a bit more consistant than Adrianne to take the win. I was alone in the Modified O2 class and an ever improving Chris Braun was also alone in Stock O2. What was interesting was the battle for FTD single lap in 2WD. Roy, Adrianne and I all tied with a 1.59. The diffierence was that Roy did it 3 times, Adrianne did it twice. At least I managed to get one good run in... Chris Braun was right behind us with a 1.63.

Bruce Perry driving Mike Reda's RX7. Photo: Tom Marks

What am I doing in Modified O2? Mike Reda and I shared my PGT Talon last year. Now that the Talon has gone to a new home, we didn't have a car to drive. Mike happened to have a first gen RX7 that he has been playing with and decided to build it into a dedicated rallycross car. He invited me to co-drive and help build it. I saw it as a new challenge, just about every car I have owned for the past 8 years has been AWD and I am SPOILED! I mamaged to do at least six 360's during the day but finally got the hang of it towards the end. Unfortunately, Mike had a death in the family and wasn't able to attend the maiden voyage. Thanks for the ride Mike.

We have a few dedicated workers who come to our events just to help. Mike Liggett and Deb Langdon did scoring, Debbie Bartlett was the registrar, Carl Blocker ran tech and my wife, Beth, kept the hot coffee, hot chocolate and cookies coming throughout the day. Thank you all.

One final note. Fourteen entries seems to be on par with our events lately. This is not a large enough entry to sustain our program. Please pass the word or come out yourselves with your winter beaters. Learn or practice your winter driving skills in a safe and fun environment. You are all welcome!

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